An executive of a Greek shipping company was warned in the spring that one of the company’s vessels travelling in the Red Sea was in danger of being attacked by Yemeni Houthi militants.
The Greek-operated vessel violated a transit ban imposed by the Houthi by entering an Israeli port and would be “directly attacked by Yemeni armed forces in any area they deem appropriate,” the message said, written in English and reviewed by Reuters. The email, signed by the Yemen-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Centre (HOCC), a body set up in February to liaise between Houthi forces and commercial shipping operators, said:
“You bear the responsibility and consequences of including the vessel in the ban list.”
The Houthis have carried out about 100 attacks on ships travelling through the Red Sea since November, acting in solidarity with Palestinians involved in Israel’s long-running war on Gaza. They have sunk two ships, hijacked another and killed at least four sailors.
The email, received in late May, warned of “sanctions” against the company’s entire fleet if a ship continued to “violate the ban criteria and enter the ports of the usurping Israeli entity.”
The executive and the company declined to give their names for security reasons.
Dozen threatening emails since May
The warning was the first of more than a dozen threatening emails sent to at least six Greek shipping companies since May amid rising geopolitical tensions in the Middle East, according to six industry sources with direct knowledge of the emails and two with indirect knowledge.
The email campaign, previously unreported, indicates that Houthi rebels are spreading their net wider and targeting Greek merchant ships with little or no ties to Israel.
It is also the first time in recent months that entire fleets have been threatened, increasing the risk to those vessels still trying to cross the Red Sea.
“Your ships breached the decision of Yemen Armed Forces,” read a separate email sent in June from a Yemeni government web domain to the first company weeks later and to another Greek shipping company, which also declined to be named. “Therefore, punishments will be imposed on all vessels of your company … Best Regards, Yemen Navy.”
Ships owned by Greece, which represents one of the largest navies in the world, accounted for nearly 30 per cent of attacks carried out by Houthi forces through early September, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, which did not specify whether the ships were linked to Israel.
In August, Houthi militias, part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance alliance of anti-Israeli militia militias, attacked the tanker Sounion, after which it burned for weeks before it was towed to a safer area.
The Houthi email campaign began in February with messages sent to shipowners, insurance companies and the main seafarers’ union HOCC.
The first emails, two of which came to the attention of Reuters, warned the industry that the Houthis had imposed a travel ban on some vessels in the Red Sea, although they did not warn companies of the impending attack.
Decision to end co-operation with Israel
Messages sent after May were more threatening. At least two Greek shipping companies that received email threats have decided to stop such voyages through the Red Sea, two sources with direct knowledge of the situation told Reuters, declining to name the companies for security reasons.
An executive at a third shipping company, which also received the email, said they had decided to stop co-operating with Israel to be able to continue using the route through the Red Sea. Stephen Cotton, General Secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the leading union organisation for seafarers, which received an email from HOCC in February, said:
“If safe transit through the Red Sea cannot be guaranteed, companies have a duty to act – even if that means delaying their delivery windows. The lives of the seafarers depend on it.”
The email campaign has heightened anxiety among shipping companies. The cost of insurance for Western shipowners has already jumped because of the Houthi attacks, and some insurers have suspended coverage altogether, sources told Reuters.
Greece’s Conbulk Shipmanagement Corporation stopped Red Sea voyages after its MV Groton vessel was attacked twice in August.
Attempts to fight against the Houthis
In response to Houthis attacks on merchant ships, back in December, the US launched Operation Prosperity Guardian. To ensure the safety of shipping, a 20-nation naval force was formed in the Red Sea, sending its ships to the southern part of the sea and launching multiple strikes against a number of Houthi military installations, including radars, air defence systems, weapons depots and missile launchers.
The Red Sea area, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Indian Ocean, is important to the world economy. Nearly 15 per cent of world maritime trade passes through it, including 8 per cent of grain trade, 12 per cent of oil trade and 8 per cent of liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade.
As early as last December, the world’s largest shipping companies, primarily container shipping companies, announced their decision to divert ships around Africa, bypassing the Red Sea. Among them are Swiss Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Danish Maersk, German Hapag-Lloyd, French CMA CGM and a number of others.
Oil cargo carriers were also not left behind. British BP refused to transport through the Red Sea, then Norwegian Equinor joined it, and in January deliveries through the Red Sea were suspended by Anglo-Dutch Shell. In January, QatarEnergy, one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, also stopped shipping LNG tankers to Europe via the Red Sea.
