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Video: The Brewing Conflict along the Red Sea

(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs) Dore Gold - There is a crisis brewing to Israel's south in the Red Sea area where at least a half a dozen countries are scrambling for influence, seeking bases and positioning themselves in the event of a future conflict. Iran is seeking positions of strength along the entire Red Sea, from the Suez Canal in the north down to Bab-el-Mandeb, the outlet of the Red Sea into the Indian Ocean. In the 1990s, the Iranians deployed their Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Port Sudan and Sudan became a conduit for moving Iranian weapons into Egypt, to the Sinai Peninsula, and ultimately to Gaza where they were used by Hamas and other pro-Iranian organizations. In the critical Bab-el-Mandeb straights, the naval choke point at the bottom of the Red Sea, Iran has been using the Houthi militias, which are its proxies in the Yemen war. And it may get to a point where the Iranians will seek to block the flow of naval traffic through this sensitive point. Of all the nations that are positioning themselves in the Horn of Africa, like Iran, the U.S., Turkey, France, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia, careful attention should be given to the presence of China in Djibouti where China has constructed one of its first naval bases at the gateway to the Middle East. Given the interests of all the actors appearing now in the Red Sea, the whole region has become far more combustible than it was in the past. Amb. Dore Gold, former director general of the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Israeli ambassador to the UN, is president of the Jerusalem Center.
2018-02-02 00:00:00
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