Suez Canal

It probably hasn't escaped the notice of various state and non-state actors that the recent grounding of the M/V Ever Given has made it starkly clear that even a short-term blockage of the Canal can cause all manner of havoc on the global trade system.

I've been through the Canal, twice, but not since the Egyptians began constructing parallel segments to the Canal. From looking at satellite imagry on Google Earth, it would appear that there are two single-canal segments north of the Great Bitter Lake, each roughly twenty miles in length. The sixteen-mile segment between the Great Bitter Lake and the Red Sea is single-lane. That's close to sixty miles of canal that, if a single ship breaks down, the entire Canal is closed.

It's no small project to attack a ship and smack it hard enough to disable it, let alone sink it. Besides getting in there with the necessary gear, they have to either have a plan for self-extraction or go in as a suicide mission. It would not be easy to arrange and stage such an attack.

But, on the other hand, the Egyptians have to secure a little under 120 miles of canal-bank. If they're not running medium to hig altitude drones over the Canal, I'll be somewhat surprised.