The Red Sea: The Faultline of the Middle East and North Africa

Hafsa Arslan | Middle East Fellow

Image sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

The Red Sea has become a neglected crisis area within the Middle East and North African (MENA) region, catapulting existing tensions into further instability. With its centrality in facilitating global trade as the world’s most strategically important waterway, regional states have not implemented an effective platform for collaboration and mutual support to manage rising strategic tensions.

In recent years, the Red Sea has been the site of heightened illicit trafficking activities amid rising geopolitical rivalries, resulting in the establishment of the ‘Council of Arab and African States Bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden’, also known as the Red Sea Council (RSC) in 2020. The council was envisioned to stabilise the region, but instead, was dominated by Saudi Arabia and Egypt and narrowed its membership to pursue regional competition and unilateral state interests. The Red Sea must not become a permanent faultline amid regional competition and political rivalry. MENA states must reform the RSC into an inclusive and stability-focused mechanism that incorporates Arab and African state interests.

No Security in the Security Forum

The RSC consists of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Eritrea, Yemen, Sudan, Djibouti, and Somalia, thus excluding the affected and relevant states of Ethiopia, Somaliland, Türkiye, and the UAE. This exclusion prevents the Council’s capacity to address regional stability effectively. Initially, the RSC was informally carried out under the leadership of Egypt, but it was taken over by Saudi Arabia in 2020 to dominate the council’s direction, mirroring the image of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The RSC was built upon unifying regional responses against piracy, smuggling, trafficking and maritime insecurity. However, these goals have not materialised, instead allowing a manifestation of Saudi Arabia’s exertion of control in the region.

With the central exclusion of Ethiopia, through the request of Egypt to contain competition over from the dispute over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, new tensions are at risk of rising between regional countries. With Saudi Arabia’s relatively greater political and economic power, the country’s exclusions can be viewed as instruments of regional power displacement, rather than an effective, stabilising multilateral mechanism. As such, the prevention of Qatar, Türkiye, and Iran from expanding into the Red Sea is seen as a motivation for Saudi domination of the RSC. The exclusion has created a power asymmetry that reinforces mistrust amongst smaller MENA states and undermines legitimacy. This internal conflict is risking paralysis for the Council, disabling it from mediating disputes or effectively responding to crises, such as the Houthis’ attacks on the Red Sea shipping, which remains ongoing since 2023. The lack of a conflict prevention mechanism and regional disunity make the region particularly vulnerable.

Security and Military Fragmentation

The lack of regional cohesion has resulted in the Gulf states transforming the Red Sea coast into an extension of their economic and global geopolitical influence. Advancing projects, such as the NEOM led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt’s Suez Canal Corridor and the UAE investing in African ports, risk further escalating the maritime frontier of the GCC’s security doctrine. However, none of these initiatives involve shared governance, pushing for state-based maritime infrastructure and not broader maritime stability. Similarly, the RSC has been unable to prevent the militarisation of the Red Sea Corridor, despite it being one of the central mandates. Warring national interests have resulted in competing foreign military deployments and a lack of action towards the escalating militarisation.

Due to the divergence of agendas in the RSC, MENA states are doggedly pursuing their own narrow economic interests, and are allowing the region to be subject to militarisation, insecurity, and instability. Without a formal amendment or binding framework, further economic disintegration risks amplifying the region’s tensions.

Central Voices and External Powers

The RSC’s purposeful exclusions of the central states of Ethiopia, Somaliland, Türkiye, and the UAE are at the core of its instability. However, the lack of an African dimension is acutely neglectful, as the Red Sea borders the African continent just as much as it borders the Arab world. And yet, African stakeholders are pushed out of the picture. Ethiopia’s dependence on the Red Sea ports for trade makes its exclusion from the council unbalanced and unsustainable. Excluding central voices undermines the exact stability and unity that the RSC seeks. A regional forum must reflect interdependence and not divide the Arab League and the African Union.

Rebuilding the Council

The future and stability of the Red Sea hinge on amending the RSC’s structure and mandates. It must shift from a symbolic body to a functional regional institution. Its current composition mirrors the fragmentation the RSC was founded to resolve: regional instability, lack of enforcement tools, and the detachment from central voices.

Reform must begin with participation, which must be expanded to include all impacted states, specifically, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Türkiye, and the UAE, as dialogue partners or observers. The exclusion of the states weakens legitimacy and neglects vital security cooperation. Similarly, establishing a permanent secretariat with rotating leadership for sustained coordination is necessary to convert dialogue into actionable and mutually beneficial policy outcomes. The introduction of the Red Sea Development Council, which allows for navigation rights, crisis protocols, practices, and rules of engagement that allow for inclusivity of all engaging states and accountability measures, is necessary. With such amendments, the RSC can transform from an institution of competing interests into a collective security mechanism.

Hafsa Arslan is the Middle East Fellow for Young Australians in International Affairs. She is a final-year Curtin University student, pursuing a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Economics and a Post-graduate Diploma in International Security. She is a two-time New Colombo Plan scholar, having completed an internship in South Korea in early 2025 and a study tour in Japan, focusing on the intersection of economic and geopolitical dynamics in the Asia-Pacific.

With her lived experience across the Indo-Pacific, particularly the Middle East, Hafsa has developed a strong interest in the region’s political and cultural landscape, exploring its complexity separate from its mainstream identity. Through this fellowship, she aims to combine her passion for cultural nuance and equity-driven policy discourse to create diverse perspectives for the region.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Young Australians in International Affairs. All content is original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article.