Houthis Now Control Both Chokepoints of the Red Sea

A Geography of Leverage

The Hanish islands sit 160 kilometres north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, far enough from the water that their capture might look like routine civil-war churn to anyone scanning headlines. It is not. Together with Perim island — seized weeks ago inside the strait itself — the Houthis now hold the full arc of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. They can close the chokepoint whenever they choose, and they have spent the past month proving exactly how.

The strategic geometry here is brutal in its simplicity. For more than a month, the Strait of Hormuz has been under blockade by US and Iranian forces at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. That is the route through which the majority of the world’s seaborne oil from the Gulf passes. Now the Houthis control Bab el-Mandeb on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, the passage that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. Both ends of the peninsula are effectively locked. Iran’s proxy network has turned the Arabian Peninsula into a vice.

How They Gained It

The Hanish capture came after government-allied forces withdrew rather than fought. That tells you something about the state of the anti-Houthi coalition. The islands had been held by UAE-backed allies, but the UAE dismantled its military infrastructure there earlier this year — an early warning signal of Riyadh’s and Abu Dhabi’s exhaustion from the Yemen quagmire. When the Houthis moved in, there was little to stop them.

Mokha fell before Hanish. Perim fell before that. Each gain compresses the government’s remaining coastal positions and extends Houthi launch points closer to international shipping lanes. Inland, the offensive in Taiz province has displaced more than 80,000 people in two weeks, according to the UN. Families are fleeing with nothing they can carry. Whole villages have emptied. Khanzad Shah of Islamic Relief said the scenes in Taiz mirror the early days of the humanitarian catastrophe that has killed more than 150,000 people over the past decade.

The Saudi Dilemma

Saudi Arabia’s response has been strikingly muted. The kingdom retaliated by striking the airport in Sana’a after the Houthis allowed an Iranian plane to land in July, and it has taken occasional Houthi missile and drone strikes — two civilians were wounded and a mosque damaged near the Red Sea coast over the weekend. But Riyadh has not launched a sustained campaign to retake the lost territory. The air strikes against Houthi positions in Mokha and Taiz on Sunday came from Yemeni government forces, not the Saudis.

This is the uncomfortable reckoning the Houthis’ advance forces on Gulf allies: the kingdom that spent nearly a decade bombing the Houthis from the air has concluded that full military re-engagement carries risks it may no longer be willing to accept. The cost of holding Yemen has always been political as well as military, and the war in Gaza, the Iran confrontation, and the broader regional pressure from Israel’s conflicts have stretched Saudi attention and resources thin.

But the calculus is shifting. Every day the Houthis hold the Hanish islands and Perim, they extend their range over Red Sea shipping. The group has already struck Saudi oil infrastructure repeatedly. If the blockade holds, it will raise global oil prices further at a moment when Hormuz is already constrained. The economic leverage flows directly to Tehran.

Who Wins, Who Loses

Iran wins. The Axis of Resistance has long operated on the principle of asymmetric pressure — keeping adversaries engaged on multiple fronts while conserving Iranian forces. Hanish and Perim give the Houthis a permanent foothold that amplifies that strategy. The group can harass shipping, threaten energy infrastructure, and force Gulf states to divert resources to a war they would rather forget.

The UAE loses strategically. Its decision to dismantle military infrastructure on Hanish earlier this year looked like a pragmatic drawdown. It reads now like a surrender of terrain that makes the entire southern Red Sea indefensible for any coalition force. The group that once led the military push against the Houthis in Yemen is now watching from the sidelines, having withdrawn its boots on the ground.

The internationally recognised Yemeni government loses legitimacy with every kilometre of coastline it cedes. Sultan al-Arada called the collapse in Mokha “painful and regrettable” and promised regrouping. Rashad al-Alimi called the defeats “incidental.” The word choices reveal a leadership trying to manage expectations while its forces fall back. More than 150 civilians have been killed since 3 September. The government controls the south and east, including Aden, but its authority on the west coast is evaporating.

What Comes Next

The immediate risk is escalation of the shipping blockade. The Houthis have already demonstrated they can strike Saudi targets and disrupt Red Sea traffic. With Hanish and Perim under their control, they gain staging areas that make those strikes easier and more sustainable. The question is not whether they will use these islands — they already are. The question is whether the blockade hardens into something permanent, the way Hormuz is now effectively held.

Gulf states face a choice between stepping up militarily, which could drag them back into a costly ground war, or accepting a Houthi-dominated Yemeni coast, which means living with a hostile proxy that controls one of the world’s most critical maritime chokepoints. Neither option is comfortable. The status quo — half-hearted air support, reliance on Yemeni government forces, hoping the situation does not worsen — is already producing worse outcomes.

The broader implication reaches beyond the Red Sea. The Iran war has turned the Arabian Peninsula into a contested arena where proxy forces can isolate an entire region from global trade routes. That changes how every major power calculates its stakes in the Gulf. It changes how shipping insurers price risk. It changes how oil markets absorb shocks. And it leaves Yemen’s civilians, already devastated by years of war, facing yet another escalation with no one sufficiently invested in stopping it.