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Iran has instructed Yemen’s Houthis to prepare to disrupt the Red Sea oil route if the United States attacks Iranian power infrastructure. Missiles and drones have reportedly been deployed near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with Houthi forces awaiting an order (reportedly from the IRGC itself) to begin attacks on shipping as of late Thursday. This is a pincer movement by Tehran on the oil routes, building on Hormuz leverage by adding the Houthis into the mix to threaten the southern entrance to the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait that the Saudis now rely on for the bulk of their exports.
On July 13, Yemeni government forces struck the runway at Sanaa International Airport to prevent the landing of an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation. The Houthis responded with ballistic missiles and drones against Abha International Airport in southern Saudi Arabia, breaking the relative calm that had held since the 2022 truce.
On July 16, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi warned that Saudi oil facilities, ports, airports and other critical infrastructure would become missile and drone targets if Riyadh refused to cease and desist.
This is the breakdown in relations in the Gulf that Iran was waiting for (and Israel, as well). It’s the perfect opportunity for an additional justification of its maritime pincer movement, not solely as a response to Trump’s threats to its power plants and bridges.
Iran has instructed Yemen’s Houthis to prepare to disrupt the Red Sea oil route if the United States attacks Iranian power infrastructure. Missiles and drones have reportedly been deployed near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, with Houthi forces awaiting an order (reportedly from the IRGC itself) to begin attacks on shipping as of late Thursday. This is a pincer movement by Tehran on the oil routes, building on Hormuz leverage by adding the Houthis into the mix to threaten the southern entrance to the Red Sea and the Bab El-Mandeb Strait that the Saudis now rely on for the bulk of their exports.
On July 13, Yemeni government forces struck the runway at Sanaa International Airport to prevent the landing of an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation. The Houthis responded with ballistic missiles and drones against Abha International Airport in southern Saudi Arabia, breaking the relative calm that had held since the 2022 truce.
On July 16, Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi warned that Saudi oil facilities, ports, airports and other critical infrastructure would become missile and drone targets if Riyadh refused to cease and desist.
This is the breakdown in relations in the Gulf that Iran was waiting for (and Israel, as well). It’s the perfect opportunity for an additional justification of its maritime pincer movement, not solely as a response to Trump’s threats to its power plants and bridges.
For the Saudis, it means a threat to the 70% of their energy exports that are redirected through the Red Sea, avoiding Hormuz. Tankers leaving the Red Sea port of Yanbu have to traverse the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to reach the Indian Ocean. Disruption at Bab el-Mandeb would force transfers through northern pipelines and Mediterranean terminals with limited capacity.
A Houthi campaign around Bab el-Mandeb would force Iran’s enemies to defend commercial shipping across two separate maritime spaces more than 1,000 miles apart. It also means the Saudis have to focus on new attacks from the south while maintaining air defenses in the northeast against Iran.
The Houthis are not under Tehran’s command. They make their own decisions, as they did initially by responding to the Saudi strikes on the Sanaa airport under its control. But there is clear coordination happening now and plenty of ongoing weapons transfers as Iran takes advantage of this new opportunity. And it was only a matter of time before the Houthis were brought into play.
Yemen is an active security problem for Saudi Arabia, although a fragile truce since 2022 and cooled tensions, during which time the Houthis have been rebuilding and rearming, courtesy of Iran.
What the Saudis fear most is a repeat of 2019, on a larger scale and with up-front Iranian involvement and coordination. The Houthis claimed responsibility for the September 2019 drone and missile attack on Aramco’s Abqaiq processing complex and the Khurais oilfield, taking 5.7 million bpd out of the production mix (more than half of Saudi output and ~5% of global supply). This led to the biggest one-day spike in oil prices since the 1990 Gulf crisis. (UN investigators later determined that the weapons were not launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen, while the Saudis attributed them to Iran.)
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