Houthis Seize Bab el-Mandeb as Hormuz Stays Choked
Iran-backed Houthis seized Mayyun Island on September 11, completing their takeover of Bab el-Mandeb. Hormuz has run at 7% of normal transit volume since late February. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline was reportedly struck overnight. Brent crude is near $109. U.S. diesel broke $6 per gallon
Both of the world's most critical oil chokepoints are now under hostile control simultaneously, and Saudi Arabia's only significant bypass route is reportedly on fire.
Key takeaways
- Iran-backed Houthi forces seized Mayyun Island on September 11, completing physical control of Bab el-Mandeb, the strait that carried 8.1 million barrels per day in Q2 2026 and connects Red Sea shipping between Asia and Europe.
- The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since February 28, running at roughly 6 vessels per day versus a normal ~85, while Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline bypass was reportedly struck overnight, with Aramco yet to confirm damage.
- Brent crude is near $109 per barrel and U.S. diesel broke $6 per gallon nationally for the first time, with the founder and CEO of Real Macro warning that $5 gasoline before the midterms is "extremely high" probability.
Houthi forces completed their takeover of Mayyun Island (also known as Perim Island) on September 11, 2026, according to AFP via Euronews, giving Iran's proxy physical control of the narrowest section of Bab el-Mandeb and the ability to interdict every tanker moving between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It is the second critical energy chokepoint under hostile control at the same time, with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed since late February.
"The Houthis have completed their takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area and Mayyun Island, which is located in the middle of the strait," an unnamed Yemeni government official told AFP. A separate AFP source added: "Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it yesterday."
Yemeni government forces had withdrawn from Mayyun on September 10. By September 11, the coastal corridor from Dhubab to Mayyun, including the town of Murd, was fully Houthi-controlled, per Reuters via Defence Blog. Mayyun has its own airstrip, and its position physically splits Bab el-Mandeb into two shipping lanes, meaning whoever holds it can interdict or toll every vessel in transit.
The Math the Futures Market Is Still Pricing In
Here is the supply picture entering Northern Hemisphere winter.
Hormuz was running at approximately 6 vessel transits per day as of September 6, against a pre-war baseline of roughly 85 per day, per the straits.live live tracker. That is 7% of normal. The strait carried approximately 20 million barrels per day before the conflict. Saudi Arabia, locked out of Hormuz, had rerouted crude through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, which pushed Bab el-Mandeb flows to 8.1 million barrels per day in Q2 2026, up from 5.4 million in Q4 2025, per EIA data via Newsweek.
That bypass just got choked on both ends in a single 24-hour window.
Houthis claimed a strike on the East-West pipeline overnight September 10/11. Satellite imagery (Sentinel-3) shows a large smoke plume over the pipeline route, per the Daily Caller. Saudi Aramco has not confirmed any damage. The pipeline runs roughly 1,200 kilometers from the Eastern Province to Yanbu and carries up to 7 million barrels per day. Even the threat alone closes Saudi Arabia's primary workaround for Hormuz disruption.
Layer in Saudi production collapsed to 6.24 million barrels per day in August 2026, against pre-war levels closer to 10 million, per OPEC data via Gulf News. Saudi Arabia and Russia together pumped roughly 5.5 million barrels per day less in August than in January 2026, per IEA data. Jeff Currie, founder and CEO of Real Macro and former Goldman Sachs commodities chief, told CNBC on September 10 that China's return to global oil markets is now the additional accelerant: "Actually, I put a bigger weight on China coming back to the market." He placed the odds of $5 per gallon gasoline before the midterms as "extremely high," per OilPrice.com.
Brent crude was trading near $109 as of September 11 per straits.live. U.S. diesel broke $6 per gallon nationally for the first time in history, standing at $6.06 per AAA data reported by multiple outlets on September 11. Every supply chain with a diesel input carries that price forward with a lag.
What This Means for the Monetary Architecture
This is not just an oil price story. The petrodollar system runs on physical infrastructure: oil flows through chokepoints, dollars pay for the oil, and the U.S. Navy theoretically keeps the lanes open. That architecture is breaking down simultaneously at two nodes. Iran controls Hormuz directly. Iran's Houthi proxy now controls Bab el-Mandeb. The Saudi bypass is under fire. China is back buying crude aggressively.
Central banks facing a stagflationary energy supply shock have no clean tool. Raise rates and you crater debt-laden governments carrying post-pandemic balance sheets. Cut rates and you pour fuel on inflation already embedded in diesel, freight, and food. That trapped position is the environment where hard, non-sovereign, non-physical-infrastructure-dependent money becomes structurally necessary. The pipes that move sovereign energy are now battlefields. Bitcoin has no pipes.
