Saudi military chief tells Manama Dialogue protecting maritime straits is a shared responsibility, not one country’s job
Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Chief of General Staff, Vice Admiral Fahd al-Ghufaili, told the Manama Dialogue on Sunday that threats to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb require a collective response, warning that international straits must not become tools of political or military pressure.
Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Chief of General Staff, Vice Admiral Fahd al-Ghufaili, has called for stronger international cooperation to protect strategic maritime corridors, warning that waterways must not become instruments of political or military pressure. Speaking at the 22nd IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Sunday, he said protecting international straits was a shared international responsibility and that threats to shipping required an effective collective response, according to Arab News, Al Arabiya and Centreline reporting from the forum.
His central message was stated in two short sentences that were carried across the reporting. “Maritime security is not the responsibility of one country, and force cannot be a substitute for the law,” al-Ghufaili said. “International straits must not remain tools of political and military pressure.” The wording matters because it frames maritime security as a legal and collective question rather than a matter for any single navy or state — a position that speaks both to states that use the straits and to states whose actions threaten them.
The setting for the remarks was the Manama Dialogue itself, the annual international security summit organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, whose 22nd edition ran from 30 October to 1 November at the Ritz-Carlton in Bahrain. Al-Ghufaili was speaking in a session on maritime security, on the final day of a dialogue dominated by the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran and by its spillover into shipping, energy supplies and the global economy. His intervention therefore landed not as an isolated speech but as part of a weekend of Gulf and international statements about the same waterways.
The most urgent of those waterways is the Strait of Hormuz. The strait normally carries about a fifth of global oil supplies, and it has become a focal point of the conflict, with ships regularly coming under fire since fighting began on 28 February. Arab News noted that just two days before al-Ghufaili spoke, Oman said it had rescued 25 sailors from a merchant ship that was targeted and set ablaze, while Iran reported that four oil tankers had been halted while crossing the strait. A Qatari liquefied natural gas carrier was also struck by unidentified objects in Gulf waters on Friday evening, with its crew safe — a reminder, in the same weekend’s news, of how exposed commercial shipping in the region has become.
The second waterway in al-Ghufaili’s argument is Bab al-Mandeb, the strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Fighting between Yemen’s internationally recognised government forces and the Iran-backed Houthi militia has intensified, according to Al Arabiya, with the militia threatening commercial shipping through Bab al-Mandeb. Houthi attacks on Saudi targets, including airports and energy infrastructure, have also continued, and the group has claimed responsibility for strikes on Saudi assets in recent weeks. Together, Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb form the two chokepoints through which much of the region’s energy and trade must pass — which is why a threat to either is treated as a threat to the wider system.
Reporting from Bahrain added detail on what al-Ghufaili meant by a collective response. News of Bahrain, covering the same maritime security session, reported that he said security at sea depends on transparency, clear rules, de-escalation mechanisms and the ability to communicate in times of crisis, and urged a shift towards a region-wide concept based on prevention, early detection and the exchange of information and intelligence, so that threats are dealt with before they become crises. “The seas are bridges for development and prosperity, not places for confrontation,” he said in that account, adding that sea lanes must not become tools of pressure and that international law is the only reference for settling differences.
Saudi voices at the dialogue were not limited to the military. Speaking at a session on Saturday, Saudi Vice Foreign Minister Waleed Elkhereiji stressed the need to contain crises and strengthen security and stability amid widening regional conflicts, mounting humanitarian suffering and growing repercussions for maritime security, energy supplies and the global economy. On Saturday, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan held talks on the sidelines of the G20 foreign ministers’ meeting in Atlanta with counterparts from Germany, Japan, France and Brazil, discussing threats to maritime navigation in Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb and their potential impact on energy security, global trade and supply chains. The sequence shows a coordinated diplomatic as well as military message across the weekend.
A parallel Gulf voice at the same dialogue underlined how widely the concern is shared. The United Arab Emirates’ diplomatic adviser to the president, Anwar Gargash, said on Sunday that the UAE was hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough between Iran and the United States but was “braced for the worst”, and that another round of conflict would not serve the region’s interests. Gargash’s remarks, like al-Ghufaili’s, were made as Qatari-mediated talks between Iran and the United States continued in Doha — a diplomatic track that sits alongside the maritime warnings, and that may determine whether the straits return to something closer to normal passage.
Why the straits matter beyond the region is straightforward: all countries rely on them for trade and supplies, as al-Ghufaili put it, and disruption there feeds directly into energy prices, shipping insurance, delivery times and the cost of goods far from the Gulf. That is why a Saudi military chief’s call for collective action is also an economic statement. It is aimed at states that depend on Gulf energy and Asian and European trade routes, not only at the states bordering the waterways, and it argues that the cost of insecurity is shared even when the risk is concentrated in two narrow passages.
What happens next is not yet fixed by any announcement in the reporting. Possibilities include further statements from Manama Dialogue participants as the forum closes, new proposals for information-sharing or coordinated patrols, and continued diplomatic pressure through the Doha talks to reopen Hormuz to normal traffic. What al-Ghufaili’s speech does establish is the Saudi position going into that next phase: straits as shared spaces governed by law, not as leverage for any one side, with collective responsibility as the principle on which any workable arrangement would have to rest.
More in Saudi Arabia
SaudiAkasa Air extends Saudi flight suspensions: Jeddah grounded until 18 November, Riyadh until 30 November
SaudiKenya formally protests Saudi Arabia's Ebola travel ban, demanding scientific justification within 48 hours
Saudi