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Threats to Maritime Navigation Prompt Saudi Boosting of Regional Alliances

The commander of the Saudi Royal Navy floats the first corvette from the Sarawat project in 2019(SPA)
The commander of the Saudi Royal Navy floats the first corvette from the Sarawat project in 2019(SPA)
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Threats to Maritime Navigation Prompt Saudi Boosting of Regional Alliances

The commander of the Saudi Royal Navy floats the first corvette from the Sarawat project in 2019(SPA)
The commander of the Saudi Royal Navy floats the first corvette from the Sarawat project in 2019(SPA)

Need for more international cooperation and coordination to deter threats facing the safety of waterways in the Arab region is increasing, especially for countries bordering exposed maritime corridors.

Safeguarding maritime navigation is geopolitically vital for the global economy.

Saudi Arabia, for example, oversees two important maritime routes in the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea, with its coasts stretching for about 3,400 kilometers and its kingdom including 1,300 islands.

This has prompted the Saudi Defense Ministry to make building high combat capabilities for its military forces part and parcel of its strategy to meet regional challenges and threats.

The Kingdom has also strengthened its naval military capabilities through implementing qualitative projects that included signing deals for ships and aircraft and participating in naval drills with various other countries.

More so, political and military alliances were formed to protect maritime navigation.

It is worth noting that Saudi Arabia, which has one of the world’s largest military budgets, is looking to localize some 50% of its military spending by 2030.

Maritime navigation in the Arab Gulf has come under frequent attacks, mostly staged by Iranian proxies.

Iran-backed Houthi militias have been responsible for numerous terrorist hits that threatened navigation in Red Sea waters.

Houthis rely heavily on planting Iran-made naval mines.

The Saudi-led Arab Coalition has said it has found and destroyed five Iranian-made “Sadaf” naval mines during the past 24 hours, according to a statement published on Monday.

The coalition said it has seen an increase in the Houthi militia’s activity in planting naval mines in the southern parts of the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait in recent weeks.

There is an estimated 160 arbitrarily planted naval mines threatening Yemeni waters at the moment.

Houthis also use remote-controlled explosive vessels to threaten trade ships and civilian institutions in the Red Sea.

Royal Saudi Naval Forces (RSNF) Commander Vice Adm. Fahad Abdullah Al-Ghofaily, speaking at a recent event in Riyadh, recounted attacks that targeted three oil tankers and over three commercial ships sailing the region’s waters.

Commenting on finding solutions for those threats, writer and political researcher Abdullah al-Junaid argues that the source of danger must be first defined and the partial political cover given to some regional players, such as Iran and Turkey, must be lifted.

On the political and military alliances and blocs, Junaid noted that the maritime leadership of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is one of the regional examples of political and military alliances formed to secure navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

It was established to safeguard navigation based on common interests and the stability of energy markets.

The Peninsula Shield Force, which is the military arm of the GCC, must be viewed from the scope of future challenges it will meet, added Junaid.

Threats facing Saudi Arabia also prompted the formation of naval military alliances designed to raise readiness levels, enhance maritime security in the Arabian Gulf, and protect vital and strategic interests.

Early in 2020, the Council of Arab and African States Bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden was created as a mechanism for improving the security of regional waterways. This new Arab-African alliance has eight members: Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Jordan and Yemen.

In November 2019, a multinational maritime security initiative, Coalition Task Force (CTF) Sentinel, composed of Australia, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, the UK, Albania and the United States, was also established with the aim to protect commercial vessels in the Arabian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and Bab Al-Mandeb.

As for the steps Saudi Arabia has taken to modernize its naval forces, the kingdom witnessed in July 2018 the state-owned Saudi Arabian Military Industries (SAMI) signing a contract with Spanish shipbuilding company Navantia to build five Avante 2200 corvettes for the RSNF.

