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Iran gains leverage with Bab al-Mandab Strait under Houthi control
The waterway, which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean, is a busy transit point for crude oil, cars and other manufactured goods.A lightning offensive along Yemen’s Red Sea coast by Iranian-backed Houthi militants has strengthened Tehran’s leverage in its war of economic attrition with Washington — giving it the ability to threaten a waterway that plays an even broader role in global shipping than the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis last week swept through the coastal towns of Mokha and Dhabab and took the island of Perim, cementing their grip over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which is at the entrance to the Red Sea and known as the “Gate of Tears.”
“This is a major, almost unprecedented, strategic achievement for Iran and the Houthis,” said Dennis Citrinowicz, an Iran expert at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv and a former Israeli military intelligence analyst. “At precisely the moment when Tehran is trying to drive up the economic cost of its confrontation with the United States, the Houthi advance gives Iran enormous additional leverage.”
About 8.7 percent of global seaborne trade passes through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, making it one of the busiest chokepoints for maritime transport, according to 2023 figures published by the United Nations. That includes 20 percent shares of both cars and containers, 15 percent of oil products and 13 percent of crude oil.
The strait, which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the broader Indian Ocean, is about 18 miles wide at its narrowest point. It is bordered by Djibouti and Eritrea to the west and Yemen to the east.
Perim Island naturally divides the strait into two channels for traffic. Transiting vessels carry bulk commodities, manufactured goods and energy, allowing disruptions in the bottleneck to have global repercussions.
Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in region with the Red Sea on its west coast and the Persian Gulf on its east, is literally caught in the middle.
Now, the threat of Iran-backed forces controlling both straits, Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, could allow Tehran to use multiple fronts to ramp up pressure on Washington.
The unpopular Iran war and soaring energy prices have created an increasingly heavy burden for President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress less than two months before the Nov. 3 midterm elections.
Trump last week accused Iran of trying to influence the midterm elections and acknowledged he wasn’t poised to resolve the six-month-old conflict or reduce pump prices until after the midterms.
Amid the Houthis’ advance, the price of oil jumped above $100 per barrel and has stayed there — its highest levels since May. Friday was “the first day that Iran really started winning the war,” one Yemeni official, who is part of the country’s internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government, told The Washington Post, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.Ask The Post AIDive deeper
Boats float in the Bab al-Mandab Strait on July 24. (Khaled Ziad/AFP/Getty Images)
On Saturday, Trump sounded a conciliatory note, telling reporters that “the Houthis called us” and said “they don’t want to fight with us.”
“They would much prefer not having us involved,” Trump said during a meeting with Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. “They are letting most ships go through.”
Iran appeared to further flex its regional influence when drones launched last week from Iraqi territory, most likely by Iran-backed militias, hit the Saudi-operated East-West Pipeline, which funneled up to 7 million barrels of oil per day toward the Red Sea, further squeezing global supplies.
Taken together, the developments suggested a degree of coordination by Iran at a crucial juncture, as Tehran seeks to regain leverage after Trump and his administration imposed sweeping sanctions to choke the Iranian economy, and began using naval and air forces to escort tankers through Hormuz.
The drone attack shows that “energy supplies are highly vulnerable, whether it’s by sea or by pipeline,” said Rob Haworth, a strategist at U.S. Bank.
For now, it’s not clear whether the Houthis will use their territorial gains to impose a broad blockade — or how Trump will respond.
A significant U.S. military operation to force a reopening of the Bab al-Mandab or a prolonged shutdown of the East-West Pipeline could send oil prices “much higher than what we’ve already seen this week,” Haworth said.
In July, the Houthis also vowed to block the access of Saudi Arabian ships to the Red Sea while Iranian-backed militias in Iraq fired at — but failed to hit — the Saudi pipeline in what also appeared to be a coordinated effort.
Commercial vessels sit anchored in the Strait of Hormuz off Bandar Abbas, Iran, on Sept. 7. (Vahid Salemi/AP)
Sima Shine, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies and former head of analysis at Mossad, said Iran was taking advantage of the window before the Nov. 3 midterm elections to drive up oil prices and pressure Trump with a multipronged maneuver.
Although the Houthis historically are not known to coordinate with Tehran as closely as other Iran-backed groups in the Middle East, last week’s events showed Iran’s interests aligning perfectly with those of the Yemeni militia, which seeks to overthrow the Yemeni government backed by Saudi Arabia. In Iraq, several Iran-backed militias have sought to rebuff the government’s attempts in recent weeks to disarm them.
“It’s much more coordinated between the Iranians and the Iraqi militias and the Houthis,” said Shine, who noted that even if the East-West Pipeline came back online, the Houthis could still threaten tanker traffic by positioning drones and artillery near the Bab al-Mandab coast.
Analysts say it’s not immediately clear how the events of the past week will affect the oil market.
Saudi Arabia announced the pipeline’s closure on Friday, and the Iraqi government said it had launched an investigation. The attack sent a message that pipelines across the region — present and future — are potential targets.
Persian Gulf oil exporters have advanced plans to build alternative pipelines, such as through the United Arab Emirates and across Iraq and Syria, to circumvent the chokepoint.
U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the Houthi threat, telling reporters that “the Houthis called us” and said “they don’t want to fight with us.” (Kin Cheung/AP)
Abdullah al-Junaid, a geopolitical commentator in Bahrain, said a renewed U.S. campaign against the Houthis was unlikely. The two sides reached a ceasefire agreement during the first few months of Trump’s second term in May 2025, and Gulf countries should recognize that the U.S. military is not in a position to open another front, al-Junaid said.
“The U.S. Navy is stretched far too thin at the present time. The assets are not available to address multiple threats like Iran and now Yemen,” al-Junaid said. “The regional powers need to step up and address this issue. We can’t just depend on the U.S. to solve our regional issues anymore.”
The Red Sea is such a crucial waterway that international powers in the past have cooperated to keep the area free of piracy — for instance, from Somalia. The United States, France, Japan and Italy all operate naval bases in Djibouti, just across the Bab al-Mandab from Yemen, and in 2017 China chose the small East African country’s coast for its first overseas military base.
If the Houthis widen a blockade of ships traversing the strait, cargo ships traveling between Europe and Asia would be denied access to the Suez Canal and have to travel around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, adding weeks to their journey.Ask The Post AIDive deeper
Citrinowicz said Iran was now close to choking all export routes for Saudi Arabia — the region’s largest oil exporter.
“What makes this particularly serious is that there is no obvious solution on the horizon, military or economic,” he said. “This is not simply another Houthi battlefield victory in Yemen. It fundamentally changes Iran’s leverage in its confrontation with the United States and places much greater pressure on the global energy system.”
