The Future of Global Water Wars

As evening sets in, on july twenty sixth, nineteen fifty six, the president of Egypt, Gamed Abden Nasir, stands at a podium in Alexandria , looking out at a crowd of a hundred thousand . He's about to throw a wrench into the plans of the most powerful countries on Earth . At first, the speech seems fairly standard , kind of upbeat , but about halfway into the nearly three hour speech , Nasser begins to rail against what he calls the imperialists who have mortgaged our future, his voice growing more fi ery. And then he repeatedly says the name Ferdinand Ferdinand de Leseps, the nineteenth century French developer who built the Suez Canal in the eighteen sixties , which dramatically cut down the travel time between Europe and Asia The canal was mostly built by Egyptian laborers. It runs through Egyptian territory , but the two biggest shareholders of the company that controlled shipping in the canal Britain and France . And towards the end of the speech, Nasser reads a presidential decree nationalizing the Suez Canal Company , putting control of shipping there in the hands of Egypt At that exact moment, miles away, Egyptian military forces mobilized to occupy the canal offices , taking control of all its assets. The crowd erupts with cheers . Almost immediately, the British and French owners of the Suez Can al Company start freaking out . A new Middle East crisis arises as President Nasser of Egypt tells a wildly cheering crowd. The clock begins ticking . Can Egypt and these empires come to some kind of agreement? His announcement touches off a rapid series of reprisals and counter reprisals . Turns out, Britain had already been working on a secret plan to try to get rid of Nasser , and now the moment has come to put it into action , a conspiracy that will nearly bring on World War III The feeling that we're hurtling towards World War III isn't unfamiliar today , and over the last week, the headlines have been dominated by one question , will the latest U. S. Iran tentative deal hold? And will the oil keep flowing through the Strait of Hormuz? Which highlights an important reality. For decades now, the real power in the region has often flowed through water . Three narrow waterways shape the Middle East's relationship to the world, carrying up to a quarter of global trade . Together, they form what may be the most powerful triangle on Earth , the Suez Canal, the Strait of Hormuz , and Babel Mendeb . In times of crisis, these waterways become chokepoints, a single disruption sending shockwaves across continents , shockwaves that often reverberate long after ceasefires are signed and tensions cool . I'm Randab eta , and on this episode of Through Line from NPR, we're taking you to three moments on these waterways that help define the modern Middle East and rewrote the rules of global power When we come back, we return to the secret murder conspiracy on the Suez Canal My name is Fridson Des Ruvins from Silver Stream, Maryland, and you're looking to through line from MPR Part one , So z When people try to talk about what triggers the crisis, they often come to NASA and nationalizing the Suez Canal Company in july nineteen fifty six . But I think that you have to understand the world in which that happened. This is Alex von Tunzelmann. I'm a historian and my book is called Blood and Sand, Suez, Hungary, and Eisenhower's Campaign for Peace A few months before Nasser made his earth shattering announcement to nationalize the Suez Canal Company, the British Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, had actually phoned a colleague in the foreign office and said I want him murdered. So before we dive into what happened next on the Suez Canal, we need to rewind a little to understand what the world looked like back then and how Nasser ended up at that podium. So Britain and France had been the imperial powers in the Middle East. They'd carved it up between themselves under what's called the Sykes Pico agreement. In nineteen sixteen, the Sykes Pico agreement drew new borders around the Arab territories of the crumbling Ottoman Empire, places like Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine , and put them under the control of either Britain or France . Around this time, a British intelligence bureau was set up in Egypt to monitor its neighbors , and then a couple decades later. Of course you got World War two shakes up the entire world . After World War two complex time in the Middle East, in theory it was the end of empires, the end of colonial rule, the beginning of a new world order defined by international law and organizations like the United Nations . In nineteen forty seven, the UN drafted a plan calling for the partition of Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states. Israel was established the following year . An Arab state was not created. That created a lot of instability in the Middle East, largely because most of the other Middle Eastern countries were very unhappy with what they saw as a sort of colonial move after World War two. The US not a huge player in the Middle East yet, was a big supporter of this plan and helped push it through. The day after the state of Israel was declared, you had a joint force of Arab armies invading and that first war that kind of establishes that. Newsreels from the time show Israeli soldiers driving trucks through the streets . Latest pictures from war torn Palestine provide these impressions of Hangana forces