The falsifiable version: if Hormuz returns to near-normal commercial transit within 30 days, Houthi presence on Mayyun is reversed by coalition forces, and oil falls back below $80 without central bank intervention, the near-term structural pressure dissipates. All three conditions must resolve. Any one alone is insufficient.
What to Watch
The immediate pressure point is the Saudi East-West pipeline. Aramco's silence on the claimed strike is the variable that moves markets next. If confirmed damaged, the last meaningful physical bypass for Gulf crude exits the equation entering winter. Watch also whether the Houthis attempt to formalize a toll or blockade regime at Bab el-Mandeb, a posture they have reportedly discussed with Tehran according to AFP via Euronews and corroborated by Reuters reporting cited by The Hill. The Hormuz disruption forecast already extends through 2027. A simultaneous, durable Bab el-Mandeb closure compounds that timeline.
Update, September 14, 2026
The escalation that was purely about chokepoints and pipelines is now a direct military exchange between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia's own air force infrastructure. On Monday, the Houthis claimed a large-scale missile and drone attack on King Khalid Air Base in the southern Saudi city of Khamis Mushait, with Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree saying dozens of ballistic missiles and drones were fired at the installation.
Saree claimed the attack struck aircraft hangars, radar systems, runways, and ammunition depots, causing "significant losses."
The base is one of the Royal Saudi Air Force's principal launch pads for Yemen operations. Saudi Arabia has not confirmed damage. The Houthis framed the strike as retaliation for more than 300 Saudi air strikes across several Yemeni provinces over the prior five days.
The East-West pipeline, already struck Friday, is staying shut. Saudi Arabia kept the 1,200-kilometer pipeline closed throughout the weekend after it was damaged in drone strikes on Friday, and oil prices jumped when markets reopened Monday.
Saudi oil traders told Reuters that unless the pipeline is opened within days, the kingdom will run out of export stock, removing as much as 4% of worldwide supply from the market, and that Saudi inventory had already plummeted to its lowest level in 30 years even before the pumping station attack.
One source told Reuters repairs could take five to six weeks.
Any near-term diplomatic off-ramp just got kicked down the road. Another attempt to clinch a deal between Iran and Oman to restore some traffic to the Strait of Hormuz was set back when officials from Iran, Iraq, and GCC nations who were scheduled to meet in Oman's port city of Salalah on Monday failed to convene.
Hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough faded when Oman's foreign minister posted late Sunday that the regional meeting had been postponed "in the interests of consensus."
Saudi Arabia, under pressure from Iranian-allied militias in Iraq and Houthi rebels in Yemen, requested the postponement of what would have been the highest-level multilateral talks between Tehran and Persian Gulf nations since the start of the U.S.-led war in February, according to Iran's Foreign Ministry. With both chokepoints locked, the pipeline offline, the Saudi air base under fire, and diplomacy stalled, the structural supply shock is now running without a relief valve in sight.
Update, September 16, 2026
The conflict crossed a new threshold on Tuesday when Saudi Arabia said it shot down a Houthi drone near Mecca, Islam's holiest city, drawing swift regional condemnation of the Iran-backed Yemeni rebel group.
Saudi-led coalition spokesperson Turki al-Maliki said Royal Saudi Air Defence Forces intercepted the hostile drone before it entered restricted airspace, condemning the incident as an attempt to frighten worshippers and harm civilians and warning that the security of the two holy mosques and pilgrims is a "red line."
Saudi Arabia issued a security alert for Mecca for the first time since the Houthis last attempted to target the sacred area in 2017.
The Houthis strongly denied the claim, with military spokesman Yahya Saree saying its targets were Saudi oil facilities and military bases "far removed from the holy places."
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation condemned the incident as a "heinous" attack.
The kingdom's claim drew condemnation from across the Middle East, but no immediate sign of military support as fears grew of a return to all-out war between the key U.S. ally and the Yemeni rebels.
Later Wednesday, the rebels claimed, without offering evidence, that they shot down an F-15 fighter jet operated by the Saudi-led coalition over the central province of Marib.
On the diplomatic front, Iran's top diplomat Abbas Araghchi was visiting China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, as talks were expected to focus on the conflict and on shipping on the Strait of Hormuz. Washington is not stepping in: top U.S. officials in recent days have indicated a lack of desire to get involved in the conflict, with President Trump saying Saturday, "The Houthis called us, and they don't want to fight with us," adding that the rebels appear focused on the Saudis. With Mecca now in the crosshairs, Saudi Arabia faces maximum political pressure to respond kinetically, which would pull the conflict further from any negotiated exit and keep both chokepoints locked for longer.
