The Red Sea Is Saudi Arabia's Mare Nostrum

That is the gap Saudi Arabia is now working to close.

The Mediterranean Precedent

Italy never formally declared the Mediterranean its sea. It did not need to. Over decades, Rome built port infrastructure, cultivated bilateral energy relationships across North Africa, developed ENI into a continental operator with upstream positions from Libya to Mozambique, and positioned itself as the indispensable transit hub for gas moving from Africa into Europe. When the energy crisis of 2022 arrived and Europe scrambled to replace Russian pipeline gas, Italy moved faster than almost anyone. It signed LNG and pipeline deals with Algeria, Egypt, Tunisia, and Congo within months. It was not improvising. It was activating a network it had spent years quietly assembling. The phrase "Mattei Plan," named after ENI's legendary founder Enrico Mattei, became the organizing concept for Italian energy diplomacy under Prime Minister Meloni. The idea was simple: Italy as the Mediterranean's energy hub, the connector between African supply and European demand.

Saudi Arabia is watching. The lesson is not lost.

What Riyadh Already Controls

The physical assets are already substantial. Saudi Arabia's western coastline runs for approximately 1,800 kilometers along the Red Sea. The port of Jeddah Islamic Port is the largest on the Red Sea and one of the busiest in the Middle East by container throughput. Yanbu, further north, is the terminus of the East-West Pipeline, the 1,200-kilometer crude artery that connects Abqaiq in the Eastern Province to the Red Sea coast, giving Saudi Aramco the ability to export crude westward without transiting the Strait of Hormuz. That pipeline has a nameplate capacity of around 5 million barrels per day, though it has historically operated well below that ceiling. The optionality it provides is real and it is priced into Saudi strategic planning even when the barrels are not flowing.

NEOM sits on the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea's northeastern finger, adjacent to the maritime borders of Egypt, Jordan, and Israel. Whatever one thinks of NEOM's timeline or its more ambitious architectural claims, its location is not accidental. The Gulf of Aqaba connects to the Suez Canal system and places Saudi Arabia at the intersection of Red Sea and Mediterranean trade. The port infrastructure being developed as part of NEOM's logistics component is designed with that geography in mind.

Saudi Arabia is also the largest economy among the Red Sea littoral states by a considerable margin. Yemen, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, and Ethiopia collectively do not approach Saudi GDP. Egypt is the only counterpart with comparable regional weight, and Cairo and Riyadh have spent the past several years deepening their economic relationship through Saudi investment flows into Egyptian infrastructure, real estate, and industry. That bilateral dynamic gives Riyadh indirect influence over the northern end of the corridor as well.

The Narrative Problem

The physical position is strong. The narrative position is not, and that asymmetry is the central challenge.

When Houthi attacks disrupted Red Sea shipping beginning in late 2023, the story was told through a Yemeni lens, an Iranian proxy lens, an Israeli-Palestinian conflict lens, and a US naval response lens. Saudi Arabia appeared in that coverage primarily as a bystander, occasionally as a diplomatic interlocutor, rarely as the region's most consequential stakeholder. That framing understated Riyadh's exposure and overstated its passivity. Saudi Arabia's own exports, its Vision 2030 logistics ambitions, and its western port infrastructure were all affected by the disruption. But the country was not the author of the narrative about its own sea.

Italy's Mattei Plan worked because it gave Rome a vocabulary. It provided a conceptual frame that journalists, diplomats, and energy executives could use to understand Italian ambitions in the Mediterranean. The frame preceded the deals. It shaped how the deals were interpreted when they arrived. Saudi Arabia does not yet have an equivalent organizing concept for the Red Sea, at least not one that has been articulated publicly with the same clarity.

What a Red Sea Strategy Looks Like

The components of such a strategy are visible in existing Saudi policy, even if they have not been assembled under a single label.

The Saudi Fund for Development has financed port and infrastructure projects across East Africa and the Horn. Saudi Aramco's downstream expansion into Asian and European markets runs through the Red Sea corridor. The Vision 2030 logistics pillar, which targets making Saudi Arabia a global logistics hub connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe, is geographically dependent on Red Sea access and influence. The Saudi Global Ports initiative, which has been developing terminal operations and port management capabilities, is the operational expression of that ambition.

What is missing is the connective tissue between these initiatives and a coherent external communication strategy. Italy did not just build infrastructure. It told a story about why that infrastructure mattered, who it served, and what role Italy intended to play. The Mattei Plan gave Rome a platform from which to speak about African energy development, Mediterranean connectivity, and European supply security as a unified strategic vision. The individual projects became legible as parts of something larger.

Saudi Arabia has the projects. It needs the frame.

Why This Matters for the Energy Market

The Red Sea's importance to global energy flows is not static. It is growing. As Gulf producers increase their refining and petrochemical capacity and shift toward exporting higher-value products rather than raw crude, the western export route becomes more commercially significant. Yanbu's refining complex, which includes the SAMREF joint venture with ExxonMobil and the PetroRabigh complex with Sumitomo Chemical, already exports refined products westward through the Red Sea. As Saudi Arabia moves further downstream, those volumes will increase.

Qatar's LNG, much of which moves westward to European buyers, also transits the Red Sea corridor. The disruption of 2023 and 2024 forced some Qatari cargoes onto longer routes, adding cost and complexity. A more institutionalized Saudi role in Red Sea security and governance would benefit Doha as well, creating a natural basis for GCC coordination on maritime infrastructure.

The Houthi disruption also demonstrated something the market had perhaps underweighted: the Red Sea is not a passive corridor. It is a contested space, and the cost of that contestation is measurable in freight rates, insurance premiums, and rerouting expenses. The entity that can credibly stabilize that corridor, or at minimum shape the governance conversation around it, holds real economic leverage. That leverage is currently diffuse. It does not have to remain so.

The Soft Architecture of Sea Power

Italy did not build a navy to claim the Mediterranean. It built relationships, institutions, and a narrative. The Mattei Plan is fundamentally a soft power instrument dressed in energy policy language. It works because it aligns Italian commercial interests with the development interests of African partners and the supply security interests of European consumers. Everyone in the frame has a reason to support the Italian role.

Saudi Arabia's Red Sea strategy, if it is articulated clearly, has the same structural logic available to it. East African nations benefit from Saudi investment and port development. European importers benefit from a stable southern corridor. Asian exporters benefit from uninterrupted access to Suez. The physical geography already places Riyadh at the center. The question is whether Riyadh chooses to name that centrality, institutionalize it, and communicate it with the consistency that transforms a geographic fact into a strategic identity.

The Red Sea has always been Saudi Arabia's sea in the physical sense. The work now is to make it Saudi Arabia's sea in the way that matters for the next fifty years: in the ledgers of shipping companies, in the frameworks of multilateral institutions, and in the mental maps of energy executives deciding where to build the infrastructure of the future.

That is not a military project. It is a narrative one. And narratives, unlike pipelines, do not require a decade to construct.

For informational purposes only. Not investment advice, a solicitation, or a recommendation. Consult a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decision.