Yemen’s Houthi rebels declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia on Monday, threatening to shut a second global energy chokepoint just as the Strait of Hormuz enters its fifth month sealed off by Iran. The announcement landed hours after a UN spokesperson voiced alarm over a broader resurgence of Middle East hostilities, a day after the World Health Organization reported 50 people killed inside Iran this month alone.
The world has run something close to this experiment before. Houthi attacks shut down Red Sea shipping through 2023 and 2024, adding weeks and hundreds of millions of dollars to global trade routes. This time the threat lands on an oil market already strained by an active Hormuz closure, and on a US-Iran ceasefire framework that collapsed within weeks of being signed.
Houthis Declare a Naval Blockade Against Saudi Arabia
Yemen’s Houthi armed forces said they were imposing “a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of an eye for an eye, effective immediately,” in a statement carried by the group’s SABA media outlet. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the ban on Saudi shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait would take hold at once.
The group blamed Saudi Arabia for a strike on Sanaa International Airport last week. The Houthis said the strike targeted a plane carrying their delegation home from the funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader.
The aircraft landed safely at another airport. The Houthis responded anyway, firing missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport in the most serious confrontation between the two sides in years.
Saudi Arabia has rerouted more than 70% of its crude exports through a pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu since Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz in March. That route has functioned as Riyadh’s only working relief valve.
Weekly crude loadings from those Red Sea terminals had already slipped to 6.1 million barrels a day in the week of July 13, ship tracking firm Kpler found. That was down from a peak of 9.5 million barrels in late June, before Monday’s blockade declaration even landed.
Saudi Arabia exports four to five million barrels a day through pipelines feeding its Red Sea ports, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, which is why access to Bab el-Mandeb has become critical to keeping the kingdom’s oil moving at all.
The Last Time Bab el-Mandeb Went Dark
UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric put the historical marker down himself on Monday. “We’ve seen the Red Sea already being choked off in the past,” he told reporters in New York. “We don’t want to see a return to that.”
What happened last time is well documented. Houthi attacks on merchant shipping began in November 2023 in response to Israel’s war in Gaza. Within months, more than 190 attacks had hit vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Fuel tanker rates from the Middle East to the Netherlands jumped from $23,000 a day in December 2023 to $73,000 a day by late January 2024, according to research from Rice University’s Baker Institute. The cost of shipping a 40-foot container from Shanghai to Genoa climbed from about $1,400 to $6,300 over the same stretch.
Maersk estimated that rerouting a single container ship around the Cape of Good Hope added $1 million in extra fuel and at least 10 days to the voyage. Trade through the Suez Canal dropped by about half in the first two months of 2024 compared with a year earlier.
Oil shipments through the strait itself fell from 9.3 million barrels a day in 2023 to just 4.1 million barrels a day in 2024, US trade figures show. The numbers below lay the two episodes side by side.
| Crisis | Trigger | Chokepoint(s) | Trade Impact | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 to 2024 Red Sea campaign | Houthi attacks tied to the Gaza war, starting November 2023 | Bab el-Mandeb Strait only | Crude flows fell from 9.3 million to 4.1 million barrels a day; Shanghai to Genoa container costs rose from about $1,400 to $6,300 | Attacks eased after regional truces took hold in 2025 |
| 2026 twin chokepoint threat | Iran’s Hormuz closure since March 4 plus the new Houthi blockade declared July 20 | Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb at once | Threatens Saudi Arabia’s only remaining oil export corridor since Hormuz shut | Both fronts active; Houthis call the blockade effective immediately |
The pattern rhymes, but the starting conditions are not the same this time. The Red Sea closed once before with Hormuz still open. Now it would not be.
Could the Red Sea and Hormuz Close at Once?
Not at full capacity yet, but the two are being squeezed together for the first time in this war. Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz on March 4, cutting a route that normally moves a huge share of the world’s oil. A Houthi blockade of Bab el-Mandeb would remove Saudi Arabia’s main workaround at the same time.
The numbers explain the anxiety. Reuters reported that the Iran war has already cut global oil supply by roughly 10%, and that a full closure of Bab el-Mandeb could remove another 7%, a combined hit with little precedent in modern energy markets.
