Houthi Announce Blockade Against Saudi Arabia

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis announced a naval blockade targeting Saudi Arabia this week, threatening to disrupt a critical Red Sea shipping route and deepen an energy crisis already fueled by the US-Iran conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The Houthis said Monday they were imposing a “maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye,’ effective immediately,” but did not specify how the blockade would be enforced.

The group said the move was retaliation for what it described as Saudi airstrikes on the airport in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, while an Iranian official was traveling through the facility earlier this month. Saudi Arabia condemned the blockade.

The Houthis control territory along the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, which links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.

Observers…