No military solution in Yemen, Eritrea's foreign minister says
Osman Saleh told Middle East Eye that Eritrea has a responsibility to keep the Red Sea open as a safe passage, and that the waterway's coastal states cannot settle navigation questions while Yemen has no functioning government.
By Eyob Hadgu · 12 September 2026
The port of Massawa, on Eritrea's Red Sea coast. Photo: Reinhard Dietrich / Wikimedia Commons, CC0 1.0 (public domain)
Eritrea's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Osman Saleh, has said there is no military route out of the war in Yemen, in an interview with Middle East Eye conducted in Asmara and published on 11 September 2026.
"There is no military option in Yemen, which must be given a chance to be peaceful," Saleh told the outlet.
Saleh described Yemen's internationally recognised government as having no practical authority on the ground. "Yemen is non-existent. The official government has no control. There is no 'Yemen'," he said, according to the report by Middle East Eye's Sean Mathews.
Red Sea passage
Saleh framed Eritrea's position on the waterway in terms of responsibility rather than leverage. "Eritrea is in a very strategic position. We have a responsibility to safeguard the Red Sea to be a safe passage for all," he said.
He argued that decisions about navigation should be taken collectively by the states along the waterway, but that Yemen's fragmentation left a gap in any such talks. "There should be a discussion among littoral states and a decision how to ensure free passage," he said. "If Yemen is non-existent, we can't speak with it now about these issues."
Asked about the idea of charging shipping for passage — a proposal the report attributes to Iran — Saleh distanced Eritrea from it. "This is a new idea, a new concept," he said. "Because Iran raised it doesn't mean Eritrea will ask."
The wider picture
Middle East Eye reported that the Houthis now control Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline, the shore facing Eritrea and Djibouti, and said that position strengthens Iran's leverage against the United States and Gulf states through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
The report also quoted an unnamed senior Eritrean official as saying that no foreign power would "subdue Yemen", and as describing the situation in the Red Sea as inseparable from the confrontation between Iran and the United States and Israel.
This report draws on reporting from Middle East Eye and Martin Plaut.
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