The deal is set to be completed by 2022. In addition to the Avante 2200 corvettes, the contract includes setting out a plan for the creation of a naval construction center in Saudi Arabia. According to SAMI the agreement would “localize more than 60 percent of ships combat systems works,” including installation and integration in the Saudi market.

Riyadh has sought partnerships in the past few years with international suppliers to boost its domestic manufacturing capacity.

Regarding the localization of military manufactures, Saudi Arabia has succeeded in establishing joint cooperation with French builder CMN for the production and export of 39 HSI32 Inceptors.

The vessels are among the most modern speedboats and will contribute to raising combat readiness of the maritime units and help protect the strategic interests of the kingdom.

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Features

'Metals of the Future': Copper and Silver Flow Beneath Poland's Surface

Smelter workers process copper at the Glogow plant in southwestern Poland, owned by KGHM. Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP
Smelter workers process copper at the Glogow plant in southwestern Poland, owned by KGHM. Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP
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'Metals of the Future': Copper and Silver Flow Beneath Poland's Surface

Smelter workers process copper at the Glogow plant in southwestern Poland, owned by KGHM. Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP
Smelter workers process copper at the Glogow plant in southwestern Poland, owned by KGHM. Wojtek RADWANSKI / AFP

Thousands of meters beneath the ground, amid suffocating heat, lies one of the keys to Poland's rumbling mining sector -- and the world economy.

Whitish ore, rich in copper and silver, is extracted from the country's depths and exported around the world to fuel technological and energy transitions.

"These are the metals of the future," Ariel Wojciuszkiewicz, a geologist at the Polkowice-Sieroszowice mine in the west of the country, tells AFP, noting that copper and silver are "indispensable for electronic equipment, electric cars, and renewable energy installations".

Driven by the rise of artificial intelligence, renewable energies, and global defense needs, demand for these metals is expected to keep increasing in the future, with copper even being referred to as "red gold" and a "barometer" for world economic development.

Poland, responsible for as much as half of Europe's supply, is one of the industry's key players.

Equipped with a helmet and an emergency breathing device, Wojciuszkiewicz leads AFP journalists through the Polkowice-Sieroszowice mine -- one of three sites operated by KGHM, the Polish metals giant, which also owns local smelters and companies in the Americas.

The 24-hour operation runs at a constant roar as machines grind rock at deafening volumes, its tunnels stretching for hundreds of kilometers beneath Poland's surface.

The world's second-largest silver producer, the KGHM group also supplies between 40 percent and 50 percent of the copper produced in Europe.

Last year, it ranked eighth worldwide in terms of copper extraction volume, behind global giants such as BHP Group, Glencore Plc and Rio Tinto, according to industry statistics.

Global copper demand, already high, is expected to climb by over 40 percent by 2040, according to a 2025 UN Report.

To meet this demand, "it might take 80 new mines and 250 billion dollars in investments by 2030," the organization estimates.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), however, predicts that supply will lag 30 percent behind demand by as early as 2035.

- 1,200 degrees Celsius -

Dependence on copper is growing exponentially across the world economy's most innovative sectors.

"We don't realize how much we are surrounded by copper on all sides," Piotr Krzyzewski, KGHM vice president in charge of finance, explains to AFP.

"An electric car contains 80 kg of copper, compared with 20 kg in a conventional one," he notes, while "a wind turbine contains between four and ten tons of copper per megawatt."

Farther away, at the Glogow smelter, two workers in protective suits, armed with long lances, open huge furnaces where the ore is melted.

They work diligently as sparks fly from metal heated to 1,200C.

Several processing stages later, 99.99 percent pure copper plates, each weighing more than a hundred kilos, are shipped all over the world.

Last year, the KGHM group as a whole generated more than 36 billion zlotys ($9.7 billion) in revenue. Copper production reached 710,000 tons and silver production 1,347 tons, according to the group's annual report, published at the end of March.