consolidating areas under their control. And Gamalav Del Nasar was among those who fought in that war. Nasser was from a middle class family, very, very bright, very ambitious. Also very good looking, not irrelevant. And like a lot of young men in Egypt then who had bigger dreams for themselves, he joined the military . And he really started to come on to the radar of people like the CIA in the early nineteen fifties. The CIA had been established after World War two and was just starting to build its relationships worldwide . In march nineteen fifty two , when the CIA operative Kermit Roosevelt was in Cairo, NASA was a colonel. Roosevelt had a series of meetings with him and actually established that NASA was rather a positive figure from the point of view of American interests. This is the same Kermit Roosevelt that staged the coup in Iran in nineteen fifty three. Oh yeah , there weren't too many Combert Roosevelt. These guys were busy. Yeah, you know, there was a lot happening at this time . A lot of secret plots and backroom deals . You can't disentangle it from the history of oil. This part of the world bec is justoming incredibly important and the struggle to control that is absolutely enormous . Meanwhile, Nasser helps stage a coup and goes on to become Prime Minister of Egypt in nineteen fifty four and president in nineteen fifty six. He was politically positioning himself in a very interesting way. He could remember the Cold War was really kicked off by this point. Nasser refused to align fully with either Washington or Moscow. He promoted Arab unity and anti colonial nationalism, which made him very popular across the region , and threatening to France, which blamed him for encouraging resistance in Algeria. So at this time, Algeria is still part of France. It's held in a colonial situ ation, which it's very unhappy about. Lucky for France, there was one guy in the British foreign office who absolutely could not stand Nasser. Anthony Eden Anthony Eden started off as a foreign diplomat and eventually became prime minister. Yeah, she spoke Arabic and Persian. Eden only ever met Nasser once in person. That was in february nineteen fifty five. According to Witnesses, it did not go well. Eden brought his wife with him. Eden's wife was much younger than him. It was his second wife, Clarissa Churchill, Winston Churchill's niece . Long story short, Eden, who was getting up there in age, seemed to be trying to impress his young wife, and started reeling off classical Arabic poetry to Nasser, this young, handsome Arab trailblazer. You can imagine Nasser thinking, What is happening? Why are you saying this? Then Eden tries to lecture him on defence strategies. He and Nasser start arguing politics. And there he is kind of losing an argument to a much more handsome, much younger man in front of his wife at dinner you know, do we think this was maybe a factor I don't know ? The strength of that vendetta against Nasser was so extraordinary that we have to say it's hard to imagine there wasn't some kind of personal ele ment. Now this is definitely speculative territory , but she says it gets at something important about big historical moments. As a Cold War historian, I often have a little motto which has never assumed rationality . Never assume that somebody's doing something for really good logical reasons . By the spring of nineteen fifty six, the British Secret Services were looking into ways to assassinate Nasir. Around that time, totally unrelated to that, the U. S. withdrew funding they had promised Nasser to build a massive hydroelectric dam in Egypt . The U. S. and the UK were growing impatient with NASA's foreign policy and decided to withdraw funding. Nasser was furious , and that's when he nationalizes the Suez Canal Company . Soon after, France and Britain start to set in motion a plan to invade Egypt , get rid of Nasser, and retake control of the Suez Canal Company. And you know, Eisenhower heard about it. They didn't actually approach him. The American President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had been a general in World War two. He'd seen the devastation firsthand . Plus it was an election year, and he was determined to keep the peace. So he wrote a strongly worded letter to Eden, telling him to stand down , insisting on diplomacy. He then sent in the U. S. Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, to mediate things. He really drove massive diplomatic campaign with the UN to hash out some sort of user plan for the Swiss Canal Company, some kind of joint running of it. Dulles was actually making a lot of progress. Nasser was playing ball. It was looking like they were going to be able to figure it out . But at the same time that was happening, Britain and France were not happy with it. They were going along with it to like, you know , show good face for the Americans and this , but they were also planning what they called Operation Musketeer . And they needed Israel's help to carry out Operation Musketeer The basic plan was Israel would invade Egypt first. Britain and France would then pose as neutral peacekeepers , send in troops, and use the fighting as a pretext to seize control of the canal. Israel agrees to go along with this plan. I think we need to remember this incredibly soon after World War two, incredibly soon after the Holocaust. There's a real sense among Israelis that this is about survival and there's quite a ruthlessness that goes with that . Alex says they