From Hormuz to Bab-el-Mandeb: How Houthi Strategy Extended the Chokepoint Problem
The Strait of Hormuz has a sister chokepoint at the other end of the Arabian Peninsula. Bab-el-Mandeb, the narrow passage between Yemen and Djibouti that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, carries the maritime traffic of the Suez Canal route — container ships, bulk carriers, tankers moving between Europe and Asia, and LNG vessels serving European regasification terminals. When Houthi forces in Yemen began attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea in late 2023, they demonstrated that Iran’s sphere of proxy influence could threaten two of the world’s most critical maritime corridors simultaneously.
The operational connection between the Houthi maritime campaign and Iran’s Hormuz posture is real but not simple. Iran provides weapons, targeting intelligence, and training to the Houthis through a logistics chain that runs across the Gulf of Oman and through Omani waters — the same shadow maritime network that moves Iranian crude and weapons to other proxy forces. The Houthi decision to attack commercial shipping was consistent with Iranian strategy of maintaining multiple pressure points, but it was not simply a directive from Tehran. The Houthis have their own political calculations and their own domestic audiences. They used the attack campaign to establish an independent regional profile that is distinct from, though aligned with, Iran’s agenda.
The shipping industry’s response to Houthi attacks illustrated the cost structure of maritime chokepoint threats. Major container shipping companies rerouted vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding approximately ten to fourteen days of transit time and corresponding fuel costs to Europe-Asia voyages. The rerouting decision was economically rational given the available alternatives, but it imposed costs — higher freight rates, disrupted delivery schedules, and increased vessel demand — that were borne by consumers at the end of the supply chain. Insurance premiums in the Red Sea followed the same spike pattern observed in the Persian Gulf during earlier crisis periods.
The military response — a US-led coalition conducting strikes on Houthi launch sites in Yemen — demonstrated both the capability and the limitation of naval power in this context. Air strikes can destroy missile launchers, radar systems, and command facilities. They cannot eliminate the ability of a dispersed, ideologically motivated force to regenerate launch capacity from a country-sized area of operations with a sympathetic population. The Houthis absorbed strikes and continued attacks. The calculus for commercial shipping — which must make voyage decisions based on probability and cost, not capability demonstrations — remained affected.
For Hormuz specifically, the Houthi campaign expanded the geographic scope of the Iran-linked maritime threat in ways that complicated coalition defense planning. A naval force managing both the Hormuz threat and the Bab-el-Mandeb threat simultaneously faces a resource allocation problem that neither alone would create. Mine countermeasures, escort operations, surface surveillance, and strike capacity are all finite. Distributing them across two chokepoints separated by the entire Arabian Peninsula requires either more assets than coalition navies have allocated to the region or accepting reduced coverage at one end.
The precedent established by the Houthi campaign is strategically significant beyond its immediate operational effects. It demonstrated that a non-state armed group with appropriate external support could impose substantial costs on global commerce through a maritime chokepoint at affordable cost to itself. The missiles and drones used in attacks are far cheaper than the shipping industry’s rerouting costs and the military’s interdiction expenses. Asymmetric economics apply in chokepoint interdiction as in other domains of irregular conflict. Iran’s strategists have noted the demonstration.
Two chokepoints at the ends of the Arabian Peninsula, both under pressure simultaneously, both connected to the same external patron. The geography of global energy trade has never been more concentrated, or more contested.