Image for representation purposes only The U.S-Iran war has led to a resurgence of maritime piracy in Somalia as commercial ships are forced to take lengthy detours around Africa’s southern tip. This has not only increased travel times by weeks and raised expenses by an additional $1 million per vessel, but also forced ships into the dangerous Somali basin. Pirate networks have remobilised to take advantage of the increased maritime traffic and are reportedly joining hands with Yemen’s Houthis. This resurgence in Somali Piracy was confirmed by a May 12 advisory from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO). Somali pirates are presently holding two oil tankers and a general cargo/cement carrier, which were captured between April 21 and May 2, including one vessel which was hijacked off Yemen and then brought to Somalia. UKMTO has warned that the “piracy threat level remains severe” along the coast of Somalia, which was a hotspot for maritime piracy incidents in the 2000s, which peaked in 2011 with a record of 237 incidents that cost $7 billion. More than 4000 seafarers faced attacks involving rifles and grenades during that year. These incidents are a result of extreme poverty in the region, especially Somalia, which has forced the youth to join terror groups or pick up arms to feed their families. Since the 1990s, Somalia has not had a functioning central government, and corruption has been rampant. People starved, and no jobs or resources were available to them, which pushed them to piracy, theft, robbery, etc. The situation worsened when they realised shipping companies would agree to pay millions in ransom to release the ships and the crew members. Manu Lekunze, an international relations lecturer at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, explained that the U.S-Iran war in the Middle East had created a ‘security vacuum’ which led to a resurgence of maritime piracy in Africa. Naval ships, which had usually patrolled the Somali waters to keep pirates a