Yemen’s Houthi movement said it struck two Saudi-flagged oil tankers in the Red Sea on July 22, the first tanker attack since it declared a blockade on Saudi-linked shipping two days earlier. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the vessels, the Encelia and the Layla, had violated the blockade order, according to Al Jazeera.
Only the strike on the Encelia is confirmed. The Saudi Press Agency said the tanker caught fire near its bow while transiting the Red Sea and that all crew members were safe, citing an official at the kingdom’s Transport General Authority, according to Al Jazeera. SPA gave no update on the Layla. The claimed strike on that vessel remains unverified and should be treated as a Houthi claim rather than a confirmed event, according to Portnews.
The Encelia had departed Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu terminal on July 20 before it was hit roughly 70 nautical miles southwest of Al Shuqaiq, according to Seatrade Maritime. Yanbu has become Saudi Arabia’s primary workaround for exporting crude without transiting the Iran-disrupted Strait of Hormuz, with pipeline volumes to the port quadrupling since the Iran conflict escalated, according to Seatrade Maritime. Striking a Yanbu-linked tanker raises the prospect of a coordinated squeeze on both of Saudi Arabia’s maritime export corridors at once. However, no official confirmed coordination between Tehran and the Houthis on this specific strike.
The Houthis do not need to sink vessels outright to disrupt trade. A single confirmed hit is already reshaping the risk calculus for insurers and shippers. Maritime security analyst Corey Ranslem’s colleague Munro Anderson, cited by Seatrade Maritime, said war-risk premiums have moved from roughly 0.3 to 0.75 percent of vessel value for southern Red Sea transits since the Encelia strike, and predicted closer scrutiny of vessel ownership, cargo origin, and recent Saudi port calls, particularly around Yanbu. At least nine tankers changed course following the blockade announcement, three of which had loaded at Yanbu, according to Euronews.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the threat directly in an on-record press exchange in Manila, saying the US has been “engaging the Saudis… over the last week” on the issue and casting Iran as the “troublemaker in the region” for facilitating IRGC flights into Yemen, according to a transcript from the US Department of State.
