Oil slick from sinking ship in Red Sea

A cargo ship that was struck by a Houthi ballistic missile on Monday has created an 18-mile long slick in the Red Sea. It remains unclear what kind of substance is causing the slick.

Rubymar — a Belize-flagged, UK-registered, Lebanese-owned vessel — was carrying 41,000 tons of fertilizer when it was struck on Monday by one of two ballistic missiles fired from Houthi territory in Yemen.

The damage sustained by the Rubymar is potentially the most significant to a vessel caused by an attack launched by the Houthis, who have been targeting commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden for months.

US Central Command said this week that the Rubymar sent out a distress call after the attack and was assisted by a coalition warship and another merchant vessel, which took the crew to a nearby port.

It appeared to be the first time a crew has been forced to evacuate a ship after it was hit by the Houthis. Many of the ships struck by Houthi missiles have been able to continue their voyage.

Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh said Thursday that the Rubymar was taking on water as we speak.

“It’s creating an environmental hazard with the leakage of all the fuel that it’s carrying,” Singh said. “On top of that, it was carrying, to my understanding, fertilizer. Houthis are creating an environmental hazard right in their own backyard.”

The Houthis’ attacks have been ongoing for months and despite several rounds of strikes by the US and UK on their capabilities, US officials told CNN it’s unclear how much weaponry the militia group still has.

“The US campaign against the Houthis appears to bear the hallmarks of many of these highly circumscribed, scrubbed campaigns of the past where we seek to avoid causing them actual pain,” a former US military official told CNN.

The Houthis’ attacks have increased in recent days; Singh said Thursday there has certainly been an increase in attacks from the Houthis over the last 72 hours. And while the Houthis have said they are conducting the attacks in support of the Palestinian people and targeting ships connected to Israel, many of the vessels attacked have instead been connected to other countries.

Another ship hit by the Houthis on Monday — the Sea Champion, a US-owned, Greek-flagged bulk carrier — was carrying grain to Yemen. A CENTCOM release on the attack said the Sea Champion has delivered humanitarian aid to Yemen 11 times in the past five years.”

“So, again, they’re saying that they’re conducting these attacks against ships that are connected to Israel,” Singh said Thursday. “These are ships that are literally bringing goods, services, aid to their own people, and they’re creating their own international problem.”

Maersk to pause container ship traffic through Red Sea

Danish shipping company A.P. Moller-Maersk will pause all container shipments through the Red Sea until further notice and send them on a detour around Africa, a spokesperson for the company told Reuters on Friday.

"Following the near-miss incident involving Maersk Gibraltar yesterday and yet another attack on a container vessel today, we have instructed all Maersk vessels in the area bound to pass through the Bab al-Mandab Strait to pause their journey until further notice," the company said in a statement.

Maersk on Thursday said its vessel Maersk Gibraltar was targeted by a missile while travelling from Salalah, Oman, to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and that the crew and vessel were reported safe.

Earlier on Friday Maersk denied a claim by Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement that the militia had struck a Maersk vessel sailing towards Israel.

"The vessel was not hit," a Maersk spokesperson told Reuters in an emailed statement following the Houthi claim.

The Houthis had claimed they carried out a military operation against a Maersk container vessel, directly hitting it with a drone. The Houthis, who made the claim in a statement, did not release any evidence.

Maersk said the company was deeply concerned about the highly escalated security situation in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

"The recent attacks on commercial vessels in the area are alarming and pose a significant threat to the safety and security of seafarers," it wrote in the statement.

 

 

US coalition to halt Houthi threat to shipping

The Biden administration is building an international coalition to halt the threat the Iranian-backed Houthis pose to international shipping routes in the Red Sea, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in Israel on Friday.

“We will continue to take every step we deem necessary and appropriate to deal with the threat the Houthis pose,” he said, adding that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin would tackle this issue during his visit to Israel and the region next week.

“That response shouldn’t just be from the US. It should be a broader coalition of countries working together in concert,” he said.

The Houthis have said they are attacking ships to protest Israel’s military campaign to oust Hamas from Gaza, but Sullivan said the issue was much broader, particularly given Iran’s involvement.

“We are building a coalition we are working to ensure and rally the nations of the world, all of whom have an interest in seeing this stop,” Sullivan said.

