Houthis’ email to ships in the Red Sea: Get ready to attack, best wishes

A top executive at a Greek shipping company noticed an odd email in his personal inbox on a warm spring night in Athens just before midnight.

The message, which was also sent to the manager’s work email address, said that the Houthi group in Yemen, which is backed by Iran, could attack one of the company’s ships in the Red Sea.

It was against Houthi rules for the ship to go through an Israeli port, so it would be “directly targeted by the Yemeni Armed Forces in any area they deem appropriate,” according to an English-language message that Reuters looked over.

The email was signed by the Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC), which is based in Yemen and was created in February to help Houthi forces communicate with commercial ship owners. It said, “You bear the responsibility and consequences of including the vessel in the ban list.”

As a show of support for the Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza, the Houthis have attacked almost 100 ships crossing the Red Sea since November. They’ve sunk two ships, taken one, and killed at least four sailors.

The email, which was sent at the end of May, said that the whole company’s fleet would be subject to “sanctions” if the ship continued “to violate the ban criteria and enter the ports of the usurping Israeli entity.”

For safety reasons, both the official and the company did not want to be named.

Six industry sources who saw the emails directly and two who saw them indirectly say that since May, more than a dozen emails getting scarier were sent to at least six Greek shipping companies. The emails were sent because of rising political tensions in the Middle East.

The Houthis have been attacking commercial ships with ties to Israel, the US, and the UK with rockets, armed drones, and boats full of explosives since last year.

The new email effort shows that the Houthi rebels are going after more than just Israeli ships. They are also going after Greek merchant ships that have little to do with Israel.

For the first time in a few months, the threats were aimed at whole groups, which made things more dangerous for ships still trying to cross the Red Sea.

In June, a different email from a Yemeni government domain said, “Your ships broke the decision of the Yemen Armed Forces.” It was sent to the first company and another Greek shipping company that also didn’t want to be named. “Because of this, all of your company’s ships will be punished… Thanks a lot, The Yemen Navy.

Yemen is at the start of the Red Sea, and it has been in a civil war for years. The Houthis took over the capital, Sanaa, in 2014 and got rid of the officially recognized government. The US put the Houthis back on its list of terrorist groups in January.

Reuters asked Houthi officials to confirm that they sent the emails but they refused to say anything else because they said it was secret military information.

Reuters wasn’t able to tell if the emails were also sent to other shipping companies in other countries.

According to data from Lloyd’s List Intelligence, nearly 30% of all attacks by Houthi forces up to early September were made by Greek-owned ships, which are part of one of the biggest fleets in the world. The data did not say if these ships had any ties to Israel.

In August, the Houthi militia attacked the Sounion tanker. It was set on fire for weeks before it could be towed to a better area. The Houthi militia is part of Iran’s Axis of Resistance alliance of anti-Israel irregular armed groups.

Because of the strikes, a lot of goods has had to take a much longer route around Africa. Lloyd’s List Intelligence data showed that the number of ships going through the Suez Canal dropped from about 2,000 per month before November 2023 to about 800 per month in August.

As a response to the killing of terrorist leaders in Lebanon, including Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Friday, Iran fired more than 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday. This caused tensions in the Middle East to reach a new high point.

NEW STAGE

According to a document read by Reuters, the European Union’s naval force Aspides confirmed the change in Houthis’ tactics in a meeting with shipping companies in early September that was closed to the public. Aspides has helped more than 200 ships safely sail through the Red Sea.

Aspides wrote in the document that shipping companies saw that the Houthis’ move to warn whole fleets was the start of the “fourth phase” of their military campaign in the Red Sea.

Aspides also told ship owners that they had to “shut it off or be shot” if they didn’t turn off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, which let other ships know where a ship is and help them find their way.

Aspides said that the Houthis’ rocket attacks were 75% accurate when they were aimed at ships with the AIS tracking system turned on. The same report said that when AIS was off, 96% of attacks were missed.

“Aspides is aware of those emails,” Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, the operational commander of Aspide, told Reuters. He also said that any reaction should be carefully thought out, and companies should strongly tell their security experts if they are contacted before sailing.

“In particular, for the HOCC, the advice or guidance is not to respond to VHF calls and e-mails from “Yemeni Navy” or the “Humanitarian Operations Command Center” (HOCC).”

In February, emails from the Houthis were sent to shipowners, insurance companies, and the main sailors’ union (HOCC).

Two of these early emails were seen by Reuters. They let the industry know that the Houthis had banned some ships from traveling through the Red Sea, but they didn’t say directly that an attack was coming.

The threats in the texts sent after May were stronger.

Two people with direct information told Reuters that at least two Greek-run shipping companies that got email threats have decided to stop making trips through the Red Sea. They did not want to be named for security reasons.

A manager at a third shipping company, which also got the letter, said that they had to stop doing business with Israel so that they could keep using the Red Sea route.

Companies have a duty to act if safe transit through the Red Sea can’t be guaranteed, even if that means pushing back their delivery windows, said Stephen Cotton, General Secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the largest union for seafarers. The federation got an email from HOCC in February. “The lives of the seafarers depend on it.”

Shipping companies are more worried now because of the email marketing. Reuters was told that attack by the Houthis has already caused insurance costs for Western ship owners to go through the roof. Some insurers have even stopped covering ships altogether.

After its ship, the MV Groton, was attacked twice in August, the Greece-based Conbulk Shipmanagement Corporation stopped trips in the Red Sea.

“There are no bulk ships trading in the Red Sea.” The crew’s safety is the main reason for it. Dimitris Dalakouras, CEO of Conbulk Shipmanagement, told a Capital Link shipping meeting in London on September 10 that “all the talk stops when the crew is in danger.”

For the German container shipping company Leonhardt & Blumberg, managing director Torben Kolln said the Red Sea and the wider Gulf of Aden were “no go” areas for their fleet.

When Reuters tried to get the companies to comment on whether they had been targeted by the Houthi email campaign, they did not reply.

Some businesses keep going across the Red Sea because they have long-term contracts with charterers that they can’t break or because they need to move goods in that area.The Red Sea is still the fastest way for things to get to people in Asia and Europe.

Not all trade has been stopped by the Houthis. Most ships owned by China and Russia, which the Houthis don’t see as connected to Israel, can pass through without any problems and with lower insurance costs.

An audio recording of a Houthi message sent to ships in the Red Sea in September was shared with Reuters. It said, “We are reassuring the ships of companies that have no connection with the Israeli enemy that they are safe and have freedom (of movement) and (to) keep the AIS devices on all the time.”

“Thank you for working with me. “Out.”