The Strait Again

The Bab el-Mandeb is a narrow gap of water between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and around 12 percent of the world’s trade passes through it. In early September, Yemen’s Houthi rebels stormed down the Red Sea coast, capturing the port city of Mokha and several islands in the strait, the chokepoint where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden. The Associated Press called it their biggest land grab in years. It revived a civil war that began in 2014 and that a 2022 ceasefire had largely held in check until this summer. This week the internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia, set out to take it all back.

The government announced a major operation on Sunday 4 October, and the offensive began early on Monday 5 October under air cover from the Saudi-led coalition, the Associated Press reported. Rashad al-Alimi, head of the government’s presidential council, said on X that the operation, dubbed “Yemen Dawn,” aimed to liberate Sanaa, the rebel-held capital. On Monday Yemeni officials told the AP that government forces had retaken the town of Dhubab, just north of the strait, along with the towns of Bab and Hadeid. The government also said it had reached Mokha. That claim had been premature, according to Yemeni military officials on the ground and analysts, Reuters reported on Wednesday 7 October, adding that the fighting on the western front remained concentrated in the Dhubab district. The Houthis denied losing anything at all: their military spokesman, Yahya Saree, insisted that the rebels retained “full control over all their gains on the ground,” CBS News reported. What is not in dispute is that this is the worst fighting in Yemen in years, that both sides allege hundreds of people have been killed, and that the strait itself is the prize.

The Houthis are not fighting only on the coast. They have repeatedly struck infrastructure in Saudi Arabia, including airports, oil refineries and pipelines, and on Wednesday 7 October Saudi civil aviation authorities said attacks on two of the kingdom’s airports had killed three people: one at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh and two at Abha, according to Reuters. The Saudi-led coalition said the same day that it had intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile north of Riyadh; Saree said the group had targeted King Khalid International Airport with several drones. The coalition promised that the attacks “will not go unpunished.” A war that was supposed to be contained inside Yemen is now being fought, in part, over Saudi cities.

Why the strait matters

The Bab el-Mandeb is one of a small number of maritime chokepoints on which the global economy depends. Around 12 percent of world trade, including a quarter of global container traffic, moves through it between Europe and Asia by way of the Suez Canal, the AP noted. This year it has mattered even more. When Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz after the United States and Israel went to war with it on 28 February, the Red Sea became a crucial alternative route for Saudi oil exports. When the Houthis attacked shipping in the Red Sea from late 2023, carriers rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope and war-risk premiums rose. Control of the strait’s shoreline is control of a tap on the world economy.

That is what makes the September land grab strategically different from the grinding front lines of the past decade. The Houthis did not just take territory; the AP said their gains let them tighten their declared blockade of Saudi shipping. “There’s actually not necessarily all that much that the Houthis need to actually do,” Sarah Phillips of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies told the AP in September. “Having the threat there is very powerful because you get insurance companies becoming nervous about putting ships through that area.” And they took it at a moment when Washington is reluctant to fight. The United States has provided Saudi Arabia with intelligence sharing, target identification and planning for the offensive, a regional official and a US official told the AP, but President Donald Trump is not, for now, directing the US military to resume its own strikes against the rebels.

The timing is not accidental. The Saudi-led coalition accuses Iran of arming, training and funding the Houthis; the group denies being part of Tehran’s proxy network, and Iran rejects the allegation. Either way, a force that can threaten the strait gives Tehran’s side of the wider war leverage it would otherwise lack. In September a drone attack shut Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline, the kingdom’s main route around Hormuz; Iraq’s government confirmed that the attack came from its territory, Iran-backed Iraqi militias were accused of it and denied it, and regional officials told the AP that the Houthis and the Iraqi militias had recently coordinated attacks on Saudi oil facilities. The pattern is a regional one, even if the fighting is local.

The expanding coalition

The response is becoming regional too. Turkey is sending mainly defensive and technical support to Saudi Arabia, two officials told Reuters, after Turkey and Pakistan pledged to implement a collective defense commitment under their newly formed alliance with the kingdom. Both countries say they are deploying forces to Saudi Arabia, though neither has given troop numbers. Syria is weighing whether to provide military assistance to its Saudi ally, a US official and a Syrian military official told Reuters. The Yemen war, which began as a civil conflict and settled into a Saudi-Iranian proxy war, is now accreting the architecture of a broader regional alignment.

This is how the Middle East’s wars metastasize: not through declarations but through deployments, each one defensive, each one temporary, each one liable to become permanent. Forces sent to defend the kingdom this autumn may well still be there when the next crisis starts.

The humanitarian cost, as always, is borne by Yemenis. The International Organization for Migration said on Wednesday that more than 200,000 people have been displaced since the latest round of fighting began, and the United Nations says three in four families are going hungry in parts of the country. Yemen was already one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters before this summer. It is now worse, and the world’s attention is elsewhere.

The lesson of the chokepoints

There is a larger pattern here, and it runs through the straits. Hormuz, Malacca, Bab el-Mandeb, Panama: the global economy is built on a handful of narrow waters, and the twenty-first century keeps rediscovering how narrow they are. Every few years a different chokepoint demonstrates the same lesson. The ships reroute, the insurers reprice, the costs filter down to fuel pumps and grocery shelves thousands of miles away, and then, when the shooting stops, everyone forgets until the next time.

The Houthis have not forgotten. Their strategy, from the seizure of the Red Sea coast to the strikes on Saudi airports, rests on the understanding that in a globalized economy leverage does not require matching your enemy’s army. It requires threatening something your enemy’s economy cannot do without. A rebel group with drones and missiles, sitting beside a waterway that carries an eighth of world trade, has a seat at every table.

Whether the government’s counteroffensive retakes Mokha or stalls on its outskirts, the underlying reality will not change. The strait is the prize, the prize is leverage, and leverage, once demonstrated, does not need to be used to be effective. The ships are already watching. So are the insurers. So is everyone who heats a home or fills a tank.

Sources

The start of the offensive, the name “Yemen Dawn” and al-Alimi’s statement, the officials’ account of Dhubab, Bab and Hadeid, and the description of the Houthis’ September advance as their biggest land grab in years are from the Associated Press report of 5 October, read on PBS NewsHour’s site. The 12 percent and container-traffic figures, the 2022 ceasefire, the Hormuz context, the blockade of Saudi shipping and the account of US support are from the AP explainer of 6 October, read in a syndicated copy. The airport casualties, the coalition’s interception and statement, Saree’s drone claim, the premature Mokha claim, the casualty allegations, the displacement and hunger figures, Turkey’s support, Syria’s deliberations and the dispute over Iran’s role are from Reuters’ report of 7 October, read as republished by BusinessWorld; the Reuters original was not read directly. The Houthi denial is as CBS News reported it. The pipeline attack and Sarah Phillips’s remark are from the AP report of 12 September, read on PBS NewsHour’s site. A widely repeated claim that the rebels are twenty miles from Djibouti could not be traced to a reputable source and has been left out.