EU Mission Against Houthis Will be Purely Defensive, Won’t Join U.S.-UK Raids on Yemen

A month after the U.S. and UK launched Operation Prosperity Guardian and three months after the attacks on trade began, the EU has apparently decided its own mission will be allowed to use weapons in the Red Sea, but only in self-defence.

The European Union makes a lot of noise about wishing to become a naval power in its own right, but its response to the blossoming trade crisis off the coast of Yemen as global shipping is scattered by Iran-backed, missile-armed Shiite Houthi militias in the Red Sea suggests that ambition remains as remote as ever. According to reports of rumours from the top-level meetings in Brussels on Monday, such as reported in the German and Italian press, while plans haven’t yet solidified the Union has at least decided European ships can open fire in self-defence.

Christened operation Aspides, the mission between France, Germany, and Italy hasn’t actually started yet but appears to continue to be a subject of discussion in Brussels. Italian newspaper Il Giornale reports the nation’s foreign minister came out of EU meetings with the news ships under European command will be “authorised to open fire only for defence”. Nevertheless, the paper relates, “the methods and the timing” of the deployment are still yet to be clarified, suggesting it may be weeks or months away.

Further, it is stated, Aspides will have no air mission element and the European ships will not be joining the United Stated and United Kingdom in attempting to prevent the Houthis from launching their attacks in the first place, by striking their launch, radar, and organisation sites inside Yemen. European ships will instead screen merchant vessels from harm, standing between Yemen and the trade and using their weapons to take down inbound missiles, as the Americans and British have done for months.

Per a document on the deployment seen by the Financial Times Asppides hopes to build on the work of operation Agenor, particularly its model of building “a considerable degree of trust and confidence with regional Arab States, while never entering in a confrontational mode with Iran”.

Part of the problem for this purely defensive mission is there is a rapidly diminishing number of ships to protect. As noted by President Biden of his own mission to take out the Houthis, it does not seem to be working and strikes continue, with fresh Anglo-American attacks launched overnight. The impact of the continuing attempted missile strikes against global trade in the Red Sea has simply been the shipping has redirected elsewhere, around the Horn of Africa.

This is no small matter, as supply disruptions caused by the considerably longer route to reach Europe heaps on inflationary pressure as Western governments attempt to keep economies under control, and cause supply issues to domestic industries. Tesla’s ‘Gigafactory’ in Germany has already shut down over a shortage of imported parts coming to Europe from Asia, redirected to avoid the Red Sea, and now Germany’s chemicals sector, Reuters reports, is signalling that supply disruption is curbing production.

As stated, even basics like cleaning products are being produced in lower quantities in Europe because the ingredients cant’ be imported in sufficient quantities.