Treasury lets the Eritrea emergency expire, lifting 2021 Tigray-war sanctions

The US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control posted a notice on Friday, 18 September, removing sanctions imposed in 2021 on Eritrea’s ruling party, its armed forces and related commercial arms. The national emergency that underpinned the measures was allowed to expire. The State Department said President Donald Trump had chosen not to renew the 2021 declaration “to advance US regional interests.”

The delisted names include the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, the Eritrean Defence Forces, Hidri Trust, the state-linked Red Sea Trading Corporation, economic official Hagos Ghebrehiwet W Kidan and Abraham Kassa of the National Security Office. Biden’s Treasury had designated them for roles in the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, where Eritrean units fought alongside Ethiopian federal forces against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from 2020 until a peace deal in November 2022.

Why the Red Sea changes the file

Eritrea holds a long coast on the western Red Sea, opposite Saudi Arabia and near the southern approaches to the Suez route. Shipping through those waters has been under strain from Houthi attacks and from the wider war that now includes Iran. Washington’s interest in ports, overflight and coastal intelligence has risen with that strain. Reuters noted that the lift had been previewed in internal documents and that analysts read it as an opening to Asmara.

The 2021 sanctions were renewed annually under a presidential emergency, including once during Trump’s current term. Letting the emergency lapse is a cleaner instrument than a one-off licence. It takes the party, the army and the trading companies off the list rather than carving exceptions.

Asmara’s response

Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told AP and Reuters that the Biden measures had been unwarranted and had caused serious damage. “We welcome the gesture and remedial measures by the Trump Administration,” he said. The defence ministry did not issue a parallel comment on Friday.

Eritrea remains a one-party state under President Isaias Afwerki. Human-rights groups that documented abuses in Tigray will treat the delisting as a political trade. The Treasury notice does not claim that the original factual findings were withdrawn. It records that the emergency expired.

The regional ledger

Relations between Asmara and Addis Ababa have deteriorated again since the 2022 ceasefire. Ethiopia accused Eritrea last year of working with a TPLF faction. A US decision that frees Eritrean military and commercial entities from American blocking sanctions lands in that dispute, not in a vacuum.

For shipping companies and banks the practical change is immediate. Counterparties that refused Eritrean names because of OFAC risk can reopen those files. For the Red Sea war the change is a bet: that a coastal state previously locked out of the US financial system is now more useful inside it. Whether Asmara supplies what Washington wants in that corridor will be visible in port calls, intelligence access and votes, not in the Treasury notice itself.