Commercial shipping in the Red Sea no longer resembles what it was in past decades. The waterway has been militarized, with warships and naval fleets from distant powers flowing into it.
As the Red Sea and its straits have been drawn into regional conflicts — including Houthi attacks on commercial vessels in recent months that later subsided — and with military bases established along its shores in multiple countries, the Red Sea has been transformed into something resembling an arena of international and regional competition for influence.
As a result, the map of roles in the Red Sea has been redrawn, with much of that change coming at Saudi Arabia’s expense.
In recent years, Riyadh has worked to enforce a key equation: the Red Sea is for the Arabs. Saudi Arabia played a leading role in establishing the Council of Arab and African States Bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden on Jan. 6, 2020, and pushed to strengthen security and economic cooperation among member states to safeguard the waterway and confront emerging challenges.
These shifts between past and present have raised questions about Saudi Arabia’s ability to protect its interests in the Red Sea and to implement its vision of the waterway as a corridor for oil exports, a vital artery for trade, and a pillar for development and tourism programs — most notably the NEOM megacity project.
Saudi Ambitions and a Shifting Red Sea Order
Saudi Arabia’s push to establish the Red Sea council was an attempt to recreate a regional framework that would allow coastal states to coordinate collectively on maritime security, the protection of navigation and responses to cross-border threats.
The move reinforced the notion that managing Red Sea security should originate from within the region rather than be imposed from outside.
On the development front, Riyadh has invested heavily in its western coastline under Vision 2030, launching major strategic projects such as NEOM and the Red Sea Project, which Saudi officials view as global engines of growth, tourism and trade.
However, this vision has faced an increasingly complex geopolitical environment in recent years. The militarization of the Red Sea has increased with beefed up military presence of international powers at the sea’s entry and exit points.
According to analyst Faisal Al-Shammari, Russia’s return to Africa via Port Sudan, the expansion of Israeli roles through Somaliland and the port of Berbera, alongside U.S. and Chinese military presence in Djibouti, have gradually transformed the Red Sea from a region potentially governed through shared regional management into a field of overlapping external power inroads.
Al-Shammari said that while this international military presence has provided temporary protection for navigation during periods of tension, it has weakened prospects for building a self-sustaining regional security system. He concluded that Saudi Arabia’s approach to foreign military forces is cautiously ambivalent” noting that while Riyadh recognizes their potential role in deterring short-term threats and protecting shipping lanes, it remains wary of the risks of politicizing the Red Sea and drawing it into international conflicts that undermine development projects and regional stability.
Who Holds the Keys to the Red Sea?
Over the past two years, the Red Sea and its waterways have increasingly been managed in practice through a network of decision-makers spanning Washington, Moscow and Beijing, with narrower margins of influence for Tehran and Tel Aviv.
Political analyst Dhafer Al-Ajmi said this shift does not reflect a decline in the importance of Red Sea littoral states, but rather a change in the nature of control over strategic waterways, where geography alone is no longer sufficient to confer decision-making power.
Al-Ajmi pointed to Dec. 18, 2023, as a pivotal moment, when the United States announced the launch of Operation Prosperity Guardian to protect navigation in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
He said control of Red Sea waterways is now being enforced through cross-border firepower rather than gradual regional deterrence arrangements, citing U.S. and British strikes carried out on Jan. 11, 2024, against Houthi targets in Yemen.
The internationalization of the Red Sea is further underscored by Djibouti’s hosting of U.S., Chinese, French and Italian military forces at the Bab el-Mandeb gateway.
On the African coast, Moscow is seeking to establish a permanent foothold through agreements with Sudan that would grant it a naval presence in Port Sudan.
To the south, Israel has introduced a new political variable by recognizing Somaliland a few days ago, drawing renewed attention to the port of Berbera and its sensitive location near Bab el-Mandeb.
Iran, for its part, has also been an actor through the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, carried out by the Tehran-backed group before halting several months ago.
Against this backdrop, observers say the failure of the Council of Red Sea Litoral States to evolve into a joint maritime force has become a predictable outcome.
Al-Ajmi said the council has remained a political framework without operational tools, lacking a unified command, an operational budget, shared rules of engagement or an integrated early-warning and surveillance system, while international players possess ready-made military structures.
He concluded that security arrangements with armed nonstate actors, or the management of escalation with them, have become part of risk management rather than a preferred option, because “the keys to disruption are no longer held in the capitals of conventional states but are rather lodged in open conflict environments.”
Sukina Ali
A Saudi writer, researcher, and TV presenter