Update, October 3, 2026
The war is moving toward a major ground phase. Saudi Arabia is planning an offensive against Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen, with options being considered including a coastal push to secure the Red Sea shipping route or an assault on multiple fronts, according to regional and Western officials who spoke to Reuters.
The plans were confirmed by six regional and Western sources; Yemeni government forces under Saudi command would lead the ground operations backed by Saudi airstrikes, with more than 100,000 Yemeni government troops and pro-government militia fighters potentially mobilized depending on the scale.
The Saudis are weighing two options: either a narrowly focused attack on the area around Bab el-Mandeb or a broader offensive hitting multiple fronts across the governorates of Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz, and Al-Jawf.
The trigger for the offensive calculus is leverage, not just retaliation. Riyadh has concluded it cannot enter new Yemeni peace negotiations with the Houthis while the militants remain in control of Bab el-Mandeb, giving them significant global leverage.
The U.S. is already providing intelligence to support Riyadh's operations in Yemen, and some regional and European nations are providing mainly defensive military aid, though Saudi allies are not expected to play a direct role in combat operations.
France has separately announced it will send defensive systems and troops to Saudi Arabia to help protect the Red Sea port city of Yanbu.
Meanwhile the Houthis have continued hammering Aramco infrastructure. A major fire erupted at Saudi Aramco's Jizan facility following a reported Houthi missile strike, with 73 people reportedly wounded at the site.
The Saudi-led coalition reported intercepting and destroying three additional Houthi ballistic missiles launched toward Khamis Mushait, while Houthi forces claimed Saudi aircraft launched 94 strikes against areas under their control in a single 24-hour period. The combination of a battered Jizan refinery, a still-offline East-West pipeline, and an imminent ground campaign means the supply picture heading into Q4 is structurally worse, not better.
Update, October 4, 2026
The offensive that was being planned is now being executed. Bloomberg confirmed that Yemen's internationally recognized government launched a full-scale military bid to recapture all Houthi-held territory on Sunday, with Rashad Al-Alimi ordering all branches of Yemen's army to begin operations and fight "until the liberation of the country from the grip of the terrorist Houthi militia."
Al-Alimi said the decision to launch operations followed "the Houthi militias' continued mobilization, escalation and attacks, as well as their threats against civilians, facilities, neighboring countries, and international shipping lanes."
Fighting has already intensified near the southwestern city of Taiz, and the Yemeni forces' spokesman Col. Majid Abdullah al-Nuzaili said government forces struck "vital targets" and Houthi strongholds in Sanaa and Saada.
The Houthis are not sitting still. The Saudi-led coalition dismissed a fresh Houthi claim of responsibility for an attack on a Saudi oil facility as "misleading," even as Al-Alimi was formally announcing the start of operations.
Fighting has continued to intensify around Taiz city, Yemen's third most populous city, which sits between Houthi-controlled areas in the north and government-controlled areas in the south -- making it a likely flashpoint as the ground phase opens. With the offensive now formally underway rather than merely planned, the timeline for any resolution to the Bab el-Mandeb blockade has just gotten longer, not shorter.
Sources
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Mayyun Island and why does controlling it matter?
Mayyun (also called Perim Island) sits in the narrowest section of Bab el-Mandeb, physically dividing the strait into two shipping lanes. Any vessel moving between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, covering the trade route linking Asia and Europe, transits within range of whoever holds the island. Houthi control gives Iran's proxy the practical ability to interdict, inspect, or toll commercial traffic at will.
Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?
Effectively no. As of September 6, Hormuz was processing approximately 6 commercial vessel transits per day against a pre-war baseline of roughly 85 per day, putting traffic at around 7% of normal per the straits.live live tracker. Iran imposed the blockade following U.S.-Israeli strikes in late February 2026. The EIA has extended its disruption forecast through 2027.
What does a simultaneous closure of both straits mean for inflation?
Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb together carried more than a quarter of global seaborne oil and petroleum trade at pre-war baselines, and nearly one-third of global container traffic transited the Red Sea. With both corridors restricted and the Saudi bypass pipeline under fire, the physical supply deficit entering winter is a math problem, not a futures trader's tail risk. Diesel at $6-plus feeds into freight, food, and manufacturing costs with a multi-month lag. Central banks can raise rates or cut them; neither resolves a physical supply shortage.
