Sniffing out Red Sea access, US in line to be Eritrea's latest suitor Sniffing out Red Sea access, US in line to be Eritrea's latest suitor

With Strait of Hormuz closed, the US is reportedly seeking normalization with coastline state in the Horn of Africa. But it would be courting rivals, too. 

Recent reports revealed that the Trump administration has been quietly pursuing normalization of ties with Eritrea, a small nation in the Horn of Africa with a 700-mile coastline on the Red Sea, sitting directly opposite Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen at the entrance of the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

With the U.S. locked in a war with Iran that has closed the Strait of Hormuz and roiled global energy markets, an ally on the Red Sea has never looked more valuable. Saudi Arabia, locked out of its main Gulf export terminals, has been routing roughly 4 million barrels of crude oil a day through its Red Sea port of Yanbu. This makes the Bab al-Mandeb the sole outlet for the world's biggest petroleum exporter to reach the global market.

The Houthis and Iran have now threatened to shut that corridor too, and the prospect of both chokepoints closing simultaneously has focused minds in Washington on Eritrea and the Red Sea arena more broadly.

It was Egypt that reportedly arranged the meeting between Massad Boulos, President Donald Trump’s Africa envoy, and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki in Cairo. The talks were first reported by the Wall Street Journal and independently confirmed by Semafor.

Boulos has denied discussing Eritrea while in Cairo, but the denial has done little to quell speculation that U.S.- Eritrea normalization is in the works — especially in light of a statement from the Eritrean Embassy in Washington released last week that did not deny the talks, but defended the case for normalization, attacking critics of the process as “hired lobbyists.”

The State Department, meanwhile, told RS it “looks forward to strengthening the United States' relationship with the people and Government of the State of Eritrea.”

Egypt’s role as a broker is one of the most important details of the story. The Iran war has badly shaken Egypt’s own economy. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi noted recently that attacks on Red Sea shipping cost Egypt $10 billion in Suez Canal revenues. Though el-Sisi was careful not to get into specifics, he was seemingly referring to the Houthi shipping blockade of 2023-2025, launched in solidarity with Gaza, during Hamas’s war with Israel.

During that period, Egypt took significant steps to thaw its long troubled ties with Iran and also reportedly conducted secret consultations with the Houthis, attempting to contain Red Sea escalation. With the Houthis and Iran now threatening to reopen that front as Iran’s war widens, Cairo has every reason to want the entrance to the Red Sea secured.

Indeed, Egypt’s interests in Eritrea run deeper than emergency economics. Cairo has spent the past two years constructing an elaborate pressure architecture around neighboring Ethiopia, and Washington has now been recruited into it, apparently without fully grasping the role it is being asked to play.

The grievances driving Egypt are longstanding. Ethiopia inaugurated the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in September, and has since announced plans for three additional dams on the Nile. Egypt views Ethiopia’s construction of dams as “existential” threats to its water security. El-Sisi told Trump in January that he valued American support on the Nile issue and praised the president for offering to restart mediation, but Ethiopia continues to resist efforts to come back to the table, arguing that its position is legally justified, and that the GERD's inauguration has created a fait accompli.

In response to this situation, Egypt has concluded agreements to upgrade Eritrea’s ports of Doraleh and Assab with facilities capable of hosting Egyptian warships. Egypt has also deployed troops to Somalia’s peacekeeping mission, placing Egyptian forces on Ethiopia’s south-eastern flank. It has lobbied Saudi Arabia to deepen security links with Eritrea, and it has aligned itself firmly with the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in its civil war against the Emirati-backed Rapid Support forces — a conflict in which Eritrea is also backing the SAF, while Ethiopia has been supporting the RSF.

In short, Egypt has constructed a clear strategy of encircling Ethiopia from all sides. And now, by brokering the rapprochement between Washington and Asmara, Egypt is no doubt keen on activating American diplomatic weight in its regional campaign.