[Webinar] Red Sea Dialogues 2 – From Waterways to Chokepoints

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The Red Sea is no longer a set of isolated waterways, it is becoming a connected arc of strategic tension.

REDD 2: From Waterways to Chokepoints, the second session of the REDD – Red Sea Dialogues Webinar Series organized by the Mediterranean Platform and Pan African Agenda, explores how developments from the Strait of Hormuz to Bab el-Mandeb are increasingly interlinked, where local fragilities intersect with proxy dynamics and global rivalries. Disruptions in one chokepoint now reverberate across the other, reshaping trade routes, energy flows, and security across one of the world’s most critical corridors.

Building on the series’ ongoing dialogue, and the e-book ‘The Red Sea: Divided by Water, United by Opportunities’ co published by the Mediterranean Platform, Pan African Agenda and the Middle East Council on Global Affairs مجلس الشرق الأوسط للشؤون الدولية, this session situates maritime insecurity within a wider system of state fragility, power projection, and economic vulnerability, raising key questions around escalation risks and the resilience of global trade arteries.

Featuring:
Prof. Gawdat Bahgat, Prof. Mehari Taddele Maru, Samira Gaid and Nabil Al-Bukiri
Moderated by Prof. Luigi Narbone

📅 Thursday, 7 May 2026
⏰ 15:00 – 16:30 (CET)
🌐 Online | Open to all

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Outcome :

Take aways 

• The Strait of Hormuz and Bab El-Mandeb have historically been interlinked, although nowadays the former remains primarily associated with oil exports and the latter with global trade through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Furthermore, the two chokepoints also matter differently for different regions of the world, with most of the energy sources transiting from the Strait of Hormuz ending up in South and East Asia, while Bab El-Mandeb is central for Europe’s eastward connections. Current changes in energy dynamics are bringing the two straights closer again. Indeed, the renewed centrality of the East-West Saudi pipeline has increased the importance of the Red Sea for global energy security, making stability around Bab El-Mandeb more critical than ever. Once the current open hostilities end, international powers are likely to focus more on the Red Sea and its coastal states. 

• Maritime security is deeply tied to conditions on land. Factors such as failing governance, proxy confrontations, imperialistic ambitions, and the growing role of non-state actors directly affect security at sea. This is especially visible in the Horn of Africa, where strategic opportunities due to geography are not capitalised upon because of domestic instability. At the same time, the Red Sea has also historically proven difficult for major external powers to control, leaving a margin of manoeuvre to coastal countries and polities. 

• With the erosion of the rule-based international order, practices once considered exceptional, such as the weaponization of chokepoints, blatant attempts of regime change, and the use of force, are becoming increasingly normalized. While this has long been familiar to many countries in the Global South, what is new is the extent to which these dynamics are now spreading more broadly, undermining freedom of navigation and weakening international legal norms. A major step in this direction is the precedent established by Iran that strategic international waterways can be disrupted or effectively closed during wartime, raising concerns that other states could eventually impose restrictions, duties, or coordinated controls over key maritime passages in the future. 
   

• Yemen was identified as one of the main sources of instability in the Red Sea. Although the truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia still holds because neither side currently sees an advantage in resuming large-scale fighting, it remains fragile in the absence of a broader political settlement. The militia’s strategic significance, however, extends far beyond Yemen itself. As argued by some, if Iran were able to exercise influence over both Hormuz and Bab El-Mandeb through its proxies, Tehran might no longer need nuclear weapons as a deterrent. At the same time, the Houthis reinforced a broader point repeatedly raised during the seminar: non-state actors such as the Houthis, Hamas, and the Taliban cannot simply be defeated through military force alone. 

• Somalia is key due to the overlap between the Yemeni conflict and dynamics in the country. Reports suggest that the Houthis are providing resources and technological support to pirate networks operating near the Somali coast, contributing to the resurgence of piracy in the region. Somalia is also becoming increasingly entangled in wider regional tensions following the Israeli recognition of Somaliland, which has elevated the strategic importance of the port of Berbera and potentially turned it into a target for the Houthis. At the domestic level, Somalia is undergoing a volatile political transition, and external actors that once played relatively stabilizing roles are now indirectly or directly contributing to instability. Meanwhile, international attention has shifted toward other nearby crises, particularly Sudan and disputes surrounding water supplies, leaving Somalia less central in regional diplomacy. The gradual withdrawal of UN missions and insufficient funding for African Union operations have further weakened stabilization efforts, even though it appears that the United States has continued to play an important behind-the-scenes role in the last months in preventing direct armed confrontation. In this environment, al-Shabaab, piracy networks, and further violent non-state actors continue to expand their influence, while worsening humanitarian conditions risk fuelling further instability even as they create some pressure for national unity.  

• The Horn of Africa is ridden of potential crises, making the creation of big-tent preventive mechanisms especially urgent. Without stronger regional coordination and internal capacity-building, the region risks remaining trapped in cycles of instability, external intervention, and humanitarian crisis despite its considerable strategic and economic potential. 

• A more sustainable future for the region will depend less on external military guarantees and more on regional cooperation and stronger internal institutions. Gulf countries, despite decades of military assistance from the United States, ultimately discovered that security cannot simply be “imported” through foreign bases by outside powers, as Iran still retained the ability to target them directly. For this reason, regional alliances such as the still-loose one emerging among Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey may become increasingly important in building new economic, political, and security partnerships capable of preserving stability in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. Other international actors could also play a more important role in the future of the region, as China’s growing importance in both diplomacy and energy strategies shows.