israel wants to lead the red sea, and they want black america to sell the plan
the blueprint places somaliland at the center of an israeli-led security order while casting black investors, universities and media figures as its american support network.
quick context:
December 26, 2025: Israel recognizes Somaliland.
January 6, 2026: Israel’s foreign minister visits Hargeisa and announces plans to exchange ambassadors and open embassies.
April 2026: Israel appoints an ambassador to Somaliland.
May 18: Somaliland’s ambassador presents his credentials in Jerusalem.
June 14: President Cirro arrives in Israel.
June 15: Cirro opens Somaliland’s embassy in Jerusalem.
Somaliland is the second Muslim-majority “country” to open an embassy in Jerusalem, after Kosovo (Which is also not a real country). Israel, meanwhile, has not yet opened an embassy in Hargeisa.
An Israeli think tank closely tied to the country’s political establishment has published a plan for placing the African side of the Red Sea under an Israeli-led security order.
The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs says Somaliland should become the “cornerstone” of an alliance linking Israel, Somaliland and Ethiopia, with support from the United Arab Emirates. Israel would provide intelligence, military technology and overall direction. The paper calls Israel the “natural anchor” of the entire system. In plain terms, Israel wants to run the show.
JCFA is not formally part of the Israeli government, but it is close to it. Its former director, Yechiel Leiter, is now Israel’s ambassador to the United States and previously served as Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief of staff when Netanyahu was finance minister. This is not an obscure group talking from the sidelines.
At the center of the project is Berbera. Somaliland’s port and four-kilometer runway sit directly across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen. A Le Monde investigation reported that the UAE is turning Berbera Airport into a military facility intended for Emirati, American and Israeli use. Satellite analysis by Rich Tedd/@AfriMEOSINT says the Berbera base now includes new air-defense and radar positions, larger drone and aircraft hangars, underground structures, reinforced bunkers, weapons storage areas and more than 10 fortified observation posts. The expansion is reportedly nearing completion. Le Monde also reported visits by Israeli military delegations, while AFRICOM has publicly confirmed that its commander toured Berbera and reviewed the port’s operational capacity.
Berbera would give Israel a closer position from which to monitor Yemen, operate drones and surveillance systems, and potentially launch military operations around the Bab el-Mandeb.
The plan does extend beyond Berbera though. Ethiopia gives the alliance scale: a large market for Israeli weapons and technology, as well as a powerful regional military that Israel could train, equip, and coordinate as local muscle. The paper says the alliance could eventually expand into a “post-dictatorship Eritrea” and a Sudan “free from Islamist domination.” So, Eritrea would need a new government, while Sudan would have to remove the political forces Israel opposes. (They want to do regime-change. My theory is that, Israel may eventually openly back the RSF in Sudan and support Ethiopia if it moves from threatening Eritrea to invading it. Both outcomes would help create the regional order this paper describes.) The tone is almost managerial: both countries are treated as future members once their politics have been cleaned up and made acceptable.
The rest of Somalia offers little to this plan. The project is not really about East Africa as a whole. It is about the coastline facing Yemen and the Red Sea. Somalia is only relevant mainly because Somaliland remains internationally recognized as part of Somali territory, making Mogadishu a legal obstacle to be ignored.
To justify the expansion into internationally recognized Somali territory, JCFA makes the extraordinary claim that Iran is cultivating Al-Shabaab through the Houthis and supplying the Somali al-Qaeda affiliate with drones, intelligence, training and logistical support.
The claim is absurd. Al-Shabaab is a hardline Salafi-jihadist movement that sees Shia Muslims and Iran as enemies. Iran and its allies have spent years fighting al-Qaeda-linked groups elsewhere in the region. Yet JCFA asks readers to believe Tehran has suddenly decided to build an al-Qaeda affiliate into a proxy in Somalia, without presenting evidence of Iranian funding, orders, personnel or direct contact. (Meanwhile, Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, a former al-Qaeda commander, was welcomed into the White House. By JCFA’s own logic, there is a stronger case for accusing Washington of cultivating al-Qaeda and its networks than Iran.)
There have been reports of limited dealings between the Houthis and Al-Shabaab. UN monitors described those contacts as transactional and opportunistic, not ideological. That is a long way from proving an Iranian command structure. The Houthis have their own interests and networks; not everything they do is ordered by Tehran. JCFA takes a supposed murky arms relationship and turns it into an Iranian conspiracy in Somalia. The reason is obvious. Israel needs an Iranian threat in the Horn to make its move into Somaliland look defensive. Without that invented network, Israel is not “containing Iran.” It is building a offensive military position opposite Yemen.
The strangest section turns to African Americans. The authors propose sending Black venture funds, family offices and technology entrepreneurs into the Berbera Economic Zone to invest in logistics, digital infrastructure, manufacturing, apparel and, bizarrely, “streetwear ecosystems.” They also want HBCUs and Black media figures to build ties with Hargeisa and Jerusalem and help create what they call an “organic shield” of support in the United States. (Basically they want to cultivate a group of prominent Black American validators, people who can present the project as progressive, African and empowering while defending Israel’s interests in mainstream media. They want to manufacture more CNN’s Van Jones-type spokespeople for Somaliland.)
No actual investors or organizations are named. African Americans are simply imagined as a ready source of money, cultural influence and public relations. Meanwhile, Israel would contribute technology and gain new markets, diplomatic reach and safer access to the Red Sea, while the UAE builds much of the infrastructure. The Black empowerment language is bullshit obviously. The proposed investments will all lead back to Berbera, helping make Israel’s military foothold cheaper, deeper and harder to remove.