were also interested in expanding beyond the border they shared with Egypt. And they had their eyes on the Sinai Peninsula at this point. I think Israel was far more preoccupied with its own borders as indeed they are today . At the UN in October, Egypt had agreed to a set of principles for how the canals should be governed . Still, Britain, France, and Israel secretly agreed to go ahead with Operation Musketeer , and on october twenty ninth, nineteen fifty six . After weeks of stalemate, the Suez crisis burst dramatically into the news again for Israel has invaded Egypt . Britain and France have declared the canal in danger. Initially, Britain and France got together in London for what they said was emergency talks. Though of course this had all been planned. You can hear the sense of surprise and news footage from the time. Come out of this meeting in London and say we've got an ultimatum. If Egypt or Israel refuses these terms, Britain and France will intervene in twelve hours. Very, very short deadline, just twelve hours. I know that you would wish me as Prime Minister to talk to tonight on the problem which is in everybody's mind. So you know, people literally are listening to this on the radi o and British civil servants are putting their heads in their hands and saying what the hell is going on ? They don't immediately suspect it's a conspiracy because they can't possibly believe that such a thing has been done. One former civil servant wrote in his diary, you know, we think AE Antony Eden has gone off his head . And one foreign office official was asking another what was going on . And the guy said, Don't ask me and then sort of flicked his thumb at ten Downing Street and said Ask that fucking mad man over there . Meanwhile, Nasser also can't believe this is happening. He kind of said, look, let's not leap to conclusions too much. Let's kind of take our time and really work out what's happening here because it seems so unlikely . But Eisenhower. Eisenhower did work out very quickly that he'd been betrayed because he knew that Britain and France were planning something like this. The journalist James Reston, he wrote The White House crackled with barracks room language, the likest of which had not been heard since the days of General Grant. So I think probably some big swears going on in the White House. They're mad. Yeah, super mad. Operation Musketeer had quickly started causing huge ripples and confusion even before the twelve hour ultimatum was up . French warships are out there in the Mediterranean working with Israeli ships on joint operations. So it's incredibly obvious that they're working together , really to anyone who's paying the slightest attention. The United States was not consulted in any way about any phase of these actions , nor were we informed of them in effect. The next day, Eisenhower gives a speech telling everyone to chill out and respect international order. In the past, the United Nations has been able to find a way to end bloodshed We believe it can and that it will do so again . It's a very pressure cooker situation and probably this is the point to mention it . There's the first major uprising against Soviet control in satellite states. So the Hungarian uprising begins at this exact point . Totally separate from what is happening in the Middle East. But the heady breath of freedom was short, as twenty Red Armored Divisions sent Hungarians by the thousands fleeing to the Austrian border. The Americans are thinking what the heck is going on? Why is this happening at the same time? And meanwhile, Moscow starts to think that the CIA must be behind the Hungarian uprising. This is all part of some kind of anti Soviet move . So basically everyone is paranoid about these two crises unfolding at the same time. And this is when people start talking about this could turn into World War III. That's the word they use at the time . Less than a week into Operation Musketeer, things were spiraling way more than expected , the Hungarian uprising is heating up . And on the ground in Egypt, Britain, France, and Israel were militarily pulling off the operation , but not without some serious mistakes , which only intensified the diplomatic firestorm. To give you an example Britain intended to bomb Cairo West, which was an air field in Cairo. So the idea is you take out the air power, right? That's always one of the first sort of acts in the war. So British planes are in the air heading for Cairo West. But at the last minute, a message cry was saying thirteen hundred American civilians are being evacuated through Cairo West . So if the British bomb it, they're probably going to kill thirteen hundred American civilians. Eden frantically sends a message to the bombers and says change the target, change the target, bomb something else. Just change that instead. Like it's crazy that you would bomb another place haphazard . Right, just something else. Anyway, it goes even wrong than that though. The planes only had ten minutes to change those plans . They hadn't been fully briefed and they mistook the civilian airport in Cairo for Almazar the military aerodrome , which is, of course, a major act of war . That shows you kind of the levels of chaos that were going on here and the sort of disorgan izations . At this point, the US and the Soviet Union both jump into action . These sworn enemies, engaged in an existential fight over control of the world end up on the same side , trying to force a ceasefire at