Somali pirates are back in business.
Piracy in the region around the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden had faded in recent years after peaking around 2010, thanks to prevention and enforcement from the U.S. Navy along with an international coalition of partners. But with the Iran war both sucking away American resources and fomenting regional instability, conditions have allowed for a return of the notorious practice.
The cargo vessel Lutuf was boarded and seized on Aug. 17 by eight armed men around four nautical miles off the Somali coast. Another tanker, MT Asana, a Tanzanian-flagged oil and chemical tanker, was seized by a group in the Gulf of Aden a month ago and taken toward Somalia's Puntland region.
For would-be pirates in a country currently grappling with drought, worsening food insecurity, and shrinking humanitarian assistance, the economic incentives and risk-reward balance may be too tempting to pass up. Though for shipowners, this compounds an already strained risk calculation as they weigh Houthi attacks, rising insurance premiums, and whether to transit the area at all.
"The piracy issue is definitely adding to acute uncertainty, and making those who have already decided to avoid the Red Sea stay firm in their decision," said Ian Ralby, CEO of I.R. Consilium, a maritime and resource security firm, and a maritime law and security expert.
According to UN reports, the Houthis and armed groups in Somalia have developed increasingly close ties in recent times mainly through weapons transfers, training and intelligence support.
"If the Al-Shabaab and the Houthis formalize a relationship where they take control of the Red Sea, the Bab-el Mandeb, and the Gulf of Aden, and have the Somali pirates be a part of that militant organization, it would fundamentally change the dynamic in the region," said Corey Ranslem, CEO at Dryad Global, a global maritime cybersecurity and risk intelligence firm.
"It could mean Houthi technology, including missiles, drones, and drone capabilities, becomes available to the Somali pirates, and then risks grow disproportionately," he added.
The Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, which has been tracking the 2026 resurgence, recently said in a report that pirates demanded as much as $10 million for the release of the Eureka, which was seized on May 2. The Chinese fishing vessel Liao Dong Yu 578, hijacked in January, was released in March after a reported ransom payment of between $1.2 million and $1.5 million.
What's more, as oil prices climb, so does the value of energy tankers moving through the waters. That puts pirates in the position of holding increasingly valuable cargo at gunpoint, according to Matt Reisener, Senior National Security Advisor for the Center of Maritime Strategy
"The Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have driven ships closer to the Somali coastline, near pirate hotspots, and given how high oil and gas prices are, these energy tankers have become extremely valuable and particularly vulnerable," Reisener said.
Recent hijackings appear to bear that out: three of the four commercial vessels seized by Somali pirates between April and July were tankers carrying oil products.
"Everybody is having to do almost daily gymnastics to try to recalculate what the risk is," I.R. Consilium's Ralby said.
