With the Strait of Hormuz blocked after the assault by the United States and Israel, Iran has threatened another vital maritime trade choke point: the Red Sea.
The Islamic Republic said this week that the 1,400-mile inlet dividing Africa and Asia was fair game for retaliatory attacks because of the presence of the American aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford.
“Therefore,” any facilities supporting the carrier group “will be regarded as potential targets by Iran’s armed forces,” its military said Monday, according to the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
Whether Iranian forces would assault Red Sea shipping themselves remains unclear, but in recent years the Houthis, Tehran’s proxy militia based in Yemen, have vastly reduced traffic through the waterway with attacks on vessels there.
Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the militant group’s leader, said March 5 that “our fingers are on the trigger, ready to respond at any moment should developments warrant it.”
So far, however, unlike
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