No less than half of the silver is used in industry, mainly for electronics, solar panels, and medical applications. The rest goes to jewelery or serves as a safety net and financial asset.

But it is copper, now an irreplaceable metal for the economy, that has become the object of global strategic contention.

"Copper is on the strategic list of critical metals in Europe, the United States, and China," Krzyzewski tells AFP.

The metal's impact on geopolitics is already being noted in real time.

In July, US President Donald Trump announced a 50 percent tariff on copper, eventually limiting the measure to products made with the metal.

To justify his decision, he invoked the need to "defend national security".

"Copper is the second most used material by the Department of Defense!" he said.

- Record prices -

In 2025, copper prices jumped 41.7 percent, before hitting a record high of $14,527.50 a ton in January of this year.

Even in the face of the war in the Middle East and the slowdown of the global economy, the price remains high at about 12,000 dollars per ton.

In this uncertain context, Poland's subsoil appears to be a major asset for the energy sovereignty of the Old Continent.

"It's no longer about the security of our country alone, but the security of all of Europe," Krzyzewski says, adding that KGHM's resources "are still estimated to last for at least 40 years," not counting new exploration and concessions.

But mining consumes enormous amounts of water, making it subject to the effects of global warming and drought.

Features

Trump’s Anger Over Iran Thrusts NATO into Fresh Crisis

A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. (Reuters)
A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. (Reuters)
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Trump’s Anger Over Iran Thrusts NATO into Fresh Crisis

A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. (Reuters)
A NATO flag flutters at the Tapa military base, Estonia April 30, 2023. (Reuters)

The NATO alliance has in recent years survived existential challenges - ranging from the war in Ukraine to multiple bouts of pressure and insults from US President Donald Trump, who has questioned its core mission and threatened to seize Greenland.

But it is the US-Israeli war with Iran, thousands of miles from Europe, that has nearly broken the 76-year-old bloc and threatens to leave it in its weakest state since its creation, say analysts and diplomats.

Trump, enraged that European countries have declined to send their navies to open up the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping following the start of the air war on Feb 28, has declared he is considering withdrawing from the alliance.

"Wouldn't you if you were me?" Trump asked Reuters in a Wednesday interview.

In a speech on Wednesday night, Trump criticized US allies but stopped short of condemning NATO, as many experts thought he might.

But combined with other barbs aimed at Europeans in recent weeks, Trump's comments have provoked unprecedented concern that the US will not come to the aid of European allies should they be attacked, whether or not Washington formally walks away.

The result, say analysts and diplomats, is that the alliance created in the Cold War that has long served as the basic fabric of European security is fraying and the mutual defense agreement at its core is no longer taken as a given.

"This is the worst place (NATO) has been since it was founded," said Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who now leads the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

"It's really hard to ‌think of anything that ‌even comes close."

That reality is sinking in for Europeans, who have counted on NATO as a bulwark against an increasingly assertive Russia.

As recently ‌as February, ⁠NATO Secretary-General Mark ⁠Rutte had dismissed the idea of Europe defending itself without the US as a "silly thought." Now, many officials and diplomats consider it the default expectation.

"NATO remains necessary, but we must be capable of thinking of NATO without the Americans," said General Francois Lecointre, who served as France's armed forces chief from 2017 to 2021.

"Whether it should even continue to be called NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization - is a valid question."

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said: “President Trump has made his disappointment with NATO and other allies clear, and as the President emphasized, ‘the United States will remember.’”

A NATO representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

THIS TIME IT'S DIFFERENT

NATO has been challenged before, not least during Trump's first term from 2017 to 2021, when he also considered withdrawing from the alliance.

But while many European officials until recently believed that Trump could be kept on board with pomp and flattery, fewer now hold that belief, according to conversations with dozens of former and current US and European officials.

Trump and his officials have expressed frustration over what they see as NATO's unwillingness to help the United ⁠States in a time of need, including by not directly assisting with the Strait of Hormuz and by restricting US use of some airfields and ‌airspace. US officials have declared NATO cannot be a "one-way street".

