The Other Red Sea Crisis Nobody Is Talking About
As Houthi threats and Iran's standoff choke the world's most critical shipping corridor, a second flashpoint is quietly igniting in the Horn of Africa
KEY QUESTIONS
WHAT HAPPENED? Ethiopia and Eritrea are locked in an escalating standoff over Red Sea access, with military buildups and hostile rhetoric mounting on both sides of the border
WHY IT MATTERS? The Red Sea is already buckling under Iran-driven energy pressure, a second simultaneous flashpoint in the same corridor would be a geoeconomic crisis, not just a regional one
WHAT’S NEXT? No open war has begun, but the conditions for one are firmly in place
While eyes and headlines remain firmly locked on the Strait of Hormuz, tensions are boiling westward in the Red Sea. A vital maritime inlet sitting between the Gulf and East Africa, roughly 12% of global trade passes through the Red Sea. Critically, the Red Sea and Hormuz together form the passageway connecting Gulf energy to global oil markets.
Ever since the US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, fears have arisen that the Houthis, a Yemeni militia backed by Tehran, will resume striking shipping traversing the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, as the group did from late 2023 to mid-2025. Shipping giants such as Maersk are already avoiding the inlet in anticipation.
Yet if a new Red Sea crisis occurs, it won’t just be restricted to Yemen. On the western flank of the Red Sea, a separate flashpoint is emerging between longtime rivals Ethiopia and Eritrea, and the stakes are just as high.
The Specter of 1998
As the capital of the world’s most populous landlocked country, Ethiopia has long aspired to maritime access. That strategic imperative contributed to its annexation of Eritrea in 1962, and since Eritrea’s secession in 1993, Ethiopia has depended on Djibouti for 95% of its seaborne trade, at an annual cost of $1.5 billion.
For Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, being landlocked is being deadlocked, and he intends to change that. In a televised statement, Ahmed declared:
“The Red Sea was in our hands 30 years ago. That history was yesterday’s mistake. Tomorrow it will be corrected. It is not too difficult.”
Ahmed is far from alone. Ethiopian Ambassador to Kenya and retired General Bacha Debele said in a November interview: “The question now is not whether Assab is ours or not, but how we get it back.” Assab is a southern Eritrean Red Sea port roughly 70km from the Ethiopian border, long seen in Addis Ababa as the most direct path to the sea.
What began as a war of words has since escalated. In December, Eritrea withdrew from IGAD, East Africa’s regional bloc, accusing it of failing to counter Ethiopian aggression. Eritrea has since been accused of tactically supporting the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), an armed militia and separatist movement in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has responded with a reported military buildup along the Eritrean border.
To many observers, the specter of the 1998 border war has returned.
A Corridor Already on Life Support
The Houthi campaign on Red Sea shipping was far from a series of isolated attacks; it triggered a full-blown trade crisis. Container traffic fell roughly 90% at its peak, freight rates rose close to 80%, and Suez transits roughly halved. Shipping companies rerouting via the Cape of Good Hope added an average of two weeks per voyage.
With energy trade already under pressure from the Hormuz closure–which new Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has signaled he intends to maintain–the risk of a compounding crunch is real. The Ethiopia-Eritrea crisis deepens that calculus further. The Bab el-Mandeb carries roughly 8.6 million barrels of oil per day and Eritrea sits directly above it. Assab, the port at the centre of the Ethiopia-Eritrea confrontation, is situated near the strait and could easily be drawn into any military exchange between Addis Ababa and Asmara.
Markets and insurers can barely absorb one shock. Two simultaneous shocks to the same corridor is an entirely different risk category.
The Coming Red Sea Crunch
No open war has begun, and the involved parties remain publicly committed to diplomacy. But the conditions for conflict–military posturing, proxy accusations, and hardening rhetoric on both sides–are firmly in place.
The world learned in 2023 that Red Sea disruption moves energy prices, inflates shipping costs, and reshapes global supply chains almost overnight. That came from Yemen alone. A second front in the same corridor, layered onto an Iran-driven energy crisis, would not be a regional story; it would be a geoeconomic calamity.
And as diplomatic institutions strain under the weight of global instability, the question is whether diplomacy can hold when both sides view the stakes as existential.
This reporting may be cited with attribution to Oasis Media Collective. For licensing, republication, or extended use, contact here.