The recent military actions by the air and naval forces of the United States and their allies against Houthi positions appear not to have eliminated the threat of attacks on cargo ships passing through the Red Sea. In fact, the 1 December 2024 attack targeted not a single vessel but an entire convoy, which included three cargo ships escorted by the US Navy.
According to a statement by US Central Command (Centcom), the destroyers USS Stockdale and USS O'Kane successfully "intercepted and neutralised" three anti-ship ballistic missiles, three aerial drones, and a cruise missile launched from Yemen. The Houthis, however, claimed they had launched sixteen ballistic and cruise missiles along with one drone against the convoy. The three cargo ships were the MR2 oil tanker Stena Impeccable, the 2,500 TEU container ship Maersk Saratoga, and the bulk carrier Liberty Grace.
The destroyers were escorting three merchant vessels owned, managed, and flagged by the United States, and despite the intensity of the attack, no injuries or damage were reported to either the civilian ships or the US Navy vessels. This action demonstrates that the Houthis' interdiction of ships, ongoing since Israel's invasion of Gaza, is set to continue into 2025, and no analyst today dares to predict when the Red Sea route, and therefore the Suez Canal, will once again be safely navigable.
