Grant Shapps has said the UK will not accept the Red Sea being permanently closed to commercial shipping, as he left open the possibility that western forces might attack Houthi rebels in Yemen once more.
The defence secretary said on Monday the US-led airstrikes launched against the Houthis last week were designed to be a one-off military action designed to stop their attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
But he added that the US, UK and their international partners were watching carefully to see what the rebels do next as they assess whether further attacks are needed.
Speaking at Lancaster House in central London, Shapps said: “We will watch very carefully; we will look at the patterns of what’s happening; we will check the capability; we will in particular, be interested to see those links between Tehran and the Houthis to see whether when we’re monitoring, whether there are shipments; whether we detect intelligence and the rest of it.
He added: “Although this was a distinct piece of precisely targeted military action, we will not put up with a major waterway, major shipping lanes being closed on a permanent basis.”
Shapps was outlining his vision for the UK’s military forces after just over four months in the job, arguing Britain’s participation in last week’s strikes in Yemen was evidence of how unstable the world was now.
“We’ve come full circle, moving from a postwar to prewar world,” he said. “An age of idealism is being replaced by a period of hard-headed realism.”
He added that in this more unstable world, the military would need more money. “Our great resource has always been men and women who work tirelessly to protect our nation,” he said. “But to defend our nation from increasing dangers of tomorrow they must have what they need to do the job.”
Several Conservative MPs who watched the speech interpreted his words as a traditional pre-budget call for money made by successive defence secretaries before him. “The message was pretty clear,” said one. “He wants more from the Treasury.”
Shapps said in December he wanted to see the UK’s defence budget rise by as much as 50% to 3% of economic output, from just above 2% today.
Shapps will address MPs later on Monday as he defends the government’s decision to take military action against the Houthis without consulting parliament first.
Shapps told the BBC that briefing parliament before the strikes would not have been practical. He said: “One of the issues with having a sort of full debate about those things upfront is it would have provided perhaps too much information in detail to the Houthis.
“So we needed to act. In fact, we did that with quite a lot of consultation – with parliament, with the speaker, the leader of the opposition, and others. And of course, there’ll be time today to have that public discussion in parliament as well.”
While the Houthis have said their attacks on shipping are simply aimed at Israel following its war on Gaza in response to the 7 October massacres by Hamas, Shapps dismissed this idea.
“I know the Houthis are saying that it’s somehow connected, but actually, 50 different nations have had their ships attacked, so it quite clearly isn’t actually connected,” he said.
In an apparent sign that the rebels intend to carry on attacking ships, the US military said on Sunday night that US fighter aircraft had shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen at one of its warships in the Red Sea.
The missile was fired towards the USS Laboon, which was operating in the southern Red Sea, US Central Command said in a statement, in what appears to be the first such attempt to strike a US destroyer. No injuries or damage were reported.