The Strait of Hormuz alone carries around a quarter of global seaborne oil trade along with significant volumes of liquefied natural gas and fertilizer, according to the UN Trade and Development agency. Add Bab el-Mandeb, which normally carries about 12% of world trade and a quarter of global container traffic, and the two straits between them touch a large share of everything that moves by sea.
“The Houthis are signalling that they are prepared to expand the confrontation from Yemen’s territory into the Red Sea maritime domain,” said Neil Quilliam, an associate fellow with Chatham House’s Middle East and North Africa programme. Andreas Krieg, an associate professor at King’s College London, said closing both straits at once would put Saudi Arabia under a “strategic siege.”
Right now we are facing two pressures on two critical choke points for energy security
Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, made that assessment as Saudi Arabia’s alternative export route came under direct threat for the first time since the pipeline workaround began.
Even before Monday’s blockade threat, energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie had modeled a scenario in which an extended Hormuz closure through the end of the year could shrink Middle East GDP by more than 10% in 2026, with European growth also taking a hit. A second, simultaneous chokepoint was not part of that forecast.
Civilians Absorb the Renewed Strikes
The economic modeling sits alongside a rising human toll. Dr. Hanan Balkhy, the WHO’s Regional Director, said Iranian health authorities have recorded 50 deaths and more than 500 injuries inside Iran this month, with women and children among the casualties.
“Across the Middle East, civilians are once again living with the fear and uncertainty of repeated strikes, and health systems are being forced to manage the consequences,” said Balkhy in a regional health update posted Monday.
The impacts reported across the region this week include:
- Iran: A reported strike on a water desalination plant in Hormozgan province disrupted safe drinking water for thousands, while explosions near Baqaei Reference Hospital forced the evacuation of children receiving cancer treatment.
- Qatar: Falling shrapnel injured five civilians, according to the WHO.
- Kuwait: A strike on an oil facility caused significant damage, and hits on power and water desalination plants caused one injury and knocked out several generation units.
Kuwait has absorbed some of the heaviest infrastructure damage of the renewed campaign, part of a strain on the country’s water supply and port capacity that has been building for weeks. Balkhy said the incidents are “placing civilians and environmental health at growing risk, while putting sustained pressure on emergency responders and health services.”
Dujarric, the UN spokesperson, said all parties “must respect their obligations under international humanitarian law, including the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution.” He stressed that hospitals and water systems must be spared.
Nuclear Construction Site Under Fire
The International Atomic Energy Agency said Sunday it was examining reports of an overnight strike on the Darkhovin nuclear power plant, a facility still under construction in Iran’s Khuzestan province. Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said forces hit the site around 3:39 a.m. local time.
The plant “is in the very early stages of construction and contained no nuclear material when last visited by the IAEA,” the agency said in a statement posted to X. Construction officially began there in March 2026, years after preliminary work first started in 2022.
The reported attack was not believed to carry any radiological risk. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi still repeated his call for military restraint around nuclear related sites, a warning he first raised in March when projectiles twice struck near Iran’s operational Bushehr nuclear plant without damaging the reactor.
Diplomacy’s Thin Window Before the Next Strike
The renewed fighting traces back to a ceasefire framework that was supposed to have settled the conflict. The US and Iran signed a Memorandum of Understanding on June 17 intended to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end hostilities that began on February 28 with US and Israeli strikes on Iran, which Tehran answered with retaliatory attacks on Gulf states and Jordan.
That framework collapsed within weeks. Fighting resumed after US service members were killed in recent strikes, and Iran has continued attacking oil tankers, killing at least two seafarers and injuring more than a dozen so far this month.
Still, there are signs the diplomatic door has not fully shut. Brent crude jumped nearly 4% overnight to break $90 a barrel after the latest deaths were reported, then eased once Tehran signaled it remained open to talks with Washington.
The pattern fits a broader trajectory of a war that keeps reopening after each attempt to close it, a dynamic already reshaping the region’s balance of power since fighting first erupted in February.
Dujarric closed Monday’s briefing with a warning about what a second closed chokepoint would mean beyond the battlefield. “It will, of course, impact the flow of UN goods that are shipped, notably humanitarian goods and elements for peacekeeping,” he said. “But much more worryingly, it will again have a negative impact on global commerce, on the trade in energy, and just commerce as a whole.”
