FRANKFURT: Two of the world’s top shipping companies, Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd, said on Thursday they did not see an immediate return to the Red Sea after the ceasefire between Hamas and
Israel was announced.
Both companies said they would closely monitor the situation in the Middle East and return to the Red Sea once it was safe.
“The agreement has only just been reached. We will closely analyze the latest developments and their impact on the security situation in the Red Sea,” said a Hapag-Lloyd spokesperson.
“It is still too early to speculate about timing,” a Maersk spokesperson said.
Hapag-Lloyd had already flagged in June that a ceasefire would not mean an immediate resume of passage through the Suez Canal, as attacks from Yemen-based Houthi militants could still be possible.
Rearranging the schedule would take between four and six weeks, a company spokesperson said at the time.
Disruptions in the Middle East have caused shipping companies to divert their vessels toward longer routes, often forcing their container ships around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, pushing freight rates higher, and disrupting global ocean shipping.
Houthis have carried out more than 100 attacks on ships crossing the Red Sea since November 2023, saying they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza.
They have sunk two vessels, seized another, and killed at least four seafarers.
The attacks have disrupted global shipping, forcing firms to re-route to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa for more than a year.
Maritime security officials said on Thursday they were expecting Houthis to announce a halt in attacks on ships in the Red Sea.
The experts pointed to an email, seen by Reuters, from the group postponing a planned security briefing that had been due to take place in the coming days as a possible signal.
“British, American and Israeli strikes have succeeded in significantly limiting the attacks by Houthis, who are looking for a pretext to announce a ceasefire,” Dimitris Maniatis, the CEO of maritime security company Marisks, said regarding the briefing postponement.
Another maritime security official said that an announcement was largely expected, and there were indications that some companies were preparing to resume Red Sea journeys.
However, it was still too early to say that traffic would be restored.
“The first sign that business returns to normal will be seen in the insurance market, as insurance fees will start decreasing,” the official said.
A second maritime official said a halt in attacks was widely expected but could not confirm it.
In the email seen by Reuters, the Houthis said that the security webinar, aimed at shipping and maritime companies and the first such invitation they had issued, had been postponed to Feb. 10 due to the many questions and suggestions received from participants.
“This will ensure that the event is more comprehensive and beneficial for all attendees,” they said in the email on Wednesday.
Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd see no immediate return to Red Sea
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Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd see no immediate return to Red Sea
- Both companies said they would closely monitor the situation
Trump says Iran government change ‘best thing that could happen’
- US president's comments come after he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East
FORT BRAGG, United States: US President Donald Trump said a change of government in Iran would be the “best thing that could happen,” as he ordered a second aircraft carrier to head to the Middle East.
“Seems like that would be the best thing that could happen,” Trump told reporters at the Fort Bragg military base in North Carolina when a journalist asked if he wanted “regime change” in Iran.
“For 47 years, they’ve been talking and talking and talking. In the meantime, we’ve lost a lot of lives while they talk,” he told reporters.
Trump declined to say who he would want to take over in Iran from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but he added that “there are people.”
He has previously backed off full-throated calls for a change of government in Iran, warning that it could cause chaos, although he has made threats toward Khamenei in the past.
Speaking earlier at the White House, Trump said that the USS Gerald R. Ford — the world’s largest warship — would be “leaving very soon” for the Middle East to up the pressure on Iran.
“In case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it,” Trump said.
The giant vessel is currently in the Caribbean following the US overthrow of Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro. Another carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, is one of 12 US ships already in the Middle East.
When Iran began its crackdown on protests last month — which rights groups say killed thousands — Trump initially said that the United States was “locked and loaded” to help demonstrators.
But he has recently focused his military threats on Tehran’s nuclear program, which US forces struck last July during Israel’s unprecedented 12-day war with Iran.
The protests have subsided for now but US-based Reza Pahlavi, the son of Iran’s last shah, urged international intervention to support the Iranian people.
“We are asking for a humanitarian intervention to prevent more innocent lives being killed in the process,” he told the Munich Security Conference.
It followed a call by the opposition leader, who has not returned to his country since before the revolution, for Iranians at home and abroad to continue demonstrations this weekend.
Iran and the United States, who have had no diplomatic relations since shortly after the revolution, held talks on the nuclear issue last week in Oman. No dates have been set for new talks yet.
The West fears the program is aimed at making a bomb, which Tehran denies.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said Friday that reaching an accord with Iran on inspections of its processing facilities was possible but “terribly difficult.”
Trump said after talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this week that he wanted to continue talks with Iran, defying pressure from his key ally for a tougher stance.
The Israeli prime minister himself expressed skepticism at the quality of any agreement if it didn’t also cover Iran’s ballistic missiles and support for regional proxies.
According to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency, 7,008 people, mostly protesters, were killed in the recent crackdown, although rights groups warn the toll is likely far higher.
More than 53,000 people have also been arrested, it added.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) NGO said “hundreds” of people were facing charges linked to the protests that could see them sentenced to death.
Figures working within the Iranian system have also been arrested, with three politicians detained this week from the so-called reformist wing of Iranian politics supportive of President Masoud Pezeshkian.
The three — Azar Mansouri, Javad Emam and Ebrahim Asgharzadeh — were released on bail Thursday and Friday, their lawyer Hojjat Kermani told the ISNA news agency.
