‘Prepare for attack’: Houthis email explicit warnings to Greek shippers

Athens/London — On a warm spring night in Athens, shortly before midnight, a senior executive at a Greek shipping company noticed an unusual email in his personal and business inboxes. The message warned that one of the company’s vessels travelling through the Red Sea was at risk of being attacked by Iranian-backed Houthi militia.

The Greek-managed ship had violated a Houthi-imposed transit ban by docking at an Israeli port and would be “directly targeted by the Yemeni Armed Forces in any area they deem appropriate”, read the message, written in English and seen by Reuters.

“You bear the responsibility and consequences of including the vessel in the ban list,” said the email, signed by the Yemen-based Humanitarian Operations Co-ordination Center (HOCC), a body set up in February to liaise between Houthi forces and commercial shipping operators.

The Houthis have carried out nearly 100 attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November, acting in solidarity with Palestinians in Israel’s year-long war in Gaza. They have sunk two vessels, seized another and killed at least four seafarers.

The email, received at the end of May, warned of “sanctions” for the entire company’s fleet if the vessel continued “to violate the ban criteria and enter the ports of the usurping Israeli entity”.

The executive and the company declined to be named for safety reasons.

The warning message was the first of more than a dozen increasingly menacing emails sent to at least six Greek shipping companies since May amid rising geopolitical tension in the Middle East, according to six industry sources.

Since last year, the Houthis have been firing missiles, sending armed drones and launching boats laden with explosives at commercial ships with ties to Israeli, US and UK entities.

The email campaign indicates Houthi rebels are casting their net wider and targeting Greek merchant ships with little or no connection to Israel.

The threats were also directed at entire fleets for the first time in recent months, increasing the risks for vessels using the Red Sea route.

“Your ships breached the decision of Yemen Armed Forces,” read a separate email sent in June to shipping companies from a Yemeni government web domain. “Therefore, punishments will be imposed on all vessels of your company ... Best Regards, Yemen Navy.”

Yemen, which lies at the entrance to the Red Sea, has been embroiled in years of civil war. In 2014, the Houthis took control of the capital, Sanaa, and ousted the globally recognised government. In January, the US put the Houthis back on its list of terrorist groups.

Houthi officials declined to confirm they had sent the emails, saying that was classified military information.

It was unclear if the emails had also been sent to other shipping companies.

Greek-owned ships, the world’s largest merchant fleet, comprise nearly 30% of the Houthi attacks since early September, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence data. In August, Houthis attacked the Sounion tanker, which had fires on board for weeks before it could be towed to a safer area.

The strikes have prompted many cargoes to take a much longer route around Africa. Traffic through the Suez Canal has fallen from about 2,000 transits a month before November 2023 to about 800 in August, the Lloyd’s data shows.

Tensions in the Middle East soared on Tuesday as Iran hit Israel with more than 180 missiles in retaliation for the killing of militant leaders in Lebanon, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah on Friday.

The EU’s military operation known as Eunavor Aspides, which has helped more than 200 ships to sail safely through the Red Sea, confirmed the evolution of Houthis’ tactics, in a closed-door meeting with shipping companies in early September.

Transponders

Aspides said the Houthis’ decision to extend warnings to entire fleets marked the beginning of the “fourth phase” of their military campaign in the Red Sea. It also urged ship owners to switch off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders, which shows a vessel’s position and acts as a navigational aid to nearby ships, saying they had to “shut it off or be shot”.

Aspides said the Houthis’ missile strikes had 75% accuracy when aimed at vessels operating with the AIS tracking system on. But 96% of attacks missed when AIS was off, according to the same briefing.

“Aspides are aware of those emails,” its operational commander, Rear Adm Vasileios Gryparis, said, adding that any response should be carefully considered and companies were strongly advised to alert their security experts if contacted before sailing.

“In particular, for the HOCC, the advice or guidance is not to respond to VHF calls and emails from ‘Yemeni Navy’ or the ‘Humanitarian Operations Command Center’ (HOCC).”

The Houthis’ email campaign began in February with messages sent to shipowners, insurance companies  and the largest global union for seafarers from the HOCC. They said the Houthis had imposed a Red Sea travel ban on certain vessels, though they did not explicitly warn of an imminent attack.

The messages sent after May were more menacing. At least two Greek-operated shipping companies that received email threats have decided avoid the Red Sea, according to two sources, who declined to identify the companies for security reasons.

An executive at a third shipping company, which has also received a letter, said they decided to end business with Israel so they could continue to use the Red Sea route.

“If safe transit through the Red Sea cannot be guaranteed, companies have a duty to act, even if that means delaying their delivery windows,” said Stephen Cotton, general secretary of the International Transport Workers’ Federation, the leading union organisation for seafarers, which received an email from HOCC in February. “The lives of the seafarers depend on it.”

The email campaign has increased alarm among shipping companies. Insurance costs for Western ship owners’ have already jumped.

Greece-based Conbulk Shipmanagement Corporation stopped Red Sea voyages after its vessel MV Groton was attacked twice in August.

“No [Conbulk] vessel is trading in the Red Sea. It mainly has to do with the crew safety. Once the crew is in danger, all the discussion stops,” CEO Dimitris Dalakouras told a shipping conference in London on September 10.

Germany-based shipper Leonhardt & Blumberg MD Torben Kolln said the Red Sea and wider Gulf of Aden was a “no-go” area.

The companies did not respond to questions on whether they had been targeted by the Houthi email campaign. Some companies continue to cross the Red Sea due to binding long-term agreements with charterers or because they need to transfer goods in the area. The Red Sea remains the fastest way to bring goods to consumers in Europe and Asia. 

The Houthis have not stopped all traffic. Most ships from Russia and China, which are viewed as unaffiliated to Israel, are able to sail through unhindered and at lower insurance rates.

“We are reassuring the ships belonging to companies that have no connection with the Israeli enemy that they are safe and have freedom (of movement) and (to) keep the AIS devices going on all the time,” according to an audio recording of a Houthi message broadcast to ships in the Red Sea in September shared with Reuters.

“Thank you for your co-operation. Out.”

Reuters