Eduardo González
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, assured yesterday that he is willing to “study” the United States proposal so that Spain can participate with liaison officers in the Red Sea mission.
“We are now going to study the proposal that the American Administration is making to us,” Sánchez declared during an interview on Spanish National Radio (RNE) in relation to the United States’ request to Spain so that, since it is not going to send ships or effective, at least it does provide liaison officers to Operation Prosperity Guardian, led by Washington to protect shipping in the Red Sea against attacks by the Houthi rebels.
“We are a committed Government,” Sánchez continued during the interview on the Las Mañanas program. “We are very active, we have more than 3,000 soldiers in different missions, both from the EU, NATO and the UN”, and, therefore, “we are a reliable partner, we are a loyal partner, but we understand that this mission of the Red Sea has nothing to do with the Atalanta mission, which Spain is leading, in this case to fight against piracy in the Indian Ocean,” he warned. “We are not going to oppose it, but we will see what kind of participation we have,” he added.
Last December, the US Department of Defense included Spain among the countries participating in Operation Guardian of Prosperity, launched by Washington to guarantee the security of maritime traffic in the Red Sea. After the North American announcement, the Ministry of Defense announced that Spain would not participate in the operation and advocated for the creation of a specific mission in the Red Sea with “its own scope, means and objectives” to protect commercial maritime transport from attacks by the Yemen’s Houthi rebels, in contrast to the European Union’s intention to link that operation to Atalanta, the mission led by Spain to combat piracy in the Indian Ocean.
During the press conference after the last Council of Ministers of the year, Pedro Sánchez assured that “Spain is not opposed to the creation of any other operation in the Red Sea, but we consider that the Atalanta operation does not have the characteristics nor is it of the nature of the operation required for the Red Sea.” “In Atalanta, what we are doing is fighting against a particular phenomenon of piracy and in the Red Sea the situation is completely different, the risk is different and obviously the nature of the challenge is different. One operation has nothing to do with another,” he added. The Spanish Government, he assured, is “open” to participating in the new mission if it is proposed within the EU or NATO, “but obviously not within the framework” of Atalanta.
The Spanish position has not been liked in Washington and the president of the United States, Joe Biden, brought up the issue in a telephone conversation with Sánchez. Instead, the Houthi rebels have praised “Spain’s refusal to be carried away by American and British lies on maritime navigation.” The praise of the Yemeni rebels has not pleased the Government of Pedro Sánchez, as The Diplomat was able to verify from diplomatic sources, given the negative consequences that Hamas’s applause for Sánchez’s position on Gaza has had for its image.
Last Friday, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, assured that the Government had not received any type of pressure from the United States to join the mission and declared that Spain “makes its own decisions” and no country has to tell it “ where to intervene.” Likewise, she reaffirmed that Spain will not participate in the new mission, although she made it clear that she will not oppose it either.
