Yemen's New Foreign Minister Discusses Red Sea Security With Egypt's Abdelatty

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Yemen’s newly appointed foreign minister, Afrah al-Zouba, held a telephone conversation with her Egyptian counterpart, Badr Abdelatty, on Saturday, in which the two ministers discussed bilateral cooperation, the security of international shipping lanes and the latest developments in Yemen and the wider region. It was among al-Zouba’s first publicly reported exchanges with a foreign counterpart since taking office, and it came days after a drone attack on two liquefied natural gas carriers at Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Damietta.

According to Egypt’s State Information Service, Abdelatty congratulated al-Zouba on her appointment and reaffirmed Cairo’s support for the Presidential Leadership Council and the Yemeni government, together with Egypt’s backing for Yemen’s unity, sovereignty and territorial integrity. He also restated Egypt’s commitment to efforts aimed at restoring peace and stability in the country. Both ministers underlined the need to support regional stability and to safeguard navigation through vital maritime corridors.

Al-Zouba was appointed by presidential decree on 23 July by Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council, as part of a limited reshuffle of the internationally recognised government. She is the first woman to hold the foreign affairs portfolio in Yemen’s modern political history. The same reshuffle named Badr Basalma minister of planning and international cooperation and Ahed Jassous minister of local administration.

She brings more than 25 years of experience in public administration, institutional governance and international development. She played a prominent role during Yemen’s political transition after the 2011 uprising, serving as deputy secretary-general of the National Dialogue Conference and as a member of the committee that drafted a new constitution. She holds a pharmacy degree from Sana’a University alongside master’s degrees in business administration and community health economics, and she joined the cabinet in February as minister of planning and international cooperation before moving to the foreign ministry.

The Damietta attack that framed much of the call took place on 29 July. A drone struck the Energos Winter, a United States-owned floating liquefied natural gas storage vessel berthed at the Mediterranean port, and the resulting fire spread to a second vessel, the Gaslog Salem. Both ships were hit in the early afternoon, local services extinguished the fires, and no casualties were reported on either vessel. Reporting at the time noted that these were gas carriers rather than oil tankers.

The Egyptian cabinet confirmed the following day that preliminary investigations had established a drone as the cause of the fire aboard the two ships. Security sources cited in regional reporting said examination of the wreckage indicated the attack involved at least two drones. No party has claimed responsibility, and the incident was widely described as the first such strike on Egyptian territory during a campaign that has increasingly targeted energy infrastructure across the region.

The Damietta strike was the latest in a wider pattern of attacks on energy and transport infrastructure around the region. Since United States and Israeli military operations against Iran began on 28 February, Gulf states have reported repeated missile and drone launches at facilities on their territory. Kuwait said two of its ports were struck at the end of March, and Bahrain’s Defence Force reported intercepting scores of missiles and hundreds of drones over the campaign’s first weeks. Tehran has generally not confirmed individual strikes, and attribution in most cases has rested on the accounts of the governments concerned.

Al-Zouba conveyed Yemen’s condemnation of the attack and expressed the government’s solidarity with Egypt, according to the Egyptian readout, pledging support for measures Cairo takes to protect its security and vital infrastructure. The exchange placed the incident within a broader pattern of attacks on shipping and energy facilities that both governments have said threatens commerce far beyond their own coastlines.

The Yemeni minister also raised what her government describes as the destabilising conduct of the Houthi movement in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait. In an interview published days earlier, al-Zouba said the Houthis were mimicking Iranian behaviour in the Red Sea. The Houthi authorities in Sanaa reject that characterisation and have framed their maritime operations as a response to the war in Gaza, and the two accounts remain contested.

The maritime dimension gives Cairo and Sanaa an overlapping interest. The Bab al-Mandab strait, at the southern end of the Red Sea, is the gateway through which traffic bound for the Suez Canal must pass. Sustained attacks on shipping in that corridor have pushed a significant share of carriers around the Cape of Good Hope instead, adding weeks to voyages and reducing transits through the canal, a direct source of foreign currency for Egypt. For Yemen’s government, the same attacks complicate its case that it, rather than the Houthis, represents the country internationally.

Egypt has consistently supported Yemen’s internationally recognised government throughout the conflict that began in 2015, backing the Presidential Leadership Council formed in 2022 and the position that a settlement must preserve the Yemeni state’s unity. Cairo has also repeatedly raised Red Sea navigation in regional and international forums, reflecting the canal’s importance to its economy.

The call carried no announcement of new agreements or initiatives. Its substance lay in the reaffirmation of positions at a moment when both governments are absorbing attacks on infrastructure they do not fully control, and in the establishment of a working channel between a new Yemeni foreign minister and one of her government’s more reliable regional backers.