A new strait crisis is brewing in the Red Sea

Houthi gains near Bab el-Mandeb are raising new risks for shipping and putting Saudi Arabia under fresh strain Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, locked in a war with the country’s government and a Saudi-led coalition, is making military gains along the western coast of the country. The military geography of the area has changed within a matter of days. The Houthis seized Mocha, a key port north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and then pushed toward Dhubab and the strategic island of Mayyun, also known as Perim, which lies directly inside the strait. At the same time, the movement strengthened its presence around the Hanish Islands, meaning that what is unfolding can no longer be described simply as another expansion of Houthi-held territory inside Yemen. Ansar Allah is now moving directly toward one of the most important maritime chokepoints in the Middle East. The movement itself insists that international shipping is not the target of its advance, while Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam has said that trade through the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb remains safe and uninterrupted, even as restrictions against Saudi-linked shipping remain in place. However, it’s not just about whether the Houthis are physically capable of closing the strait. They are acquiring a tool with which they can raise or lower the risks to commercial shipping in accordance with the political and military situation. This is turning Bab el-Mandeb from one sector of Yemen’s protracted war into a second lever of pressure within the confrontation surrounding Iran. Read more Over 80,000 displaced in Yemen as fighting intensifies amid new Houthi push Two straits, one system of pressure The main reason the Houthi advance has become so sensitive for the United States and its allies lies in its timing, coming as it is amid a direct confrontation with Iran, which is already facing intense American pressure on its maritime communications and oil exports.

While Iran’s room for maneuver in the Strait of Hormuz is constrained by the presence of American and allied forces, a second potentially unstable maritime corridor on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula forces Washington to reckon with an entirely different theater of escalation at the same time. A substantial share of Gulf oil exports passes through Hormuz, while Bab el-Mandeb links the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and onward to the Suez Canal. Simultaneous instability in both straits could disrupt not only regional energy flows but the wider system of trade connecting Asia and Europe. The result is a kind of geographic trap, with Hormuz on the eastern side of the Arabian Peninsula, where Tehran can directly influence the level of risk surrounding maritime traffic, and Bab el-Mandeb on the western side, where a movement aligned with Iran possesses a similar capacity. It would nevertheless be inaccurate to claim that Tehran now controls both straits, because Ansar Allah is not an extension of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has its own political agenda and makes its decisions primarily in response to developments inside Yemen. Yet this degree of Houthi autonomy makes the coalescing model of two-pronged pressure so useful to Iran. Tehran does not need to expand the conflict geographically with its own forces when an allied movement is already acting in ways that serve broadly compatible interests and impose additional costs on a common adversary. Iran does not need to order the closure of Bab el-Mandeb, because the mere possibility of a renewed crisis in the Red Sea is enough to force the US to prepare for another escalation scenario. Washington must then redistribute military resources, reinforce maritime security and factor the consequences into its calculations about global energy markets. In other words, the effectiveness of the pressure does not depend on whether either strait is completely shut. It depends o