the UN. Of course, the problem for the UN Security Council is that Britain and France are on it, so there is a resolution brought against them, but because they're both permanent members of the Security Council, they use their veto and it can't be passed . And then the US decides it's going to hit Britain where it really hurts . It's pocket book. Eisenhower realises he has a very very, big lever here, which is oil. Eisenhower knew that if he forced Britain to pay for oil with dollars , they would soon hit a wall. Inflation would soar, and they'd start to crumble economically. He actually says in a private meeting that he's inclined to let them boil in their own oil. It was a form of sanctions. One labor MP of the time said the only successful use of sanctions in history was the Americans overseers . And the Soviet Union applied its own pressure. The Soviet leadership sort of elliptically threatened a nuclear attack on London and Paris. Now it didn't go so far as to say we're going to nuke London and Paris but if rocket weapons were used against Britain and France, you would no doubt call this a barbarous act. But how is this different from the inhuman attack carried by the out armed for ces of Britain and France on an almost unarmed Egypt . Was it a real or empty threat? Anthony Eden didn't want to wait to find out . Under threat of rocket attacks, but also with Britain's economy imploding he actually pulls out . And just like that, a little over a week after Operation Musketeer begins, it ends in failure. Nasser still in power and Egypt still in control of the Suez Canal Company . Nasser himself was actually very depressed after the Suez Crisis because his army had lost all the battles , but actually he emerged really as unquestionably the preeminent figure in Middle Eastern politics and was seen as a hero that had defeated two empires. The defeat was especially felt by the British. The British Empire was pretty much over already by this point, but I think what it did was kind of end that era psychologically in a huge way. And if you look at how the world was talked about in papers at the time , initially when people use this word superpower, they discuss three superpowers and it's the Soviet Union, the United States, and the British Empire. After Suez, nobody talks about there being three superpowers anymore. It becomes a bilateral world. The US and the Soviet Union, and that's it. Eden left office pretty soon after the Suez crisis. And apparently NASA, when he saw Eden, you know, fall from power, lose his health, he said it was the curse of the Pharaohs . Where does Israel come out in all of this? Some of Israel are hoping that they will hang on to Sinai and the Gaza Strip, two territories that they have occupied during this war . But actually, Bengurian says quite quickly to Eisenhower, we're not intending to occupy it long term. We'll give it back. Which will, of course, culminate in nineteen sixty seven, right? And absolutely the war that will lead to the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, the Sinai. Yes, you can see the roots of that at this point . Many later saw Suez as a long term strategic win for Israel because it strengthened Israel's relationship with France , which helped lay the foundation for Israel's nuclear program . For the US, Suez marked the beginning of a new era. As British influence receded, the U. S. stepped into a leading role in the Middle East, positioning itself as a central outside power. If there's one lesson from this moment, it's that waterways like the Suez Canal can give an underdog like Egypt a massive amount of leverage on the global stage and possibly even upend the power structures of empires . The rules that govern the water are more fluid than those on land . And the people who start a crisis don't always get to decide how it ends . Coming up , we travel back to the very first time the US and Iran exchanged fire on the Strait of Hormuz . This is Jack from Springfield, Illinois and you're listening to through line from NPR. Part two Operation Praying Mantis is being pumped out at AMR three . We found a hole in AMR two. The engineers have shorted up . It's april fourteenth, nineteen eighty eight, somewhere in the Persian Gulf, and the USS Samuel B. Roberts has just hit a mine , on fire, holes in its hull, gathering water fast. The ship was buckling and threaten ing to come in too. However, we've got to fight this problem ourselves. We don't know what the size of the minefield is. There's no way for another ship to come to their rescue inside the minefield without risking getting hit themselves . So it's two hundred crew members are stranded. They have to find a way out on their own or else sink . It's getting dark . We need to maintain visibility . By the next morning , they managed to hold the ship together long enough to get out of the minefield and back to safe waters . Miraculously , no one died . Hello , the President, good morning . President Ronald Reagan calls the captain of the USS Roberts to congratulate him. Want to and congratulate you and your men for such a great job getting in your ship safely into port after being struck by that mine . Almost as soon as the USS Roberts was in the clear, American officials in the Middle East got in touch with the Pentagon and Reagan to respond to this attack with a plan that would put the US and Iran on a collision course in the Strait of Hormuz , a narrow one hundred mile long waterway that borders Edan to