“While the Houthis are pulling the trigger they are being handed the gun by Iran and Iran has a responsibility to take steps themselves to cease these attacks because they are a fundamental threat to international law and international peace and security,” he said.

“This is not about the US and Israel, this is about the entire international community,” Sullivan explained.

“The Houthis represent a material threat to freedom of navigation to commercial shipping, to lawful commerce and they are doing so in a vital artery,” he added.

“The US is working with the international community, with partners from the region and from all over the world to deal with this threat,” he added.

He spoke as a Liberia-flagged container ship sustained damage from an aerial attack as it was sailing through the Bab al-Mandab strait, causing a fire on the deck and a container to fall overboard, the British maritime security firm Ambrey said on Friday.

Ambrey reported the vessel was owned by Hapag-Lloyd and had been sailing south through the Bab al-Mandab strait in the southern Red Sea when it was attacked by a projectile 50 nautical miles north of the Yemeni Red Sea port of Mokha.

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have been attacking vessels in Red Sea shipping lanes and firing drones and missiles at Israel since the start of the Gaza war

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis said on Tuesday they carried out a military operation against the Norwegian commercial tanker STRINDA.

The group targeted the tanker with a rocket after the crew refused to respond to all warnings, Houthi military spokesperson Yehia Sareea said in a televised statement.

He added that the group had managed to obstruct the passage of several ships in recent days, acting in support of the Palestinians.

He vowed that the Houthis would continue blocking all ships heading to Israeli ports until Israel allows the entry of food and medical aid into the Gaza Strip - more than 1,000 miles from the Houthi seat of power in Sanaa.

 

 

Is the world ignoring Iran Israel tension?

Media across the Middle East during this past week was focused on Israel-Iran tensions, including inflammatory comments from Beirut to Baghdad about the war on the horizon. Yet much of the tension failed to attract the attention of international community. That doesn’t mean that behind the scenes the US, France and others were not working to calm the issue, but it does appear that most did not take the crises seriously.

The reason is that in Europe is engrossed Brexit, while Trump-centric news cycle spent time wondering if the US would buy Greenland, or if hurricanes would be nuked, or if the G7 would hold a meeting with Russia at a Trump resort.

In addition, there are protests in Hong Kong and a crisis in Kashmir. These are important issues, some of them with ramifications as important as what is taking place in the Middle East. Pakistan and India, for instance, have nuclear weapons.

The airstrike by Israel on 24^th August, and Hezbollah’s claims that it downed Israeli drones on August 25, also did not lend themselves to much of a crisis. A few little drones that looked more appropriate for a wedding planner and an airstrike where only a grainy video seems to underpin Israel’s claims of “killer drones” is not major news globally.

Also, the allegations of Israeli airstrikes in Iraq are opaque. Some storage containers blew up, but there are not many details. And there is fatigue in Western media for stories about violence in the Middle East. In addition, the US is trying to end the Afghan war in the coming months, a war that also gets almost no media attention anymore.

Nevertheless, the Israel-Hezbollah tensions and US-Iran tensions have major ramifications. Jerusalem has said that Tehran is entrenching in Syria, and that it sends precision guidance technology to upgrade Hezbollah’s arsenal of 130,000 missiles. Hezbollah says it can strike all of Israel. Iranian-backed Shi’ite paramilitaries in Iraq are important, as is their long-term affect on Iraq and the region. Hezbollah holds the US and Israel responsible.

That could have an impact on US-Iraqi relations, and the long-term strategy to defeat ISIS. It is no surprise that ISIS is trying to expand again in Syria and Iraq with small attacks. Baghdad has launched major offensives to crush the ISIS networks, but Iraqis are dying in these battles every day. These tensions also relate to other tensions in the Gulf, as well as between Saudi Arabia and Houthi rebels in Yemen.

The Houthis tried to use drones or rockets to attack Saudi Arabia almost every day over the last week. These conflicts are linked, from Hezbollah to Houthis to Iraq and Syria. Yet they are so complex and have so many different leaders and groups involved that many feel they are too complicated to understand.

Outside of simple binaries like “Hezbollah vs. Israel” or “Iran vs. America,” the story is difficult to explain. Trump’s comments about Greenland, or Boris Johnson suspending parliament, seem easier to understand. A million people protesting in Hong Kong seems more important than two Hezbollah operatives killed.