Italy's Defence Minister Guido Crosetto has announced that the country will send warships to safeguard its commercial vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb strait (a narrow, 30-kilometre-wide waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, and one of the world's busiest shipping corridors), saying Rome would not wait for a joint EU decision. Crosetto warned that if the strait became impassable, the economic consequences would be severe, and that bureaucratic delays must not worsen an already complex situation. The move comes as Yemen's Houthi movement has seized control of the country's entire western Red Sea coastline, giving the group unrestricted access to the waterway and raising alarm over the safety of Gulf oil and global container traffic that now relies heavily on the route following Iran's seizure of the Strait of Hormuz.