Yemeni Houthis have said they could close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait in the coming days, threatening a second major chokepoint alongside Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
A member of the Houthi-aligned Ansar Allah movement’s political bureau, Mohammed al-Farah, said the group intends to close Bab el-Mandeb in tandem with Iran’s closure of Hormuz, warning that combined pressure on both straits could push oil prices to 200 dollars a barrel, EADaily reported. A senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader has said separately that the wider Iran-aligned network retains the capability to block both waterways at once, a claim analysts describe as a coordinated pressure campaign against the United States and its Gulf allies rather than isolated brinkmanship.
The threat follows this week’s escalation in Yemen. The internationally recognized government struck the runway at Houthi-held Sanaa International Airport on July 13 to block an Iranian flight, and the Houthis retaliated with missiles and drones against Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport, a strike they blamed on Riyadh, according to the Times of Israel.
Analysts say the Houthis do not need to physically shut the 29-kilometer-wide strait to achieve a closure in practice. Sustained use of anti-ship missiles, drones, and sea mines can drive war-risk insurance premiums high enough to make the route commercially unroutable, the Al Habtoor Research Centre noted. Roughly 12 percent of global maritime trade normally passes through the strait, and a simultaneous shutdown with Hormuz would threaten close to a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and gas.
The stakes are heightened for Saudi Arabia specifically. Its East-West Pipeline was built as a multibillion-dollar bypass of Hormuz, moving crude overland to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, but that route still depends on ships exiting through Bab el-Mandeb to reach Asian markets. A Houthi closure would strip Riyadh of that alternative too, according to Al Jazeera.
