Africa Is the New Front in the Middle East’s Wars

The battle for the Strait of Hormuz commands global attention, but keep an eye on the contested waterway west of the Arabian Peninsula as well. The entire Red Sea region is pulsing with rivalry; the combatants include great powers, nonstate actors and nearly everything in between. This corridor of conflict upsets global trade and roils regions spanning two continents. It may also offer a preview of broader disorder ahead.

The Red Sea connects the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean—and thus, Asia to Europe—via the Suez Canal in the north and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden in the south. In normal times, it carries 30 percent of global container traffic and nearly 5 million barrels of oil per day. The vast majority of the undersea fiber-optic cables that connect Europe to Asia run across the sea’s floor.

This waterway also links two vibrant, volatile regions, the Persian Gulf and Northeast Africa: As I note in my forthcoming book, The Landscape of Power: Geography and the Rise and Fall of Nations, a sea less than 20 miles wide at its narrowest does more to unite than divide. And in recent years, there has been punishing conflict all around.

Following the terrorist attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Yemen’s Houthis showed solidarity with Hamas by lobbing missiles at Israel and raining fire on Red Sea shipping. After the collapse of a years-long truce with Saudi Arabia this summer, they seized key terrain along the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb.

The Houthis have imposed a blockade on Saudi shipping; they have sent drones and fired missiles at the vital Red Sea port of Yanbu, the kingdom’s export hub to the world via pipeline when Hormuz is contested or closed. Now, the Saudis are sponsoring a Yemeni government offensive meant to retake Houthi-held territory; the Houthis have responded with strikes on Saudi airports, pipelines and other strategic targets. And as Saudi Arabia appeals for help—to the US, China, Pakistan, Turkey, the UK, France and Israel—instability surges on the Red Sea’s African littoral, as well.

The civil war in Ethiopia, which had been dormant for nearly four years, has reawakened. Fears of a wider conflict have grown as the Ethiopian government has accused Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt of backing Tigray rebels. Sudan has its own grinding civil war, fueled by the intervention of many outside parties, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Iran.

Tiny Djibouti, located where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, is the site of several foreign military bases and continual geopolitical jockeying. Somalia sits outside the Red Sea, just south of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, but it fosters regional turmoil, thanks to an insurgency by the al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group al-Shabaab and tensions with the breakaway region of Somaliland.

Up and down this corridor, competition and conflict are ubiquitous—and Red Sea struggles increasingly transcend regional boundaries.

Israel recognized Somaliland’s independence from Somalia late last year, perhaps partly to use its territory as a launch pad for potential strikes against the Houthis. That could be a formula for strife with Turkey, which has aligned itself with Somalia and jousts with Israel for influence on multiple fronts in Africa and the Middle East.

Radical alliances are flourishing: The Houthis have trained and traded weapons with al-Shabaab. Iran has cultivated a presence along Africa’s Red Sea coast as part of a pincer strategy aimed at Saudi Arabia. That’s hardly the only rivalry fusing the Gulf and Northeast Africa together.

The struggle for influence between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates has sprawled into Africa, where both sides seek resources and strategic depth—not least by backing opposing factions in Sudan’s civil war.

Turkey’s neo-Ottoman aspirations have produced interventions, alliances and military deployments from Sudan and Somalia to Syria and Qatar. Russia seeks naval access in Sudan, which would help it reach into multiple regions. China built its first overseas base in Djibouti; it has since become a close partner of the Houthis. A European Union naval mission has protected traffic in the Red Sea since 2024. The US has a long history of intervention against multiple actors: A fierce brawl against the Houthis ended in a draw in 2025.

When conflicts are so complex and plentiful, the alignments can be confusing: Saudi Arabia and the UAE are both existentially threatened by Iran but wage proxy wars against each other in Ethiopia and Sudan. And as the Red Sea corridor becomes a tangle of rivalries, it offers a window into two larger trends.

The first is an intensifying clash over chokepoints. The US-Iran battle for Hormuz, the Houthis’ assault in the Red Sea, China’s drive to rule in the South China Sea and Russia’s claims to the Arctic’s Northern Sea Route are all part of a global struggle to control the seas. In a fracturing, war-prone world, countries—even nonstate actors such as the Houthis—seek power and leverage through dominating the passageways that allow global trade.

The second trend is the pervasive geopolitical messiness of our world. America’s unipolar dominance has receded. Rival great powers assert their influence; middle powers pursue their own ambitious projects. Nonstate actors, now armed with missiles and other sophisticated weapons, inject radicalism and upheaval.

This world will be tougher to manage, let alone master, than anything Washington and its allies have encountered in decades. Crises will be frequent, conflicts intractable, sources of stability scarce. But the key to navigating complex terrain is understanding its contours. Mapping the geography of turmoil in the Red Sea corridor is essential—as a warning of the wider global upheaval to come.

Source: https://www.aei.org/commentary/africa-is-the-new-front-in-the-middle-easts-wars/