After a brief lull, the Houthis struck again near Hodeidah, sinking the Magic Seas and Eternity C, killing and abducting sailors and forcing insurers and shipowners to reroute around the Cape of Good Hope at great cost. Israel answered with air raids on Houthi sites, knitting the shipping war to the Gaza front. As always, the class burden falls downward sigh crews, disproportionately Filipino wage workers absorbing the trauma, injury, detention, and death, while owners pass higher premiums and detour costs through the price system.

Europe has become the day-to-day gendarme of this artery of commerce. The EU’s EUNAVFOR Aspides extended to February 2026 reports supporting 640+ merchant ships and giving 370+ close escorts with Italian, French, and Greek frigates, yet even its commander admits there aren’t enough hulls to cover every request (and some vessels that were hit hadn’t filed for escort). By mandate Aspides is defensive, leaving shore launch infrastructure largely untouched – hence the cycle: short lulls, then spectacular attacks that reset insurers’ risk models and send traffic back from Suez to the Cape. Meanwhile Washington, after pausing strikes in early May, keeps Operation Prosperity Guardian on a lower-key escort/surveillance footing, effectively leaving Europe to police the corridor while U.S. power signals elsewhere.

Strip away the rhetoric and the logic is naked: protect capital’s seaborne lifelines, socialize the hazards onto crews and coastal communities, and treat price spikes as collateral to be managed. Each additional European escort reduces losses where present, but paperwork checks and insurance demands cannot abolish an asymmetric campaign rooted in wider wars. Unless the political drivers in Yemen and Gaza change, expect the same bourgeois equilibrium: EU-led convoying, occasional punitive strikes by others, longer voyages and pricier freight and the human toll paid by working seafarers who make the “free” circulation of commodities possible.