Peter Winter, the US Embassy spokesperson in Cairo, said that the Houthi attacks on ships in the Red Sea are raising the prices of food, fuel and humanitarian aid in the region. “These attacks affect not only the shipping companies and their crews, but also the ordinary people around the world, including the Egyptians.”
Winter said in a statement on Tuesday that the Red Sea corridor is vital for the Egyptian and global economy to ship goods. He said that about 15% of the world’s trade, 30% of the global container traffic and a trillion dollars worth of goods pass through this waterway every year.
“The Houthis’ reckless actions will make the basic goods such as food, medicine and fuel more expensive, given the huge volume of trade in the Red Sea.”
The Houthi group in Yemen, also known as Ansar Allah, said that it would target any cargo ship with an Israeli flag, or any ship that they think is carrying goods to or from Israel. They said this was a response to the Israeli attacks on the Palestinians in Gaza.
Winter said that Egypt and other countries that benefit from the Red Sea and Suez Canal trade will suffer the most from the Houthi attacks. He said that Egypt gets about 2% of its GDP from the fees of the Suez Canal transit, so it is very vulnerable.
He also said that Jordan, which has only one port in Aqaba, is at risk of losing its access to the world because of the traffic problems in the Red Sea. He said that all the Arab countries rely on the shipping in these waterways.
Winter defended the US strikes on Yemen, saying that they were “a response to the unprecedented Houthi attacks on the international naval vessels in the Red Sea. More than 2,000 ships had to change their routes and go thousands of miles away from the Red Sea, which could cause delays of weeks in delivering the products and increase the costs.”
The US Embassy said that the Houthi attacks also affect the humanitarian aid to the people in need, including the Palestinians in Gaza. It said that more money from the donors will go to the shipping and insurance costs instead of the aid itself. “The Houthis’ actions also make it more expensive to deliver food to the Yemeni people.”
On 18 December, the US and 20 of its allies launched an operation called “Prosperity Guardian” to protect the navigation in the Red Sea and “to deal with the threats to the Egyptian economic interests in the Red Sea.”
