The United States wants to form the “broadest possible” maritime coalition to protect ships in the Red Sea and send an “important signal” to Yemen’s Houthi rebels that further attacks will not be tolerated, the US envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking told Reuters.
The Envoy confirmed that the US wanted the multi-national coalition to send “an important signal by the international community that Houthi threats to international shipping won’t be tolerated.”
The US aims to expand an existing international naval task force into “an international coalition that is putting some resources into protecting freedom of navigation,” Lenderking said in an interview this week during a conference in Doha.
The current task force in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, known as Combined Task Force 153, is a 39-country coalition commanded by the vice-admiral of the US Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain.
“There’s a very, very active assessment going on in Washington about what are the steps necessary to get the Houthi rebels to de-escalate,” Lenderking said, calling on the rebels to release the crew of a ship seized on Nov. 19, the Galaxy Leader.
Lenderking declined to say which countries or how many more Washington had approached to join the expanded coalition, but said it should be the “broadest possible” coalition.
About 23,000 ships each year pass through the narrow Bab Al-Mandab Strait connecting the Gulf of Aden with Red Sea and beyond to the Suez Canal