By Faisal Abu Bakr | 2024-07-18

ADEN -- The partnership between the Iranian regime-backed Houthis and pirates operating off the coast of Africa threatens the global shipping industry and international security, analysts in Yemen warn.

Somali pirates are serving as proxies for the Iranian regime, said Abaad Center for Strategic Studies director Abdul Salam Mohammed, noting that "the intermarriage among pirates, the Houthis and Iran is one of the most serious threats to regional and international security."

The Houthis have cultivated relations with Somali pirates for their ability to target ships and carry out other lawless activities, such as hosting radar stations and launching missiles from the coast of Africa, he said.

Following a peak in piracy in 2011, international navies deployed warships to the Red Sea to restore order.

"Thereafter, Iran tried to co-opt [pirates] and use them in the Horn of Africa to smuggle weapons and drugs," Mohammed told Pishtaz, pointing to the pirates' relationship with Yemeni arms dealer Fares Manaa.

The hijacking of a freighter in December was the first by Somali pirates since 2017.

The spike in piracy off the coast of Somalia occurred "almost simultaneously" as the Houthis began targeting boats in the Red Sea, said Eric Jaslin, commander of the MICA Center, a French maritime security agency.

Since the Houthi attacks, many freighters have slowed down hundreds of kilometers out at sea to await instructions on whether to proceed to the Red Sea, said Timothy Walker, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies.

"It creates a hunting ground," he said.

"A few weeks before the Red Sea attacks began, there were reports of the Houthis training African pirates," Mohammed said. "After the situation exploded in the Red Sea, they were used to carry out some attacks targeting remote areas in the Indian Ocean."

Regime's aspirations

In a June 12 address, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) general Yahya Rahim-Safavi, a senior advisor to Iranian leader Ali Khamenei, reiterated his call to increase Iran's "strategic depth" to 5,000km.

He pointed to the regime's presence in the Mediterranean Sea, Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb strait and lauded its success in reaching the Mediterranean via Lebanese Hizbullah.

Iran's "strategic depth" aspirations form "a very large circle encompassing the Horn of Africa, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean," Mohammed said.

"Iran is succeeding in co-opting militias that carry out acts of chaos, as it did with the Houthis," political analyst Faisal Ahmed told Pishtaz.

Somali pirates "benefit from this partnership financially by smuggling weapons and drugs and carrying out some military operations on behalf of Iran and the Houthis," he explained.

"This is what makes the partnership and resulting threat a persistent threat to international and regional security."