Washington Lifts Eritrea Sanctions, and the Red Sea Chessboard Gets Another Move

The United States has lifted sanctions on Eritrea’s ruling party and several military-linked figures and entities, reversing penalties imposed over Eritrean forces’ role in Ethiopia’s brutal Tigray conflict. International accountability, it turns out, can have a shorter shelf life than a mall food-court coupon when strategic geography enters the room.

The sanctions dated to 2021, when Washington accused Eritrean actors of contributing to violence and instability during the war. Eritrea rejected those allegations and welcomed the decision to remove the restrictions.

The Red Sea changes the calculation

Eritrea sits along a strategically vital stretch of the Red Sea, near shipping lanes repeatedly disrupted by regional conflict. That location has become more valuable as governments compete for influence, naval access and commercial security around one of the world’s busiest maritime corridors.

Removing sanctions may create room for closer diplomatic engagement, but it also raises an obvious question: whether geopolitical usefulness is replacing evidence of reform. Sanctions are sold as leverage. When they vanish without a transparent explanation of what changed, the leverage starts looking mostly decorative.

Tigray’s suffering remains part of the record

The Ethiopian government and Tigrayan forces signed a peace agreement in 2022, but Eritrea was not a party to it. Human-rights groups documented grave abuses during the war, and families affected by the conflict are unlikely to experience a sanctions announcement as closure.

The Associated Press reported the U.S. decision on September 19, 2026.

Foreign policy always contains compromises. The public still deserves to know which conduct earned the punishment, which conduct earned relief and whether the people harmed along the way received anything beyond another paragraph in the historical record.

YOUR COLUMNIST

Dana Side-Eye

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