After Iran essentially closed off the Red Sea and with it the Suez Canal through its proxy, the Houthis rebels, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has now threatened to shut down traffic in another large body of water. "They shall soon await the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, Gibraltar, and other waterways," General Mohammad Reza Naqdi said last month, referring to "crimes" in Gaza of the United States and its partners.
Analysts scoffed at the bold announcement. "Iran has no direct access to the Mediterranean itself, and it was not clear how the Guards could attempt to close if off," Reuters insisted. Yet Reuters also reported Naqdi's reference to "the birth of new powers of resistance."
Naqdi was probably referring to Algeria, which is beginning to coordinate policies with Iran's primary sponsor, China. Algeria, unfortunately, could be a new base for attacks on shipping. It sits just east of the Strait of Gibraltar, which connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. At its narrowest point, the passage is only eight miles wide.
How could Iran use that North African country to prevent shipping entering or leaving the Med? Tehran has already proven that it doesn't take much to control critical water.
To avoid Houthi missile and drone attacks and seizures in that body of water, major shipping lines are rerouting traffic to the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, adding 12,000 nautical miles and about two weeks to trips between Europe and Asia. This accounts for about 15 percent of the world's shipping, which normally transits the Red Sea.
Iran itself caused further turmoil by sending a frigate, the Alborz, into the Red Sea, making the announcement of the deployment on the first of this month. A small warship, without firing a shot, is forcing large shipping firms to redirect traffic at great costs to themselves.
What works for Iran in the Red Sea can also work in the Mediterranean. From Algerian ports, Iran-backed militants can patrol the western Med, just as they now patrol the Red Sea from Yemen's. They can seize ships and dock them in Oran or the capital city of Algiers. From coastal bases in Algeria, militants can hit shipping with missiles.
As a result, Iran, with the help of Algeria and Yemen, can bottle up shipping in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, in other words, from the Atlantic to Indian Oceans.
Iran is already getting ready to use Algeria. Early last month, the leaders of another Iranian proxy, Hamas, fled Qatar for Iran, Lebanon, and Algeria. In Algeria, the Tehran-backed terrorists are hiding out in Qatari diplomatic residences, a source in Qatar's foreign service said.
Algeria opened its doors to Hamas while it is fast forging a relationship with China, Iran's primary sponsor. Algeria's army chief, General Said Chanegriha, spent a week in Beijing and Shanghai in November on an arms-buying trip. China could soon displace Russia as Algiers's main weapons supplier, thanks to Russia's trouble producing armaments due to the war in Ukraine. And it appears that China and Algeria will at some point ink a co-production deal, which means a Chinese enterprise might soon be manufacturing weapons in North Africa.
China and Algeria will also deepen security and other ties, as Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune made clear in Beijing last July when he met with Xi Jinping. During the visit, the two countries signed 19 cooperation agreements. China also recently backed Algeria's push to sever the disputed territory of Western Sahara from Morocco. Algiers is bulking up its military for what will almost certainly be a renewed push to take the phosphate-rich and strategically important region.
"Needy Algeria is fast moving into the China-Iran orbit, and this cannot be good for peace and stability at the western end of North Africa," Thomas Riley, America's ambassador to Morocco from 2003 to 2009, told me this week.
There is alarm in Morocco, one of America's oldest friends and an Abraham Accord partner, about China's fast-growing role in next-door Algeria. Moreover, Morocco has another reason to be alarmed: The source in the Qatari foreign service said that country is also housing Hamas leaders in its diplomatic residences in Moroccan cities.
In short, bad actors are creating the infrastructure at the western end of the Mediterranean, probably to do Iran's bidding at some point.
And that brings us back to General Naqdi's ambitions to shut down shipping in the Med. On Jan. 3, the White House issued what a senior Biden administration official and others called a "final warning" to the Houthis for their Red Sea attacks on behalf of a coalition of 14 nations. So far, the militant group does not appear to be impressed, undoubtedly because the United States and its partners have been reluctant to use force; the day after Biden's warning, the Houthis launched a drone attack on shipping.
The danger now is that an emboldened Iran takes Washington's restraint in the Red Sea as a sign that it is free to shut down shipping at the western end of the Mediterranean as well.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and the recently released China Is Going to War. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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