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Yemen’s Houthi rebels have announced an immediate maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, threatening one of the last major routes for Saudi oil with the Strait of Hormuz already crippled.
Some shit you should know before you dig in: If you’re unaware, the Bab el-Mandeb strait is a 20-mile-wide waterway that sits between southwestern Yemen and the Horn of Africa, connecting the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea and, through the Suez Canal, to the Mediterranean. Roughly 12% of global trade normally moves through it, along with about a quarter of global container traffic. The Houthis have proven they can disrupt it before, attacking more than 100 vessels in the roughly two years after the Gaza war began in 2023, sinking four ships and killing nine crew members. They paused those attacks after last October’s Gaza ceasefire, though transit volumes never fully recovered. The Houthis have been running the show in northern Yemen since they seized the capital of Sanaa in 2014 and forced the government into exile, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene in 2015 and impose an air and sea blockade. That civil war has killed more than 150,000 people and left over 22 million needing aid, according to the UN, and a truce reached in 2022 had largely held until last week.
What’s going on now: Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree announced in a video statement that the group was declaring a “maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye,'” saying Saudi Arabia had imposed an “unjust and oppressive siege” on Yemen while “plundering our resources and imposing a comprehensive blockade on our ports and airports by land, sea, and air.”
He warned that “any foolish act committed by the reckless Saudi enemy through all escalation will be met with a comprehensive and decisive escalation.” Nasruddin Amer, deputy head of the Houthi media office, said on X that the group was “closing Bab al-Mandab to Saudi enemy ships.” Neither offered specifics on how the embargo would actually work.
The timing is notable because the Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut down by Iran since the war escalated, which left the Saudis pushing north of 70% of their crude out through the East-West Pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Shipments out of that port have been running near 4 million barrels a day lately, a massive jump from the roughly 973,000 they were moving at this point last year. Bab el-Mandeb as a whole carried 7.4 million barrels a day in June, which works out to something like 7% of what the world produces. The Iran war has already cut global oil supply by roughly 10%, and a full closure of Bab el-Mandeb would knock out that 7% on top of it.
Despite the shit talking from the Houthis, Saudi Arabia said it expects business as usual, vowing to keep the waterway open and protect its vessels. “All Houthi threats against transiting vessels will be dealt with swiftly and firmly, as such threats are a blatant violation of international law and fall under acts of maritime piracy,” said Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki, a Saudi military spokesperson.
The Saudis also said they had begun implementing protection measures for their ships transiting the strait, and the foreign ministry said the kingdom “will take all necessary measures to protect its ships in accordance with international law.”
This all comes after a week of rapid escalation, with the Houthis firing missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport in retaliation for strikes on Sanaa’s airport that they blamed on the kingdom, strikes the Saudi-backed Yemeni government took credit for, saying it was preventing an unauthorized Iranian plane from landing.
