Italy Will Send More Warships to the Red Sea, Once Everyone Else in Europe Agrees to Do the Same

Italy's defense minister Guido Crosetto says the country is willing to increase its contribution to the EU's Aspides naval mission in the Red Sea, protecting commercial shipping from attacks by Iran aligned Houthi forces, but he has attached a condition that puts the decision back in the hands of every other European government rather than Rome alone. We are willing to increase our contribution, he said, but when we see other countries doing the same.

Italy currently keeps one ship continuously deployed to Aspides, a mission launched in 2024 that now operates with roughly six warships in total, a level EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has been pushing member states to expand. Italy had also stationed two minehunters in Djibouti earlier in the mission, but withdrew them after finding too few actual deployment opportunities to justify keeping them there, a detail that undercuts any simple story about Italian reluctance, the ships came home because there was not enough for them to do, not because Rome wanted to scale back.

Crosetto was specific about what any expanded contribution would need to look like. The ships involved, he said, have to be modern, with the technological capabilities and speed required, ruling out padding the mission's numbers with older vessels that happen to be available rather than equipment actually suited to tracking and countering drone and missile attacks on shipping.

The stakes for Italy are concrete rather than abstract. Roughly 40 percent of the country's international trade moves through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, the same corridor Houthi attacks have spent nearly two years disrupting, and Italy has already sent radars, anti missile batteries and other defense systems to Saudi Arabia to help counter both Iranian and Houthi threats in the wider region. A naval mission protecting that same trade route is not a favor to Brussels, it is defending a route Italy's own economy depends on.

What Crosetto's condition really does is shift the pressure back onto the rest of the EU. Kallas wants Aspides bigger, Italy has told her it is willing to help make that happen, and the only thing standing between the current six ships and a larger mission is whether other European capitals are prepared to match a commitment Rome has already said it would make.