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A top Italian official has confirmed that the country’s navy is getting ready to escort Italian merchant ships through the Bab el-Mandeb strait after Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized Yemen’s entire western Red Sea coast this month.

Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the Bab el-Mandeb is a roughly 19-mile-wide stretch of water between Yemen and Djibouti. It connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and serves as the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. Up to 15% of the world’s trade moves through the strait in a typical year, including oil, gas, and container ships traveling between Asia and Europe, and it has become even more critical since Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year. This month, the Houthis launched an offensive along Yemen’s western Red Sea coast and took all of it, along with key islands like Mayun, leaving the group in control of the entire Yemeni side of the waterway. That matters because the Houthis have spent years going after ships they link to the US and its allies, and with the coastline in hand, they are positioned to threaten or choke off traffic through the strait, forcing ships the long way around the Cape of Good Hope and making every trip more expensive to fuel, insure, and ship.

What’s going on now: While speaking to attendees at the Risorsa Mare forum in La Spezia on Thursday, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto said he and Italy’s chief of defense staff agreed to have the navy prepare whatever is needed to get Italian vessels through the strait safely, and that Rome wasn’t going to sit around waiting on the European Union’s Red Sea naval mission, Aspides, to make the call.

“We cannot allow bureaucratic delays in decision-making to aggravate an already complex situation, with direct consequences for our economy and the lives of our citizens,” Crosetto said in a statement.

Crosetto did not say which ships might go, but Italian news agency ANSA reported that Italy is looking at putting ships it already has in the area under its own command, and that one option is the Bergamini, an Italian frigate stationed in Djibouti. The defense minister added that the government and parliament would both have a say in any deployment.