The security crisis in the Red Sea especially harms Europe, to the extent that it has almost halved traffic through the Suez Canal, the great artificial artery of modernity along with the Panama Canal. This crisis also has winners and Morocco, for the moment, is one of them. Let's see why.
Traffic through Suez has already fallen by 45%. Many shipping, oil and gas companies have decided to divert their ships around the Cape of Good Hope route (South Africa) due to the possibility of being attacked by the Houthi (Shiite) militias in the narrow Strait of Bab el Mandeb or in the Gulf of Aden. . Last Friday, despite having a military escort, the British oil tanker Martin Luanda was hit by a ballistic missile that caused a large fire on board. Companies are afraid, insurance has become more expensive and rates have risen more than costs, as reported yesterday by La Vanguardia.
Costs have risen by 21% and freight prices by 150%. Shipping companies are taking advantage of the crisis to increase profits and improve their market capitalization. They are looking for cheap, efficient and well-located ports to serve as a logistical base on the new route. And Morocco has them: Casablanca and Tangier Med, especially Tangier Med on the southern slope of the Strait of Gibraltar. The eastern Mediterranean is now too far away. It is the revenge of Geography and the bones of the engineer Ferdinand de Lesseps, creator of the Suez Canal, are disturbed in his grave in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.
“Tangier is today the rising port,” say sources in the sector who follow the Red Sea crisis to the minute. Tangier Med, one of the great Moroccan strategic bets at the beginning of the century, had already positioned itself at the end of 2023 as the first Mediterranean port in container traffic, overtaking Algeciras, Valencia and Barcelona. The keys to success are the following: the Strait of Gibraltar, a privileged location between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, between Africa and Europe, high capacity facilities, lower salaries and fewer environmental costs, circumstances that favor more competitive rates than the from the neighboring port of Algeciras.
Tangier Med, twenty kilometers from Ceuta, is a good port for transshipment of goods. So much so, that the kingdom of Morocco is promoting the construction of another large commercial port in Nador, 50 kilometers from Melilla. The strategy seems clear: favor the creation of two large areas of economic activity in Moroccan territory, very close to the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla. That strategy is now being benefited by the Red Sea crisis, the duration of which is unpredictable.
The main victims of the partial strangulation of the Suez route are the ports of the central and eastern Mediterranean. Genoa, Gioia Tauro, Malta, Trieste, Adriatic, historic port of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Greek port of Piraeus, connected to the railway axis of Eastern Europe. Those routes are now far from a revalued Strait of Gibraltar. The ports of the western Mediterranean come out better, say sources in the sector. The data for Algeciras, València and Barcelona are not bad. “This is the photo of January, a photo in motion,” they warn.
There are nerves in Italy, a country that sends 40% of its exports to the Far East and that must import liquefied natural gas from various countries, including the emirate of Qatar, to compensate for its renunciation of cheap Russian gas. (Italy saw a gas shipment from Qatar canceled the day before yesterday that was destined for a regasification plant in the Adriatic). Trieste, a port highly coveted by China during the love affair between Rome and Beijing (2018-2021), may lose strategic value. The old Venetian route is too far today. The Italian institute Ipsi, dedicated to the study of international relations, predicts that the Red Sea crisis will mean two more points of inflation for the European Union. It is not surprising, therefore, that in a matter of weeks, the Government of Italy has become one of the main supporters of a European military operation in the Red Sea. Operation in which the Government of Spain does not intend to participate.
Morocco gains logistical weight and this means political power. The situation is paradoxical. The strangulation of Bab el Mandeb benefits the modern port of Tangier and the war in Gaza hinders the public display of good relations between Morocco and Israel, favored by Donald Trump during the last days of his mandate in 2020. In exchange for the full restoration of diplomatic relations between both countries, Israel unilaterally recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. Israel is today a major supplier of weapons and security systems to Morocco and there is nothing to indicate that the Gaza war is harming that link, despite the pro-Palestinian sympathies of the Moroccan people.
