Photo Credit: Wikimedia / Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE Bab al-Mandab Strait, located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, on the right, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, to the left. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The reported attack on April 6 of an Iranian ship used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) for surveillance and naval military operations in the Red Sea indicates a moderate escalation in the ongoing shadow war between Israel and Iran. Brig. Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, director of the Project on Regional Middle East Developments at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the former head of the research division of IDF Military Intelligence, stressed that Israel did not take responsibility for the incident, adding that the attack, whoever was behind it, signals âa certain escalation.â