NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Tuesday adopted a resolution that extends for six months the secretary-general’s mandate to report Houthi attacks against merchant and commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
Thirteen of the 15 council members voted in favor of the resolution, while Russia and China abstained. The mandate will now remain in force until Jan. 15, 2027.
Resolution 2826, co-authored by the US and Greece, the “penholders” who take the lead on the Red Sea crisis at the Security Council, extends a reporting requirement established under Resolution 2722 in January 2024, and most recently renewed by Resolution 2812 in January this year.
The text of the resolution is a straightforward technical rollover, with a single operative paragraph that continues the monitoring mechanism without any substantive changes.
The vote came a day after Yemeni government forces fired on the runway at Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport to prevent an unauthorized flight from Iran from landing there, and just over a week after a similar incident on July 3 when an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation returning from the funeral of Iran’s former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, landed in Sanaa despite warnings not to do so from the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen.
Following the incident on Monday, the Houthis launched missiles and drones at Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, and warned civilian airlines to avoid the Kingdom’s airspace.
The US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, told the council that the Houthi strikes targeting the Saudi airport exposed the group’s true character.
“The Houthis are not defending Yemen, as they claim, by threatening civilian families … flying aboard civilian aircraft” but are instead mirroring the tactics of their patron, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, he said, including the targeting of civilian infrastructure and chanting of slogans denouncing Israel, Jews and the US.
The flight on July 3 amounted to an effort by Tehran to transport “equipment and experts” to the Houthis “under the cover of a funeral delegation,” Waltz said as he pressed member states to enforce an embargo on the supply of arms to the Houthis imposed under Resolution 2216, including its provisions relating to dual-use components that could be utilized by Houthi missile and drone programs.
He welcomed a June 30 report by a UN panel of experts on the issue and urged council members not to let it “become just another United Nations paper exercise.”
France’s ambassador, Jerome Bonnafont, said regular reporting of attacks in the Red Sea continues to be essential to ensure the council remains informed as tensions rise, and he reiterated calls for the Houthis to end all threats to international shipping.
The Bahraini ambassador, Jamal Fares Alrowaiei, condemned the “terrorist, unjust attacks” against Saudi Arabia in the “strongest” terms, and commended Riyadh’s air defenses for intercepting the latest barrage.
He said the strikes were a violation of Resolution 2722, which requires the Houthis to immediately halt all attacks that obstruct international trade and navigational freedoms, and linked the escalation in Yemen to what he described as Iran’s parallel campaign of “blackmail” in the Strait of Hormuz.
Russia’s ambassador, Anna Estivgeena, said Moscow abstained from the vote because the resolution added little of value, given that no incidents involving commercial vessels in the Red Sea had been recorded since Dec. 29, 2025.
She called on the council to instead focus on reviving the stalled intra-Yemeni political process under the UN’s special envoy to the country, Hans Grundberg, and to support US-Iranian diplomacy.
China’s representative said Beijing’s abstention reflected its consistent position that efforts to address tensions in the Red Sea require respect for international law and the legitimate rights of all states, and described the broader regional turmoil as deeply troubling for a vital global trade route.
The renewal of the mandate comes despite the absence of any confirmed attacks on shipping since a report by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in October 2025 that documented Houthi strikes against the Liberia-flagged Scarlet Ray and the Netherlands-flagged Minervagracht vessels.
However, the International Maritime Organization has flagged a rise in incidents of piracy and armed robbery in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in recent months, while the Houthis have repeatedly threatened to resume attacks on Israeli-linked shipping, and to close the Bab Al-Mandab Strait in solidarity with Tehran.
