Yemeni government military officials said the Houthis hold the entirety of Yemen's Red Sea coastline after a week-long offensive, including the Yemeni side of Bab al-Mandeb and the Greater and Lesser Hanish Islands1. A senior officer in Yemen's internationally recognised government and a Houthi official separately confirmed the capture of Mayun, the island inside the strait, in reporting published on Saturday 12 September 20262. The Houthis took the port of Mocha on 10 September in the same push3.
Bab al-Mandeb separates Yemen, on the eastern shore, from Djibouti and Eritrea on the western, and links the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Roughly 12 per cent of world seaborne trade moves through it4. This week's gains drew no naval response, and Saudi Arabia announced a 43-nation maritime defence coalition covering the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and the Gulf of Aden on 30 July, with thirteen founding members and no start date.
The crude that Saudi Arabia's overland pipeline delivers to the Red Sea has already stopped using this exit. Riyadh has loaded no crude for export through the strait since the Houthis declared their embargo on 23 July, sending Yanbu barrels north into the Suez Canal instead, and Egypt's Ain Sokhna terminal, the Red Sea inlet of the Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline, takes part of that rerouted volume. The drones hit the feed into Yanbu in the same week the southern exit changed hands, leaving one working route out of the Red Sea and a pipeline that is not pumping into it.
The analysts quoted by NPR read the Red Sea gains as fitting Iran's strategy of using allied pressure to keep oil and gas prices elevated5. No source claims the two operations were coordinated, and the militias in Maysan and the Houthi forces on the coast answer to different commands.
