Dollar revenues from Egypt’s Suez Canal are down 40% from the beginning of the year compared to 2023, canal authority head Osama Rabie said on Thursday, after attacks on ships by Yemen’s Houthis caused major shippers to divert away from the route.
Ship traffic was down 30% in the period between Jan. 1 and Jan. 11 compared to a year prior, Rabie said, speaking on a late night talk show.
The number of vessels to pass through the Suez Canal dropped to 544 so far this year, from 777 in the equivalent period of 2023, he said.
Legitimate question: I understand the Suez Canal is this major shipping route and it’s owned and operated (slightly indirectly) by the Egyptian government. But why do all the news stories I see about the Houthi attacks say the US, the EU, all these other countries are sending ships to secure safe passage?
I know these countries want to protect their people and their goods going through the canal. But Egypt owns and operates the Canal and they make over half a billion dollars a month off it. They have the largest navy in the middle east, the largest navy in Africa, and the twelfth largest navy in the world. So why aren’t they doing more to protect transiting ships from attack?
they gave control of the red sea task force to the US last year.
theyre the 12th largest navy in the world.
their navy us split into 2 fleets: Mediterranean and red sea.
they have 2000km of busy coastline to patrol.
the attacks are also happening beyond their coastline in the gulf of aden.
Djibouti has a military base of loads of other countries because uts also in their interests to protect the shipping
a weak navy and large coastline means they have limited ability to project naval power before considering protecting the gulf of aden or putting airstrikes into yemen.
oh, and Egypt has a track record of having an incompetent military, so there’s that…
i think you need to refer to r/habibimemes in order to understand the mental gymantics
Political sensitivities. Some of the multinational coalition currently patrolling the area have declined to be named, and it’s widely speculated that Egypt is among them.
Good job, Houthis, that will really show those Zionists in [checks notes] Egypt!
I mean yeah literally. The Egyptian government has been on that Israeli dick since at least 2014.
Edit: Saying this as an Egyptian.
Fucking lmao.
I guess we don’t need an alternative, Ben Gurion Canal after all.