the north and Oman and the UAE to the south . It's the second stop in our triangle and the one you've likely been hearing about a lot lately . But first , how and why did Iran take control of this strip of water and convert it into a minefield? To understand that, we've got to turn back the clock . The most dangerous place for merchant shipping today is the Gulf, surrounded by the Gulf War . By nineteen eighty eight, Iran and Iraq had been at war on land for nearly a decade , a war that began just a year after the nineteen seventy nine Iranian Revolution, hundreds of thousands of people died , including tens of thousands of child soldiers . And when the war stalled on land, an oil tanker runs the gauntlet of air attacks in the Gulf War. It spilled over into the water, with both countries attacking each other's oil tankers. Iran was sort of by itself . The smaller Gulf countries were supporting Iraq Iraq was at the time led by, as we know, Saddam Hussein, and ironically, the United States was supporting him Iran wanted to disrupt the flow of oil and gas ultim,ately money to the allies of its enemy , and so they would attack the tankers going to those countries. This is Harold Lee Wise. He wrote a book called Inside the Danger Zone , the US military in the Persian Gulf nineteen eighty seven to nineteen eighty eight , it features many firsthand accounts from people involved in what became known as the Tanker War. It's one of the busiest waterways in the world . The numbers vary, but they usually hover around twenty percent of the world's oil and natural gas the world's energy supply . So Iran armed small boats on the water and placed mines all over the strait . The Kuwaitis, they approached the United States with a request to escort their tankers. They had to be ref lagged with American flags in order to legally be protected by the U. S. Navy. This is what became known as Operation Ernest Will. For the most part, the escorts are going along just fine . And in April of ' eighty eight, the Samuel B. Roberts was just not on an escort mission. It was just on a normal patrol. It hit a mine. In the days after the USS Roberts hit that mine . American military officials in the Gulf and politicians back in Washington debated exactly how to retaliate for this attack . The folks in the Gulf, the military leadership there, wanted to go after the silkworm sites on l . Silkworm missiles was the nickname given to a new kind of anti ship cruise missile developed by China around this time and sold to Iran . It was relatively cheap and could be launched from platforms on the shoreline of the strait . Iran would eventually reverse engineer the silkworm missile to create an arsenal of anti ship missiles. Military people on the ground believed Iran was acting as pirates. Let's take the gloves off and put a stop to some of these things . Washington thought the same , but they wanted to be just proportionate and maybe just a hair over, but not too much over . They reached the compromise and sent the plan over to Reagan, who gave it the green light. They must know that we will protect our ships, and if they threaten us, they'll pay a price. The plan was named Operation Praying Mantis , and it was set to take place on april eighteenth, nineteen eighty eight Evacuate the platform immediately . I repeated evacuate immediately . The orders came down to start at eight o'clock . American warships were deployed to attack two Iranian gas oil platforms. They approached the first platform. They warned them first. They radioed to the platform. Evacuate the platform immediately . The clock struck eight . They waited a few more minutes . And then they started blasting . On one of the platforms, the Americans accidentally hit a gas tank . The platform blew up At that point, Iran decided to strike back. They send out a missile boat called Joshan . States started attacking an American boat called the Willie Tide, which is a oil rig support boat . Well , the order came down to destroy that boat. This is a warning . They warned them there one or four times by radius stop stop and abandon ship. I intend to take you over . A couple minutes later, they spotted a cloud of rocket exhaust coming from the Joshan. , the U S. returned fire . So for just a second, the missilists were both in the air . And this is the first surface to surface missile attack in world history Quick side note, the missile fired by the Joshan was ironically an American made harpoon missile that the U. S. sold to Iran during the Shah era before the nineteen seventy nine revolution brought the Ayatollah to power , when there was a lot of business happening between the two countries. The shaw had been installed in nineteen fifty three after a U. S. backed coup orchestrated by Kermit Roosevelt, that CIA agent we heard about earlier in the episode . Okay , back to the battle And it landed on the water . Hundred feet away from the ship. As for the missile the Americans fired, it hit the Joshan . Eventually, the Americans managed to sink the Joshan . Iran started launching planes , and one of the U. S. ships started shooting miss iles at them . Meanwhile, American planes were circling above the water . And all this time the USS Enterprise Carrier Group was outside of the Strait of Herm .ez A carrier group is a naval task force built around an aircraft carrier that can execute a really serious attack on water . The enterprise had received an earlier set of orders that told them definitely destroy