The Houthi rebels effectively completed their rapid push to take control of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline on Friday, tightening their grip on one of the world’s most important shipping routes and delivering a dramatic boost to their backers in Iran.
Houthi forces captured Perim, an island in the middle of the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait, several news agencies reported, citing multiple sources. It comes after they captured the historic port city of Mocha just a day earlier.
That was followed by an advance on the strategic coastal town of Dhubab and the apparent withdrawal from Perim — also known as Mayun — of forces from the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized Yemeni government.
The Houthis and the opposing coalition have been fighting a civil war since 2014. The conflict has simmered for years following a truce but erupted into intense fighting again in recent weeks, raising concerns of a return to all-out war and posing a serious new threat to the global economy.
Effective Houthi control over the Bab-el-Mandeb, a gateway to the Red Sea trade route that links Europe and Asia, could further imperil oil exports while granting Iran powerful new leverage in its war with the United States.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, has had to rely on the Red Sea route given the disruption to the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20 percent of the world’s oil typically passes, since the U.S. and Israel waged war with the Islamic Republic in late February.
If the Houthis are similarly able to threaten shipping along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it could reduce oil supplies through another key waterway and deepen the world’s energy crisis.
Global oil prices appeared set to end the week above $100 a barrel for the first time since mid-May, after the dramatic developments in Yemen and new U.S.-Iran exchanges.
The Houthis have also attacked oil facilities in Saudi Arabia itself, and in another potentially significant development satellite imagery on Friday showed a 60-mile smoke plume along the route of the kingdom’s East-West oil pipeline. This has been a key alternative for Saudi exports that can’t transit Hormuz.
Fire detection data showed high-temperature readings at several sites where infrastructure for the underground pipeline is located, but it was unclear what transpired. Neither Saudi officials or the Houthis have commented.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer at King’s College London’s School of Security Studies, warned that the risk of the conflict deepening had “increased substantially.”
“The important change is that the Houthis are now attacking both pillars of Saudi security simultaneously: southern Saudi territory and the Kingdom’s Red Sea strategic depth,” he said in written comments before the Houthis’ reported capture of Perim. “Riyadh still desperately wants to avoid another 2015-style war. But its room for restraint is narrowing,” he said.
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said on X on Thursday that “freedom of navigation and international trade through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab remain safe and uninterrupted,” adding that “there is no need for international concern” about the strait.
It was not clear if that would last, however.
Krieg emphasized that while the Houthis appeared to be taking swift control of the Red Sea coastline in Yemen, the idea that they might gain “full control” of Bab el-Mandab should be approached “cautiously.”
“Even control of Mokha, Dhubab and Perim would not give the Houthis sovereign control of the entire strait because the western littoral remains outside Yemen,” he said. “It would, however, give them a dramatically stronger ability to contest, threaten and potentially deny commercial use of the waterway.”
The result, he said would “constitute an extraordinary shock to the global trading system.”
A senior official with Yemen’s main southern separatist group told NBC News he believed a “lack of strategy” and “poor management” had created a “security vacuum” that the Houthis were able to exploit along the Red Sea coastline.
Amr al-Bidh, from the Southern Transitional Council, blamed this in part on the Saudi-backed government forces’ focus on pushing back his STC from areas it expanded its control to last year. The STC and Saudi-backed forces had been fighting the Houthis together in the country’s north, but that coalition descended into infighting.
“We are also concerned about the situation because they might come to the south, and we have to defend the south from them,” he said in a video interview Friday.
The growing crisis was “not just about oil,” he said. “It’s about families who are displaced and moving from one place because of because of this war.”
The United Nations’ International Organization for Migration warned on Friday at least 46,000 people had so far been displaced in Yemen since fighting escalated last week.
It said that figure spanned the West Coast and Taiz governorates as of Thursday, with the numbers of those displaced “alarmingly rising by the hour.”
The organization called on all parties to the conflict to “guarantee safe humanitarian access and to protect civilians, aid workers and assets on the ground.”
