Northwest-southeast length of the province is 2300 km, with a width to 400 km. The Gulf of Suez is an abandoned rift basin with less than 100-meter water depths. The Gulf of Aqaba is a younger, rapidly subsiding wrench basin with maximum water depth of 1850 meters. The remaining Red Sea Basin Province is an active rift where sea-floor spreading has occurred for the last 5 m.y. and where water depths locally exceed 2300 meters in the axial region.
Border disputes exist between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and between Egypt and Sudan.
Sudan has been chronically plagued by civil war and, in 1996, was sanctioned by the United Nations for sponsoring terrorism. A civil war in Yemen ended in 1994. Eritrea and Ethiopia have had recent conflicts. The Red Sea Basin Province originated as an Oligocene continental rift impacted by left-lateral wrenching. Rift location and borders are defined by crustal weaknesses created more than 500 Ma including the late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic cratonization of the Arabian-Nubian shield, its suturing to the African continent, and subsequent supercontinent breakup.