one of the big ships. The latest orders said it was optional, but they thought it was a mission priority. These kind of things happen. These kinds of things a miscommunication that can lead to a ship getting blown up . Yes . In any case, Iranian commanders sent one of the two large ships out and it was the Sahand . Now, Iran would play some tricks with these ships. They would repaint their numbers and swap them around. Suppose you see a ship coming out and it has this one number on it, the next day you see it in a different number you think, oh, that's two ships. Iran has more ships than we thought. The Iranians send out what the Americans think is the Sabilan. It had the number that the Sabilan had previously whose captain reportedly had a habit of sending oil tankers a message before attacking them. Have a nice day and they had kind of a grudge against that guy . An American attack jet flies in for a closer look and the sand started shooting at him . At the same time, remember that carrier group? Well, their jets also start attacking this a hand , just as another US warship radios them. It says back off, I'm attacking the ship. They said you back off, we're attacking the ship . The Seahan gets hit from all sides and they sink it. Iran reported forty five dead and eighty seven injured . And it's interesting that in the press release, the Pentag on put out that this is a coordinated attack . See the irony? It was accidentally coordinated. There's something interesting about that, right? Facts on the ground create a new narrative . Exactly. I mean, you're in media , you know, you can't go by some of these information that you get . Later on , they told the pilot you would either get court martial or get a medal for what you did because it was iffy , you know, justification for attacking the ship . Whether it was like a war crime versus an act of heroism. Yeah, but they ended up getting the medal . At this point At this point, the American military was sure Iran would cut its losses and back down . But instead, Iran sent out their other big ship . The American planners, they said, this is crazy. Why are they sending it out? An American plane dropped a single bomb on that ship . The bomb went down the stack ship and exploited in their engine room and the ship just drifted to a stop and started leaking oil all over the Gulf . And for a few minutes after , there was a question about whether they should continue the assault on the Iranian ship and try to sink it. Herold says people who were there told him the pilots radioed the Pentagon , and Admiral Krow, the joint chiefs of staff, said Nope, call it off. That's enough for today In less than twenty four hours, Operation Praying Mantis was over . For the U. S., it was the largest Air sea battle since World War two . They had taken out two Iranian oil platforms , two of Iran's biggest warships, and several smaller boats . And although escorts of oil tankers would continue for another year, this operation effectively ended the tanker war , with one notable exception , the USS Vincent shot two missiles and an Iranian air bus, mistaking it for an Iranian jet fighter. It was in early July of eighty eight that the US ship, the USS Vins mistakenly identified an Iranian passenger plane as an attacking plane . All two hundred ninety people on board died in the crash. The Reagan administration this week offered to pay compensation to the families of the downed airliner. The move was unpopular in the U. S., but it's likely to weaken international support for Iran's char thatg theed missile attack was intentional . Despite that fatal error, the success of Operation Praying Mantis loomed large and the U. S. was seen as the de facto guardian of the Strait of Hormuz. It really increased the standing of the U. S. military worldwide . It showed the smaller Gulf countries that the U. S. was a reliable ally , which was questionable before this operation started. This reassured the world that the U. S. would keep this oil flowing. A status quo that was in place until the current war between the U. S., Israel, and Iran began. And when there's instability in there today, we see in our own pocketbooks how it's affecting us . Coming up , we travel to the newest frontier in the water wars , which may deepen that hole in our pocketbooks even more . You're listening to three lines from NPR. This is Taylor from Aromas, California . And I love this show. I find it to be eye opening, thought provoking . Thank y'all so much . Part three , hostage at sea . On june eighth, twenty twenty six, a spokesperson for Yemen's houthis released this video annou,ncing a missile attack on Israel . He also declared a ban on Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, raising fears that there will be major disruptions to shipping traffic in Baby Mendeb , which loosely translates to the gate of grief . It can be the world of grief because Amanda is a double linguistic world in Arabic. It can be the way out or the way to get stuck in. It's the neck of many things. Like the choke points. Yes, yes, exactly. This is Faria and Muslimi. I am a Yemen and golf researcher at Charm House in London. I am originally from Yemen . The two waterways we've visited so far, the Suez Canal and the Strait of Hormuz might be more familiar to you, but Fadia has spent a lot of time thinking about this third point of the triangle, Baben Mendeb, the narrow passage between Yemen and the Horn of Africa that