Houthis Seize Bab el-Mandeb, Redrawing Global Energy Map

Sanaa, Yemen: In the space of a single day, an eighteen-hour Houthi offensive redrew a maritime architecture that had shaped global commerce for decades. On Friday 11 September, the movement seized Mokha, Hays, Dhubab and Murad before taking Mayyoun Island and the Hanish Islands, the volcanic outcrops that divide the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into two navigable passes. "Everything that was under our control on the western coast has fallen," a Yemeni official told AFP.

The admission hardly concealed the scale of the reversal. For the first time, a non-state actor holds continuous control of the entire Yemeni Red Sea coastline, extending to the 28-kilometre strait through which between 12 and 15 per cent of global trade once passed. The Houthis, analysts note, no longer need to fire on a vessel to turn it away; their presence alone is enough to set the risk.

The shift is the product of two overlapping conflicts. The Houthis began their Red Sea campaign in late 2023, explicitly linking their operations to Israel's war in Gaza, and their actions have already pushed major shipping companies to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope. Thousands of kilometres away, the Strait of Hormuz has become the central economic pressure point of the US-Israel war with Iran, the principal maritime gateway for Gulf oil and gas. Neither Iran nor the Houthis needs to control the world's oilfields, analysts argue; they need only constrain the narrow waterways through which that oil passes.

The economic data underscore the pressure. Commercial traffic through the Suez Canal has collapsed by more than 75 per cent in a few months, turning what was once a vital artery of global trade into what analysts describe as a ghost waterway. Ships diverted around Africa add ten to fifteen days to the crossing, sharply raising freight costs and the carbon footprint of fleets. Egypt is losing foreign exchange earnings, while the European Union absorbs successive inflationary supply shocks. Saudi Arabia's attempt to bypass the strait by pumping crude through the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu has failed: strikes on the Yanbu terminal, launched from Iraqi territory and confirmed by the Saudi Ministry of Energy, have reduced that alternative to ashes.

Riyadh's security architecture has also unravelled, analysts say. Washington has refused the massive strikes demanded by the Saudi crown prince, reluctant to commit US Navy resources to a naval war of attrition, while Islamabad has declined to send troops or aircraft to the Yemeni front despite the Trilateral Treaty of Mecca signed in August with Pakistan and Turkey. The 8,000 Pakistani soldiers stationed on Saudi soil remain a static presence rather than a power-projection force, leaving the kingdom isolated and exposed.

The ripple effects reach beyond Saudi Arabia. Egypt's canal revenues, European industrial competitiveness and Asian importers all face higher costs, while Riyadh's Vision 2030 development programme, built on foreign investment and coastal tourism, is now weighed down by maximum security risk. "Futuristic megacities cannot be built within range of ballistic missiles," wrote Mohamed Lamine KABA, an expert in the geopolitics of governance and regional integration at the Pan-African University.

Looking ahead, analysts outline three scenarios, none painless: a risk premium permanently embedded in the price of Saudi crude; a Europe forced to choose between accepted logistical overruns and acknowledged strategic dependence; and a redefinition of regional security in which Riyadh must either negotiate from weakness with Tehran or build an independent deterrent it has never had to construct alone. "Bab el-Mandeb is no longer just a strait," KABA concluded. "It's a verdict. And this verdict says that a power that no longer controls its routes will soon control nothing."