What Houthi Gains In Yemen Mean For The Iran War
Iran’s hold on the Strait of Hormuz gave it significant leverage over a much more powerful United States for months. But that grip is loosening, even if global energy markets have yet to reflect it.
Now another global transport chokepoint is emerging as a potential front in the conflict, hundreds of kilometers away, on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
The Iran-aligned Houthis’ capture of the Red Sea port city of Mocha and their reported advance toward the Bab al-Mandab Strait have suddenly given Yemen a new significance in the wider war.
The timing is particularly consequential for Saudi Arabia.
With shipping through Hormuz disrupted, Riyadh has increasingly relied on routes through the Red Sea to move its oil to global markets. Saudi seaborne crude exports through Bab al-Mandab were reportedly eight times higher between March and mid-July than during the same period last year.
A Houthi presence close to the strait therefore offers the group a potentially powerful means of threatening Saudi interests and gives Iran another source of leverage over regional energy flows and global shipping.
This, in addition to Houthi strikes this week on Saudi energy infrastructure, “has contributed to a further increase in oil prices, which has been Tehran’s aim all along,” said Hamidreza Azizi, a senior Iran analyst at the Belgium-based International Crisis Group.
“One can therefore expect these developments to further embolden Tehran to stick to its demands and adopt an even more defiant posture vis-a-vis the United States,” he told RFE/RL.
The Houthi resurgence also underscores the limits of the US campaign against the group. Despite weeks of intensive American air strikes targeting Houthi leadership, weapons, and military infrastructure last year, the group has retained the capacity to mount a major ground offensive and threaten key maritime routes.
But that does not necessarily mean Tehran ordered the Houthi offensive.
An Iranian Ally, Not A Proxy
The Houthis are closely aligned with Iran and have received extensive Iranian weapons, training, intelligence, and technical assistance. Iranian personnel have also reportedly helped guide Houthi military operations. But portraying the group as simply an Iranian proxy risks missing what makes the current situation so complicated.
“I have always seen the Houthis’ relationship with Iran as a strategic partnership, and that is even more the case now than before,” Azizi said.
The Houthi movement has its own leadership, interests, ideology, and calculations. It emerged from Yemen’s own political and sectarian conflicts long before the current confrontation between Iran and the United States. The group has repeatedly demonstrated that it is capable of making decisions independently of Tehran, even when those decisions ultimately serve Iranian strategic interests.
Despite Iranian patronage over the years, the Houthis “have their own local and, increasingly, regional ambitions, and they see themselves as a regional power in their own right,” according to Azizi.
The Houthi movement’s rise in stature comes as Lebanese Hezbollah, a once-powerful Iranian partner, has suffered significant setbacks as Israel continues to dismantle its infrastructure in southern Lebanon.
“In this context, the Houthi advances could boost morale among supporters of the Islamic republic inside Iran as well as across its regional network,” Azizi argued. “They could also help offset the broader weakening of Iran’s network of influence in the region.”
The Houthis Advance, Iran Gains
Iran does not necessarily need to control the Houthis for the group to function as a powerful source of Iranian leverage. If the Houthis consolidate their gains along Yemen’s western coast, Tehran could benefit from pressure on Bab al-Mandab without having to directly close another international waterway.
For the Houthis, meanwhile, the war offers its own opportunities.
The collapse of the Yemeni government’s defensive line around Mocha gives the group a chance to expand its territorial and military position on the Red Sea coast while strengthening its regional standing. Any threat to shipping can simultaneously serve Houthi objectives in Yemen and Iran’s broader confrontation with Washington and its regional partners.
“The fact is that, at the current moment, both sides see a benefit in coordination and simultaneous escalation,” Azizi said.
He added that the Houthi advances spare Iran from having to directly engage Saudi Arabia, while Houthi disruption of shipping through Bab al-Mandab and attacks on Saudi energy facilities “would not have had the same impact they have now if the Strait of Hormuz had not already been under pressure from Iran.”
It also presents Saudi Arabia and the United States with a difficult choice.
A major military response could push Yemen from a parallel conflict into an active theater of the Iran war, potentially provoking further Houthi attacks against Saudi territory and infrastructure. But allowing the Houthis to consolidate their position risks leaving a movement hostile to Riyadh in a stronger position near one of the world’s key maritime chokepoints.
The dilemma is particularly acute because the United States is already trying to manage a conflict whose economic consequences extend well beyond the Middle East. Disruptions to oil supplies and shipping have pushed up energy and transportation costs, threatening to fuel inflation and further strain an already fragile global economy.
The significance of developments in Yemen, therefore, is not simply that the Houthis have captured another strategic city. It is that the war may be creating a second maritime pressure point at a moment when the first, the Strait of Hormuz, has become central to the global economy.