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The Iran-aligned Houthis in Yemen are signaling a major escalation in the war between the Islamic Republic and the U.S., threatening a blockade on a key Red Sea shipping route that facilitates about 7 percent of the world’s oil supply.
The move would borrow from the Iranian playbook that has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz and compound the global energy crisis spurred by the Iran war.
The Houthis in their announcement on Monday said they are specifically targeting all of Saudi Arabia’s energy and other exports through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. But the consequences are global.
“The Houthis are trying to thread the needle with this threat,” said April Longley Alley, senior fellow at The Washington Institute.
“They’re focusing on Saudi Arabia, not on the U.S., Iran or the Straits of Hormuz. But effectively, by doing this, it’s directly connected to that regional conflict, because obviously Saudi’s ability to export oil is a vital lifeline.”
The Houthis are looking to extract key concessions for their own domestic purposes, calling for a complete end to Saudi restrictions on their air and seaports, among other demands, Alley said.
The triggering event for the Houthis was a July 13 attack on the Sanaa airport in northern Yemen, which prevented a sanctioned Mahan Air flight from Iran from landing. Analysts say Saudi Arabia carried out the strike, which had the effect of violating a four-year ceasefire that had been relatively stable.
“Iran is not a bystander in what is happening right now, they are the ones who facilitated the flight with the Houthi delegation to and from Sana’a,” Alley said. She called it a “brazen step” by Iran to create a new status quo in Yemen.
The fact that Saudi Arabia was willing to compromise the ceasefire suggests that the benefits of the truce had changed for Riyadh, said Brian Carter, research manager at the Critical Threats Project and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute — or that the Saudis had calculated whatever was on that plane posed an unacceptable risk.
The ceasefire, agreed in 2022, halted Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia that were threatening their investments. The Houthis had been attacking oil facilities and undermining Saudi Arabia’s pitch for the country as a new destination for investment and tourism.
“I think that the Saudis are very reticent to become involved in Yemen to a significant degree again, like they were in the late 2010s,” Carter said. “But if the Houthis force their hand, they may have to do some sort of tit-for-tat strikes.”
The Houthis initially responded with an attack against an airport in Abha, Saudi Arabia, but expanded their retaliation against Riyadh with a maritime blockade, justifying it as an “eye for an eye” in response to what they called “an unjust and oppressive siege” against the territory they hold in northern Yemen.
At least two tankers carrying Saudi crude oil reportedly turned around in the Red Sea on Tuesday in response to Houthi warnings that those ships would be targets for attacks if they approached the Bab al Mandeb Strait.
Those tankers were heading south from Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port, where they had picked up oil from the country’s East-West pipeline, a route that has allowed Riyadh to bypass Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Bridget Toomey, a research analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Tehran is demonstrating, or at least seeking to project, its leverage over the global oil markets. She also raised concern that Saudi alternatives, such as sending tankers through the Suez Canal, risk bottlenecking the narrow passageway given the enormous size of the tankers.
Toomey added, “If the Houthis are successful in curtailing Saudi oil exports, over 70% of which are now moving through the Red Sea, then that would certainly impact oil markets and could raise prices.”
If kinetic strikes break out between the two sides, that will signal a grave escalation in the regional war.
President Trump on Tuesday said the U.S. would “take care of things” if the Houthis follow through on the blockade, risking the implosion of a truce between America and the Houthis established in May 2025. That truce came after a two-month back-and-forth of fighting that the U.S. launched to halt the Houthis’ attacks against shipping in the Red Sea.
“They took a lot of damage last Spring,” Carter said of the Houthis. The U.S.-designated terrorist group is likely reluctant to provoke a U.S. retaliation, he continued, but are also weighing the calculation of how difficult it would be for the U.S. to carry out another strike campaign while they’re engaged with the Iranians.
The Joint Maritime Information Center said in a notice on Tuesday that sources close to the Houthis stated that they have completed preparations to attack vessels, including the deployment of missiles and drones near Bab el-Mandeb.
Hussein Abdul Hussein, a research fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies focusing on the Gulf and Yemen, called the Houthis capabilities a “cheap kind of piracy.”
“Once you hit the first tanker, then the second tanker; the third one will not show up,” he said.
Hussein was critical of the Saudis for not stepping up and challenging the Houthi threat, pointing out that Riyadh is one of the top spenders on their military in the world, with a budget of $78 billion in 2025, orf 7.1 percent of its GDP at the time.
“Now is the time for your military to step up and at least defend your own tankers,” he said. “Even the Houthis said that this is not connected to Iran… they said this is because it’s the two of us, it’s you, Saudis, and us, Yemenis. Our problem.”
Still, Hussein recommended the U.S. use this opportunity to bring together Gulf partners in a greater regional alliance to counter Iran and its allies. He said it would take a bigger marshalling of resources by the White House rather than the “ad-hoc” basis of the back-and-forth strikes going on with Iran.
He raised that Russia and China would likely veto an effort to gain consensus at the United Nations Security Council, but said the U.S. should reach out to allies like the United Kingdom and France. Those two countries have proposed leading a multinational mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz, although the U.K.’s position could change under new Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who took power on Monday.
“I think now you have stars aligned in such a way that you design this as a proper multinational, U.S.-led effort to just force Iran to roll back, just keep the waterways open,” Hussein said, adding that opening up maritime shipping routes is separate from U.S. talks with Iran over its nuclear program.
“But only the man in the White House knows what’s going to happen. If I were him, this would be my thinking right now.”
Mallory Wilson contributed to this report.
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