The Red Sea crisis has not yet been resolved, and the Mediterranean Sea is at risk of being drawn into it.
According to reference news 23**, Brigadier General Mohammad Reza Naqdi, the coordinating commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, said that if the United States and its allies continue to commit crimes in the Gaza Strip, it will prompt the emergence of new resistance forces, and the Mediterranean Sea may be blocked.
He did not elaborate on how Iran would operate, but he said the attack on the Strait of Gibraltar would be another escalation following the Houthi attacks in Yemen. "They (Israel and the United States) can soon wait for the Mediterranean, the Strait of Gibraltar and other shipping lanes to be blocked. ”
Nakdi referred to the "birth of a new resistance and the closure of other shipping lanes": "Previously, the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz became their nightmare, and now, again, they are trapped ......In the Red Sea. ”
Iran supports the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) against Israel and condemns the United States for supporting Israel's crimes in Gaza. After the bombardment of Gaza began, Iranian-Israeli relations deteriorated even more sharply.
The governor noted that Iran itself does not have direct access to the Mediterranean Sea and there is no large-scale naval deployment beyond the Persian Gulf, and it is unclear how the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps will block the Mediterranean, but the Iranian-backed Allah Party in southern Lebanon and the Syrian armed forces are located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean.
On the 22nd local time, the United States accused Iran of being "deeply involved" in the Houthi attack on merchant ships in the Red Sea, saying that it had relevant classified information. Iran has denied this and rejected the US demand to "stop the Houthi movements."
On the 23rd local time, the Iranian side held an international conference on the Palestinian question in the capital Tehran. In his speech, Iran's Raisi accused the United States of being the main culprit of the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
Raisi said that the international community is witnessing the product of today's unjust world order, which is terrible war crimes, and the United States is to blame for the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip.
He stressed that the important purpose of convening this meeting is to promote a new world order. "Humanity should think about the formation of a new world order, and it should be possible to bring about a new world order by holding such think tank meetings, and all parties should cooperate with each other and make concrete efforts. ”
On December 23, local time, Raisi of Iran delivered a speech at an international conference on the question of Palestine. Source: Visual China.
Recently, Yemen's Houthi rebels have cracked down on ships "linked to Israel" in the Red Sea region, forcing a number of international shipping giants to announce the suspension of shipping routes through the Red Sea.
According to reports, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, is one of the main international shipping routes, with about 12% of the world's ** traffic and 30% of container traffic passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The data shows that between December 15 and 19, the number of ships passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait fell by 14 percent;The cost of international container shipping has skyrocketed, as have the cost of insurance for vessels sailing through the Red Sea.
There are also companies that choose to detour from the Cape of Good Hope in Africa. However, ships circumnavigating from Africa also need to enter the Mediterranean Sea in order to transport goods to southern European ports, and if the Strait of Gibraltar is blocked, merchant ships can only unload their cargo through Western European coastal countries such as Portugal, Spain, France, etc., and use land transportation for distribution, which will greatly increase the transportation time and transportation costs.
At the same time, the situation in Gaza is not encouraging. To date, more than 20,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, more than 530,000 people were injured.
Staff and patients at Kamal-Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza have accused Israel of bulldozing the bodies of dead patients during a raid on the hospital, and having a military dog attack a man in a wheelchair and shooting at doctors who had already been interrogated.
In its statement, the IDF did not respond to the allegations, saying its actions around the hospital were directed against Hamas. In addition, the IDF admitted that an operation was carried out at the hospital: "The forces arrested 80 *** people, some of whom were involved in the 'brutality**' of October 7
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in the latest news that the Israeli army withdrew from the hospital on the 23rd, and according to **, an Israeli military bulldozer destroyed the tents of some internally displaced people outside the hospital, causing the number of ** to be determined for the time being.
Governor Chang'an noted that the United States is becoming more and more stunted in dealing with Gaza and the Red Sea. Earlier, US spokesman Miller "called" China, saying that it "welcomes China's constructive role in deterring an attack in the Red Sea." Then it was announced that the "Prosperity Guardian" initiative, which planned to create a multinational naval force to protect merchant ships sailing in the Red Sea, was even more dismal.
Not only Egypt and Jordan, which are directly affected by the situation in the Red Sea, did not join the "Guardians of Prosperity", but also Saudi Arabia, the leader in the region. With the exception of Bahrain, there is not a single Middle Eastern country in this action plan.
Not only that, but recent reports also show that many of the countries nominally pulled into the coalition have their own plans, and although the United States has announced that 20 countries will participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian, some of them have not yet been conclusively confirmed. Even the three major allies, France, Italy, and Spain, have said they will not participate in the US-led "Prosperity Guardian" operation, and some countries have provided only very limited support.
On December 21, local time, in Haifa, Israel, merchant ships sailed in the Mediterranean. Source: Visual China.
Gvorg Mirzayan, an associate professor at the Russian University of Finance and Economics, wrote that the actions of the United States have once again put us in danger of a large-scale war in the Middle East. "Nobody needs this war. Except, of course, the United States and its Western allies and Israel. ”