Iran’s war with Israel and the United States risks spilling over into Africa, security analysts warn, with the Yemeni Houthi movement and other actors aligned with Tehran potentially targeting Emirati, Israeli or US interests in the Horn of Africa, the Red Sea corridor, and beyond.

The Houthi movement demonstrated it could launch long-range drone and missile attacks across the Red Sea region in response to the Israel-Hamas war that began in October 2023. Escalating Iranian retaliation against Israel or US-linked targets could therefore expose military facilities, shipping infrastructure or diplomatic assets connected to those countries and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“The Iran war will likely have short-term effects on disputes in the Horn of Africa that are linked to Red Sea competition among Middle East actors, such as the Sudanese civil war and potential conflict in northern Ethiopia, although it is unclear whether the war will accelerate or dampen conflict in the short term,” writes Liam Carr, the Africa Team Lead for the Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute.

“It is unclear how the Gulf states will prioritize countering any shared threat emanating from Iran versus their Red Sea competition in the long term, and Iran’s regional threat risk will heavily influence this decision.”

The Houthis could, for example, target Emirati or Israeli military positions in the de facto independent Somaliland region of Somalia as part of a Red Sea attack campaign, Carr writes. The UAE has upgraded military facilities in the Somaliland port city of Berbera in recent years and helped facilitate Israeli recognition of Somaliland in December 2025,  which the CTP has assessed as partially aimed to boost Israeli strategic depth to counter the Houthis.

Israeli forces may already be present in the Berbera military base, Agence France-Presse reported on March 2. “Houthi leader Abdul Malik al Houthi warned after the recognition that any Israeli assets in Somaliland would be legitimate military targets,” Carr writes.

“The Houthis could also target the US base in Djibouti – Camp Lemonnier – as part of a Red Sea attack campaign,” he adds, noting Lemonnier lies about 60km  from the Yemeni coast and hosts more than 4,000 US personnel who support counterterrorism and maritime security initiatives in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa.

The group could also exploit their ties with al Qaeda’s Somali affiliate al Shabaab – which include cooperating on weapons smuggling, technical training, operational tactics, and logistic support – to increase disruptions to shipping in the greater Red Sea area.

“The Houthis lack command and control over al Shabaab, but al Shabaab has previously offered to increase lucrative piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden in exchange for Houthi support. These attacks would be highly lucrative for al Shabaab and bolster its propaganda if it decides to claim them. A piracy campaign in the Gulf of Aden would strain the bandwidth of maritime security forces focusing on countering Houthi attacks in the Red Sea,” Carr adds.

Iran could expand the conflict by targeting Emirati, Israeli and US interests further afield in Africa. When facing mounting pressure, he notes, Tehran has previously used covert networks to strike softer US-allied targets outside the Middle East.

Authorities in Kenya and Nigeria said in 2013 they disrupted plots linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps–Quds Force and Lebanese Hezbollah aimed at attacking British, Israeli, Saudi and US targets amid tightening US sanctions.

 “Iran surged attack plots between 2019 and 2022 in response to heightened US sanctions. Anonymous Western intelligence officials told The Telegraph in June 2019 that former IRGC-QF Major General Qassem Soleimani had organized attack cells in the Central African Republic, Chad, Gambia, Ghana, Niger, and Sudan to attack Western targets in response to new US sanctions,” Carr writes of potential wider spillover.

The reshuffling of forces triggered by the war in Iran will have repercussions throughout the Horn of Africa and Red Sea corridor, regions “share a dense web of military, political and economic interactions that enable crises on one shore to quickly affect the other,” writes political scientist Federico Donelli of the University of Trieste.

“The region’s fragility – as seen in civil war in Sudan, tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, instability in Somalia and the heavy presence of military bases along maritime routes – amplifies these risks,”  Donelli writes for academic journal The Conversation.

“In other words, the question is not whether Iran will suddenly expand into east Africa. It is whether the regional climate will shift towards fewer restrictions and greater acceptance of coercive tools.

“Iran is no stranger to the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa. During the 1990s and 2000s, Tehran established security and economic ties with several countries, notably Sudan, to gain a foothold along the Red Sea,” Donelli writes, while noting that Iran’s influence waned during the 2010s – “with the exception of Yemen, where Iran supports the Houthi movement” – as Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), boosted their diplomatic, financial and military presence on the continent.

But the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) – Iran’s powerful military force – is set to play a pivotal role in the post-Khamenei transition, he says.

“This is significant for the Horn of Africa and the Red Sea. Iran’s engagement here has largely relied on unconventional methods. Naval manoeuvres are an example, such as the long-term deployment in the Red Sea of the Iranian vessel Saviz, which has served as a logistical and intelligence platform. The country has also deployed military advisers and established arms networks to transport Iranian weapons.

“Any future leadership closely aligned with the IRGC is likely to keep using these low-cost tools. In this sense, continuity will likely prevail over rupture.”