European officials counter that they have not received US requests for specific ‌assets for a mission to open the strait and complain that Washington has been inconsistent about whether such a mission would operate during or after the war.

"It's a terrible situation for NATO to be in," said ‌Jamie Shea, a former senior NATO official who is now a senior fellow at the Friends of Europe think tank.

"It is a blow to the allies who, since Trump returned to ‌the White House, have worked hard to show that they are willing and able to take more responsibility (for their own defense)."

Trump's latest comments follow other signs of an increasingly unsteady alliance.

Those include his stepped-up threats in January to wrest Greenland away from Denmark and recent moves by the US that Europeans see as particularly accommodating toward Russia, which NATO defines as its principal security threat.

The administration has remained essentially mum amid reports that Moscow has provided targeting data for Iran to attack US assets in the Middle East and has lifted sanctions on Russian oil in a bid to ease global energy prices that have spiked during the war.

At a meeting of G7 foreign ministers ‌near Paris last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kaja Kallas, the foreign policy chief of the European Union, had a tense exchange, according to five people familiar with the matter, underlining the increasingly fraught transatlantic relationship.

Kallas asked when US patience with Russian President Vladimir ⁠Putin would run out over Ukraine peace negotiations, prompting Rubio ⁠to respond with irritation that the US was trying to end the war while also providing support to Ukraine, but the EU was welcome to mediate if it wanted to.

NO GOING BACK

Legally, Trump may lack the authority to withdraw from NATO. Under a law passed in 2023, a US president cannot exit the alliance without the consent of two-thirds of the US Senate, a nearly impossible threshold.

But analysts say that, as commander-in-chief, Trump can decide whether the US military will defend NATO members. Declining to do so could imperil the alliance without a formal withdrawal.

To be sure, not everyone sees the current crisis as existential. One French diplomat described the president's rhetoric as a passing temper tantrum.

Trump has changed his position on NATO before.

In 2024, he said on the campaign trail that he would encourage Putin to attack NATO members that do not pay their fair share on defense. By the last annual NATO summit, in June 2025, the alliance was in his good graces, with Trump delivering a speech effusively praising European leaders as people who "love their countries."

Next week, Rutte, the NATO secretary-general, who has a strong relationship with Trump, is set to visit Washington in an effort to change Trump's view once again.

Analysts say European nations have good reason to keep the US engaged in NATO despite doubts over whether Trump would come to their defense. Among other reasons, the US military provides a range of capabilities NATO can't easily replace, such as satellite intelligence.

Even if Trump and the Europeans find a way to stay together in NATO, diplomats, analysts and officials say, the transatlantic alliance that has been central to the global order since World War Two may never be the same.

"I do think we're turning the page of 80 years of working together," said Julianne Smith, the US ambassador to NATO under Democratic President Joe Biden.

"I don't think it means the end of the transatlantic relationship, but we're on the cusp of something that's going to have a different look and feel to it."

Features

A Look at the UK’s Royal Navy, Which Has Faced Jibe After Jibe from Trump and Hegseth

Indonesian soldiers stand guard as Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey is docked at Tanjung Priok Port during a port visit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)
Indonesian soldiers stand guard as Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey is docked at Tanjung Priok Port during a port visit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)
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A Look at the UK’s Royal Navy, Which Has Faced Jibe After Jibe from Trump and Hegseth

Indonesian soldiers stand guard as Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey is docked at Tanjung Priok Port during a port visit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)
Indonesian soldiers stand guard as Royal Navy offshore patrol vessel HMS Spey is docked at Tanjung Priok Port during a port visit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025. (AP Photo/Tatan Syuflana, File)

US President Donald Trump and his Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been damning of the UK's naval capabilities. Their jibes may have stung in a country with a long and proud maritime history, but they do carry some substance.

