In the new European mission in the Red Sea, "there will be at least one Italian ship for 12 months, and we are also considering sending air assets with surveillance and data collection tasks". Guido Crosetto, Minister of Defense, made the statement at a hearing on Red Sea tensions before the Chamber of Deputies and Senate Defense Committees. The headquarters of the European Aspides mission in the Red Sea will most likely be in Larissa, Greece. "The traffic of Russia and China, by the express will of the Houthis, will be able to continue to pass through the Red Sea and this creates a competitive imbalance that will have a violent and asymmetrical impact on us and our economies," according to the defense minister. He further stated that "the Red Sea is not yet a theater of war in the classical sense, but it is increasingly taking on its appearance" and there is a need to "maintain dialogue”: "our intervention" must always be "oriented to avoid an escalation in any case". According to the secretary of state, this is "one of the most effective tools with which Moscow and Beijing pursue the goal of unfairly prevailing in international competition and gaining new spheres of influence, making the confrontation with the West unsustainable." According to Crosetto, "this asymmetry will mainly affect Europe and in particular the countries of the southern shore, such as Italy, due to the marginalization of the Mediterranean."
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