AP
Cairo
The Houthi rebels’ threat to blockade Saudi Arabia has the potential to widen the Iran war and further disrupt global oil supplies and international trade.
The Iran-backed rebels say they have closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to Saudi-linked shipping in retaliation for the kingdom’s blockade on Yemen and a recent attack on the international airport in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, Sanaa.
The Houthis said on Thursday they had attacked two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, causing fires to break out on both. Saudi’s state-run news agency reported a fire on a tanker in the Red Sea following an attack, as did the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center. No casualties were reported.
Bab el-Mandeb, at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, is a vital shipping chokepoint, connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. Around 12 per cent of the world’s trade, including a fourth of global container traffic, passes through the narrows.
The strait has become even more vital for Saudi oil exports since the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran war has severely limited shipping out of the Persian Gulf.
The Houthis had said they would only stop vessels connected to Saudi Arabia or going in and out of its Red Sea ports. But during a similar blockade announced against Israel over the
war in Gaza, the rebels attacked many vessels with little or no connection to that conflict.
The threat alone could keep international shippers from using the route.
The Houthis don’t control the part of Yemen’s coastline along Bab el-Mandeb – that’s in the hands of its opponents in the country’s civil war.
But they hold territory less than 100 kilometres away. Three Houthi officials said recently that the group has planned for months how to disrupt shipping in the strait.
Those plans include the use of naval mines, explosive-laden boats, drones and helicopters to allow fighters to board ships, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to media.
They said vessels would first be warned not to cross designated boundaries in the strait. If ships ignore the warnings, the Houthis would resort to military action.
In the Strait of Hormuz, Iran has shown that even sporadic attacks on ships can be enough to effectively close a critical waterway, by driving up risks and insurance premiums.
“If Bab el-Mandeb comes under pressure at the same time as shipping in the Gulf, you have disruption around two of the world’s most important maritime routes at once,” Clionadh Raleigh, the founder of ACLED, a conflict monitoring service, said.
More than 7 million barrels of petroleum a day transited Bab el-Mandeb in June, compared to around 4 million before the Iran war, Allison Minor, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Project for Middle East Integration, wrote in an analysis published this week.
Saudi Arabia has been recently exporting some 4 million barrels of oil a day through its Red Sea port of Yanbu, blunting the impact of the Strait of Hormuz closure, which has still rattled economies around the world.
Saudi Arabia could still get crude to market without using Bab el-Mandeb, by shipping up to 2.5 million barrels a day across the Red Sea to Egypt, whose SUMED pipeline can carry it to the Mediterranean. It could also ship 1 million barrels a day through the Suez Canal.
International shippers could also reroute around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, as they did at the height of the war in Gaza. But that means adding one or two weeks to voyages – and raising costs.
The Houthis attacked over 100 vessels at the height of the war in Gaza, before a punishing US and Israeli air campaign put an end to the attacks in early 2025.
Asked about the attack on the Saudi tanker in the Red Sea on Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said: “I hope they’ll stop. They shouldn’t really do that.”
Speaking during a regional summit in the Philippines, he said that “I think the Houthis, frankly, got snookered into this thing by the Iranians. And they were smart to stay out of it, and they should stay out of it and they should stop.”
The Houthis also run the risk of reigniting the war with Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen, where major fighting ended with a truce in 2022. Saudi Arabia’s military says it will keep Bab el-Mandeb open.