links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean . Each story reveals a different kind of power hidden on these waterways. At Suez, we saw how a waterway could shift the balance of power between nations . In Hormuz, we saw how it could disrupt the flow of oil and goods around the world . In this third story, we'll see something different , how a narrow stretch of water can be used by non state actors to make themselves impossible for the world to ignore . Baben Mendeb only really came on the radar of many Americans in the last few years and has become almost synonym ous with the Houthis . The militia armed the group supported by Iran. They're originally Yemeni . I personally think the Houthis are a combination of Taliban , a FARC in Colombia and North Korea. They're shiat Taliban because their extreme explanation of Islam is radical and their worldview of human rights, of equality of women, of the West , of the other is extremely criminalizing. They are like Farc of Colombia because they depend highly on illicit business revenues, drugs , and they are North Korea because they believe in isolation themselves and everyone from the world. Their biggest dream is to basically keep millions of Yemenis under their control that has nothing to do with the . The Houthis came to power in Yemen a decade ago, with a headline making move . Houthi fighters seized control of the presidential palace in Sana. They also took control of state media situation on the ground remains unstable . This spiraled into a brutal civil war that quickly ballooned into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran. A decade later, it's still ongoing. A disturbing mixture of Libya, Syria, Iraq and somehow Lebanon together , all put into one package called Yemen . In the U. S., the war in Yemen received very little coverage despite becoming one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world. It was not a domestic issue, it was not an election issue . But then they burst into the wheelhouse and ordered the crew to lie down. On november nineteenth, twenty twenty three, a little over a month after the october seventh attacks and the beginning of the bombardment of Gaza. The hoses showed up in the red sea. But a dozen men wearing body armor and carrying assault weapons jump out of a helicopter and run along the deck of a galaxy leader. A cargo ship called the Galaxy Leader was traveling near Babid Menda when armed Houthi hijackers suddenly descended on the ship . According to the Lloyd's List, a shipping journal, The Galaxy Leader is Israeli owned, Bahama flagged, and operated by a Japanese company. A houthi spokesperson didn't comment specifically on the seizure, but said all ships owned or operated by Israel could be targeted. From a media point of view, it was the perfect entrance for them, a Hollywood style. The Houthis provided the video and blurred faces which they released on social media the next day. That was how the Houthis decided to announce themselves to the world. Hundreds of millions of young men and women around the world feeling senseless, looking for any compass, frustrated, partially . A lot of people say nothing would be the same in Palestine and Israel after that. They're disrupting one of the world's busiest shipping lanes in the Red Sea, where thousands of massive cargo ships travel through every year . Obviously, my immediate reaction was like holy crap . But in another way, I was like, wait , this actually can be a huge global opportunity in which Yemen can be redefined from a poor suffering country into an important country . You know, the Red Sea attacks in twenty twenty three was the very time since thirteen years the world has bait for Yemen war . Fadier says in reality, the Houthis weren't even all that comfortable on the water. They're a mountain group . They hate the water, they're afraid of the water, they're caves people . But suddenly, like as the whole world, the global was coming, they saw, oh, water . That can be something , you know? The mountain and the sea in Yemen they hug each other . Which meant the Houthis could launch attacks on ships in Baben Mendab from the mountains without ever stepping foot in the water . And they got weapons, drones and mar, itime training from Iran. Now three people have been killed and at least two injured in the latest attack by Houthi rebels on a merchant ship. The attacks already leading to a five percent increase in the cost of sh ipping a container from Asia to the east coast of the US since october seventh . It has started to create an immediate insurance banic , an insurance beyond anything. It's a feeling. So that feeling was a broken. You're no more safe in Babelmend up. You're no more safe in this part of the world, you know, but it was a banana that you could see in numbers. You can see in Mall Street it was something in which businessmen started to basically worry about . And is it too simple to say that part of what garners the attention is as soon as a state or a non state actor begins to threaten money. The bottom line, that's when , you know, the global community mobilizes tends to mobilize most aggressively. Absolutely. You had the EU one of the most inefficient bureaucracies in the world and the most consensus and time consuming , they started to make a military operation called the Aspedes Operation in the Red Sea. The mission named Aspedes, the Greek word for protector involves four countries Greece, France, Italy, and Germany ended up until today happening