Why the Houthis allow certain ships to pass through the Red Sea

Everybody, Peter Zion here coming to you from just outside of St. France. I am going to do a quick update on what’s going on to the Red Sea with the Houthis. Right now, as you guys all remember, the Houthis were the group in Yemen who decided to show solidarity with the Palestinians, they decided to start shooting at everyone who happened to sail by and demanding extortion money, because that’s what it means to be supportive, I guess. Anyway, it’s kind of fallen off the radar in the last month, I’m gonna give you an update of what’s going on. It’s still in play, ships are still being attacked. The reason that you’re not hearing as much about it is most ships are simply avoiding the area now and doing the very, very long sail around Africa. Now of the vessels that are getting through, they fall into three general categories. Number one, oil tankers, for the most part are not being affected. Why? Well, most of the oil tankers are sailing from Arab countries, and the Houthis ultimately have to get their support from somewhere and yes, yes, yes, Iran is their primary backer. But they know that if they start going after oil shipments, the whole world brings a bag of hammers down on them. And so they’re just avoiding that overall completely. The second category are green chips, and Bofors in general, coming from the Black Sea. Now, the vast majority of those are going to be Russian ships. And the vast majority of those are going to either Iran or India. So the Houthis, who take many of their marching orders from the Iranians are not going after the cargo with their patrons. And then the third category is container ships that are specifically Chinese flagged. All other container ships, which are the more valuable ships on the seas are avoiding the area completely. And if you think back the world’s container ships are typically either operated by the United Arab Emirates by the Danes or by the Chinese. Well, the Danes in the United Arab Emirates have basically pulled their ships out of the area that leaves the Chinese. And of several weeks ago, the Houthis very specifically target a series of Chinese vessels all in one day, and the Chinese agreed to pay them protection money. So this has definitely evolved away from anything strategic or anything political into a pure protection racket, and that is where we stand right now. All right, everyone, take care