Orient and Warm Seas

Le poète devant Mascate - Hedy — Illustration © European-Security
Orient and Warm Seas

Thirteen Years of Consistency: Hedy, Yemen, and Arabia

20 September 2026
“I’m growing tired of writing about Arabia and Yemen because I feel like I’m repeating myself every time”: these were the words Hedy Belhassine used a few days ago when he sent us eight of his pieces written between 2013 and 2022. Far from being a weariness to lament, this sense of repetition is in fact the best proof of how right he has been all along: what Hedy was already observing back then, the news of September 2026 has just confirmed, almost point for point.

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Bab el mandeb — Carte Levant Time/Roger Barake
Jérôme Denariez

Ormuz, Red Sea: The Gulf War Enters European Budgets

15 September 2026
Iran will likely emerge from the conflict weakened. That does not mean the United States will emerge victorious. For several weeks now, this war has been acting less on territories or military capabilities than on flows, delays, costs, and expectations. For European companies building their 2027 budgets, Hormuz is no longer a distant geopolitical question.

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Détroit de Bab el Mandeb — Photo © European-Security
Admiral Christian Gérard

The Bab-el-Mandeb Strait — Toward European Action?

13 September 2026
Admiral Christian Girard offers here a technical and historical corrective that stands in sharp contrast to the media excitement of the moment. While television panels sound the alarm over the simultaneous closure of the Arabian Peninsula’s two great maritime chokepoints, he recalls a structural difference too often overlooked: Hormuz has no maritime alternative whatsoever, whereas Bab-el-Mandeb can always be bypassed via the Cape of Good Hope — a route already carrying a large share of traffic since 2024.

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Il ne s’agit pas de sauver le soldat Trump, mais de défendre l’Europe — Photo © European Security
Admiral Christian Gérard

The Strait of Hormuz Reopened?

29 August 2026
The renewed American military offensive against Iran resumed in February 2026, following the twelve-day war launched by Israel in June 2025. The last two months have been marked by geostrategic uncertainty — mutual threats of destruction, legal claims, bombardments in the Gulf, clashes in the strait, a ceasefire agreed and swiftly denounced. Yet an uncertain and unstable status quo now appears to have settled in between Iran and the United States, particularly regarding the Strait of Hormuz, as well as the conflict’s other stakes, with each side firmly holding its positions and claims.

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