in the Red Sea and Babel Mandel Would you call this a form of political piracy? Yes, yes. Fatia also has another name for it, drone mine diplomacy. They changele the r notu just of business but of war. If they shoot a drone that takes a few thousand dollars , then if US Central Kong interrupts that a drone with a seventy thousand dollars rocket . The house is win. It's a choice in which you can only bleed and bleed and the other side only win or win. If they hit you, they win. If they don't hit you, they also win because they created that fear . What will happen of the house? You will sanction them? They don't care . Will you ban them from travel? They don't spend August in Las Vegas, you know? Don't have bank accounts in Belgium or in New York, you're going to freeze . It also came in a moment where the international law and order is already collapsing by states . It was a fracturing in Palestine. It was a fracturing in Ukraine . It was a fracturing in Syria, it is fracturing everywhere else. And the Hart is like, okay, we can do it too . And Fadi says there isn't such a clear difference between what non state actors like the Houthis did in Bab Mendadeb and what countries like the U. S. have done in recent years Holding the Venezuelan president or US military strikes on boats in the Caribbean . It's exactly the same playbook . It's a hostage policy held the entire world hostage . We cannot differentiate it whether it happens in a dishtasha or in a suit . It's a sight to behold of the port of Al Salif. The galaxy leader was anchored in the harbor under tight security till recently. The galaxy leader was taken to a port on the coast of Yemen, and its captive crew was held hostage for four hundred thirty days . The news media keeping a close eye on things . During that time, the Houthis continued to threaten other ships on Baby Mende, leading to some casualties , though some countries were given free reign to travel through it. The houses buy drones, buy toys, buy a lot of stuff from China. And that relationship is actually quite strong. And there was some intelligence report about the Russians trying to tip the house is about information and intelligence on Western ships . Goodbye, Amen. Thank you very much The crew of the Galaxy Leader was finally freed in january twenty twenty five in response to the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. No one was killed while on board. A few months later, in july twenty twenty five, the Israeli defense forces said they'd bombed the port where the galaxy leader was being held. The IDF claimed, quote, Houthi forces installed a radar system on the ship and have been using it to track vessels in the international maritime arena to facilitate further terrorist activities. A Houthi spokesperson posted on X that they quote effectively repelled the Israeli attacks . Since then, the Houthis have been relatively quiet on the water , but in the last couple of weeks, they announced a renewed blockade of Israeli ships through Babin Mendeb , and their involvement may soon escalate further , depending on whether the deal between the US and Iran hold s . Babel Mandep will always remain vulnerable. It's the opportunity and the problem of geography . And to have home and Babel Mandav closed together , that is an absolute nightmare actually . There's also the question of whether the Houthis would be able to potentially target the undersea cables that run through Babin Mendeb, which are essential to the internet worldwide. Then you will start having Google Software, Microsoft Software, Amazon Software . I mean, as you're looking towards the future, do you think that is likely to happen ? I think everything is possible . This world is running out of sanity and leadership for the sake of stability . And even beyond Babel Mandaba and Hormuz, if we look into the way military and wars and recent conflicts , they really have moved from the mountains and the land into the sea Everyone is holding each other hostage is the sea . You can be the Hosis, you can be Putin, you can be Ardogan, you can be Iran. It's all about water This is the World War of Water The World War of Water Whether it's the Suez or Panama Canal, a strait in the Persian Gulf, or a shipping lane in the Black Sea or the South China Sea, geography might not be destiny, but it is leverage , and sometimes a few miles of water can shape events half a world away And that's it for this week's show. I'm Randab De Fatar . Through line was created by me and Ramtin Ad a Bl.uey This episode was produced by me and Sarah Wyman, Casey Minor. Christina Kim, Devin Katyama, Kiana Mochaten. Irene Nagucci, Lianna Semstrom, Julia Redpath, Skyler Swenson, Amy Pedula, Jasmine Romero. Thank you to Johannes Dergy, Cheyenne Butler, Yolanda Sangueni, and Tommy Evans. Archival audio in this episode includes clips from Tames CB, TRT World , and France twenty four. Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vokel. This episode was mixed by Jimmy Keeley. Music for this episode was composed by Romtein and his band Dropoletric, which includes Navid Marvi, Show Fujiwara. Anya meisania . And finally, if you have an idea or liked something you heard on the show, please write us at throughline at nprot org. If you're open to us giving you a call back, leave your number too. We might feature your idea in an upcoming episode. Also, make sure to follow us on Apple, Spotify, or the NPR app. That way you'll never miss an episode. Thanks for listening