The UK has been at the forefront of Trump’s ire since the onset of the Iran war on Feb. 28, when British Prime Minister Keir Starmer refused to grant the US military access to British bases.

Though that decision has been partly reversed with the decision to permit the US to use the bases, including that of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, for so-called defensive purposes, Trump is adamant he was let down. He has repeatedly lashed out at Starmer and branded the Royal Navy’s two aircraft carriers as “toys.”

“You don’t even have a navy,” he told Britain's Daily Telegraph in comments published Wednesday. "You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”

Hegseth, meanwhile, said sarcastically that the “big, bad Royal Navy” should get involved in making the Strait of Hormuz safe for commercial shipping.

For numerous reasons, the Royal Navy is not as big and bad as it used to be when Britannia ruled the waves. But it's not as feeble as Trump and Hegseth imply and is largely similar with the French navy, which it is often compared with.

“On the negative side, there is a grain of truth, with the Royal Navy being smaller than it has been in hundreds of years,” said professor Kevin Rowlands, editor of the Royal United Services Institute Journal. “On the positive side, the Royal Navy would say that it’s entering its first period of growth since World War II, with more ships set to be built than in decades.”

Capabilities and preparedness

It’s not that long ago that Britain could muster a task force of 127 ships, including two aircraft carriers, to sail to the south Atlantic after Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands. That 1982 campaign, which then-US President Ronald Reagan was lukewarm about, marked the final hurrah of Britain’s naval pedigree.

Nothing on that scale, or even remotely, could be accomplished now. Since World War II, Britain’s combat-ready fleet has declined substantially, much of it linked to changing military and technological advances and the end of empire. But not all.

The number of vessels in the Royal Navy fleet, including aircraft carriers, destroyers frigates and submarines has fallen from 166 in 1975 to 66 in 2025, according to The Associated Press' analysis of figures from the Ministry of Defense and the House of Commons Library.

Though the Royal Navy has two aircraft carriers at its command, there was a seven-year period in the 2010s when it had none. And the number of destroyers has halved to six while the frigate fleet has been slashed from 60 to just 11.

Diminished state

The Royal Navy faced criticism for the time it took to send the HMS Dragon destroyer to the Middle East after the war with Iran broke out. Though naval officials worked night and day to get it shipshape for a different mission than the one it was readying for, to many it symbolized the extent to which Britain’s military has been gutted since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

For much of the Cold War, Britain was spending between 4% and 8% of its annual national income on its military. After the Cold War, that proportion steadily dropped to a low of 1.9% of GDP in 2018, fuel to Trump's fire.

Like other countries, Britain, largely under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, sought to use the so-called “peace dividend” following the collapse of the Soviet Union to divert money earmarked for defense to other priorities, such as health and education.

And the austerity measures imposed by the Conservative-led government in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008-9 prevented any pickup in defense spending despite the clear signs of a resurgent Russia, especially after its annexation of Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine.

No quick fix

In the wake of Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and with another Middle East war underway, there's a growing understanding across the political divide that the cuts have gone too far.

Following the Ukraine invasion, the Conservatives started to turn the military spending tide around. Since the Labour Party returned to power in 2024, Starmer is seeking to ramp up British defense spending, partly at the cost of cutting the country's long-vaunted aid spending.

Starmer has promised to raise UK defense spending to 2.5% of gross domestic product by 2027, and the updated goal is now for it to rise to 3.5% of GDP by 2035, as part of a NATO agreement pushed by Trump. That, in plain terms, will mean tens of billions pounds more being spent — a lot more kit for the armed forces.

The pressure is on for the government to speed that schedule up. But with the public finances further imperiled by the economic consequences of the Iran war, it's not clear where any additional money will come.

The jibes will likely keep coming even though the critiques are unfair and far from the truth, said RUSI's Rowlands, who was a captain in the Royal Navy.

“We are dealing with an administration that doesn’t do nuance,” he said.