Red Sea passage remains a no-go for shipping despite US action

The largest commercial shipping companies continue to avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, despite a recent ceasefire agreement between the US and the Houthis, which is intended to make the trade lanes safer.

The ceasefire, which began on May 6, ended a US campaign that involved more than 1,100 strikes against the Houthis in Yemen and became a source of embarrassment for the Trump administration after group chats about the strikes inadvertently became public.

The Pentagon had planned on a months-long bombardment, but President Donald Trump ended it after about 50 days.

“If the intention was to restore freedom of navigation, which is what they stated it was, then the results speak for themselves: The shipping industry has not gone back,” said Mr Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd’s List, a shipping publication.

Ship traffic through the Red Sea is down by around three-fifths since 2023 when the Houthis started targeting ships there as a show of solidarity with Hamas in its war with Israel in the Gaza Strip, Mr Meade said.

Fearing that their vessels would be struck, big shipping companies have avoided the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, taking a much longer route around the southern tip of Africa to travel between Asia and Europe.

The Houthis have said they are still at war with Israel and will attack vessels bound for the country.

And though the Houthis have not attacked a commercial vessel since December, shipping companies say they worry that their vessels may be hit, deliberately or mistakenly, and have no plans to sail the southern part of the Red Sea any time soon.

“We’re pretty far from the threshold,” said Mr Vincent Clerc, the chief executive of A.P. Moller-Maersk, a large shipping line based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Speaking soon after the ceasefire in May, he said the Red Sea would have to remain safe for the foreseeable future before the company’s vessels returned.

Shipping executives said they also feared a severe disruption to their networks if they returned to the Red Sea but suddenly had to pull out of the region because the attacks resumed.

When Mr Trump started the military engagement with the Houthis in March, he said their attacks on shipping had cost the global economy “BILLIONS of dollars”. Commenting on the ceasefire, he said: “They say they will not be blowing up ships any more.”

Oman brokered the ceasefire between the Houthis and the US. Describing the truce, Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said that “neither side will target the other, including American vessels, in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping”.

But maritime analysts said it was unclear whether the ceasefire applied just to US ships.

“Was this only an agreement between the Americans and the Houthis not to fire at each other’s military capabilities, or was this something that did indeed also cover the merchant ships going through the area?” asked Mr Jakob Larsen, chief safety and security officer at Bimco, a shipping trade group.

Nor did the ceasefire appear to involve the Houthis’ conflict with Israel.

The Houthis expanded their attacks on Israel in May to include vessels at or on their way to Haifa, an Israeli port, noted Mr Jack Kennedy, head of country risk for the Middle East and North Africa at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

And while the Houthis are unlikely to attack American vessels during their ceasefire, “the unclear designations around a vessel or company’s relationship to Israel and Israeli ports, and uncertainties around Houthi targeting accuracy, mean there is a severe risk to ships transiting the Red Sea”, Mr Kennedy said.

In an e-mail to The New York Times, the Houthi-linked group that communicates with the shipping industry said “no guarantees can be provided to shipping companies.”

The group added: “Sanctions and prohibitions are limited exclusively to companies and vessels affiliated with or linked to (Israel).”

The group also said the Yemeni Armed Forces’ actions “are carried out through a precise mechanism designed to prevent mistakes”.

The White House and the Pentagon did not comment.

Even though the route around Africa uses more fuel and crews are at sea for longer, shipping operations have adapted to the detour.

“If it was really a pain, if this new route was really imposing costs, I think you might see more countries willing to take the risk,” said Ms Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defence Priorities, a research institute that favours restraint in foreign policy.

In fact, travelling longer distances has allowed the shipping lines to deploy the glut of new ships that they ordered during the Covid-19 pandemic trade boom. Before the Red Sea attacks, the supply of new vessels threatened to depress shipping rates and the earnings of shipping companies.

“Frankly, this disruption, this long way round, has allowed the industry to a certain extent to defy economic gravity,” Mr Meade said.

Still, one large shipping company, CMA CGM, based in Marseille, France, has been sending a small number of vessels through the Red Sea. Ship tracking sites showed that, in recent weeks, at least five had been in the southern part of the Red Sea, near Yemen.

But CMA CGM said in a statement that it did “not plan to resume transits through the Suez Canal on a large scale in the short term, unless security conditions allow it”.

The re-routing of vessels away from the Red Sea has deprived Egypt of billions of much-needed dollars in toll revenue from the Suez Canal. To coax shipping companies back, the canal is offering large vessels a 15 per cent discount to go through the canal. NYTIMES