WASHINGTON—This morning, the Iran-backed Houthis announced a blockade of Saudi Arabia, threatening a critical lifeline for the Gulf and global oil supplies. The announcement follows weeks of escalating rhetoric between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and an exchange of missiles last week that disrupted a four-year-long détente between the Yemeni group and the Saudi-led coalition and their partners in the Yemen government. Saudi Arabia is currently exporting approximately four million barrels of oil per day from the Red Sea port of Yanbu, up 400 percent from pre-Iran war levels. And the Bab el-Mandeb strait has emerged as a much-needed alternative to the Strait of Hormuz for global oil flows, with more than seven million barrels per day transiting the strait in June, up from roughly four million barrels before the Iran war.
Three factors will determine how disruptive the new Houthi campaign will be to global oil markets and Gulf economic stability:
1. Can the Houthis threaten Yanbu itself or just the Bab el-Mandeb?
The Houthis have demonstrated that they can disrupt maritime traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb using weapons that can be either produced domestically or procured through the Houthis’ diverse supply chains. While the Houthis don’t control the coastline along the strait itself, they used a variety of small boats, drones, and missiles to attack more than a hundred commercial ships between 2023 and 2025. These attacks rendered the waters of the twenty-mile-wide strait too risky for most shippers, even those ships that the Houthis said were not targets. The Houthi campaign also proved difficult to combat: the Trump administration declared a hasty ceasefire with the Houthis following an aggressive air campaign, but the Houthis continued to sink ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis suffered significant military and economic damage from aggressive US and Israeli strikes during 2024 and 2025, but they quickly began rebuilding their arsenal.
The Houthis’ announcement today puts the oil transiting the strait—which represents about 7 percent of global supply—at risk. The Houthis have not yet clarified which ships they will target, but their intent to blockade Saudi ports implies that any ship visiting Saudi ports and carrying Saudi oil would be in the crosshairs. The oil currently transiting the strait from the north is going primarily to Asian markets. During their earlier Red Sea campaign, the Houthis cut deals with Russia and China to permit their ships to pass—but the Houthis may be less willing to cut deals with Chinese ships carrying Saudi oil. In addition, the Houthis’ targeting record during their previous Red Sea campaign also proved imprecise, with the group attacking ships that had tenuous or outdated connections to Israel.
Cutting oil flows through the Bab el-Mandeb strait would be a blow to global oil supplies, given limited alternative routes. But it would allow Saudi Arabia to continue exporting oil through Yanbu north, across the Red Sea to Egypt’s SUMED pipeline, which can carry roughly 2.5 million barrels per day to the Mediterranean. Additionally, tankers can carry roughly one million barrels via the Suez Canal. That supply is critical for global markets already suffering from a 4 million barrel per day deficit due to closure of the Strait of Hormuz, especially as global inventories, which have provided a much-needed buffer, are nearing their operational minimums. On top of this, it will threaten an important source of food and other imports for Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf, as Saudi Red Sea ports have become a Gulf hub since the Iran war choked off the Hormuz.
If the Houthis target Yanbu itself, however, they could disrupt Saudi Arabia’s oil exports at the source. Prior to the United Nations–negotiated truce in April 2022, the Houthis targeted Yanbu multiple times with missiles and drones. An attack just days before the truce took effect temporarily reduced production at the Yanbu refinery. It remains unclear if the Houthis have the stockpiles of more advanced missiles and drones needed to pose a sustained risk to Yanbu, which sits roughly eight hundred miles northwest of Houthi-controlled Yemen. So far this year, the Houthis have fired a handful of missiles and drones against Israel, demonstrating that they still have some weapons that can travel over a thousand miles. But Saudi Arabia’s robust air defenses and a mixed Houthi track record with long-range strike precision mean that the group would likely need more significant stockpiles to overwhelm Saudi air defenses and hit their target.
2. Is this a Houthi negotiating tactic or a justification for war?
The Houthis have framed their campaign as a proportional measure in response to a Saudi “blockade” of Yemen. While they warned that they were readying for a return to all-out war, their leadership may instead be focused on another goal: securing further concessions from Riyadh.
Prior to the 2022 truce, the Houthis’ military campaign was focused on seizing control of all historical north Yemen, including the country’s primary oil and gas fields. But that campaign failed, due in significant part to Saudi close air support. Since 2022, the Houthis have instead sought to gain access to oil and gas revenues and formalize their control over Yemen through negotiations, including extensive backchannel talks with Riyadh. But progress towards a comprehensive agreement was derailed by the Houthis’ Red Sea campaign and the US response, which included re-designating the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in March 2025. Still, the Houthis refrained from resuming their ground offensives inside Yemen. This restraint might be because the group assessed that it was not ready, or because it was confident that it could secure concessions via negotiations with Saudi Arabia, or both.
If the Houthis’ latest announcement is focused on extracting new concessions from Riyadh, they will seek new concessions that affirm the Houthis’ unrestrained control over northern Yemen and ease the group’s economic woes. This could include flights from Sana’a to friendly cities such as Tehran and Muscat. On the other hand, if this is not about negotiations, it may be the group’s attempt to justify a return to all-out war to a weary population. The former could preserve a relatively quick off-ramp for the blockade, while the latter would signal a longer-term conflict that would further destabilize the Gulf while it is still coping with fallout from the Iran war.
Even if the latest Houthi announcement is just a negotiating tactic, the fragile regional environment could still push Yemen into an all-out war, especially because Tehran appears intent to stoke the conflict to put additional pressure on Washington and the Gulf. It is worth noting that while Iran may be fanning the flames, the Houthis have repeatedly demonstrated a hesitancy to take orders from Tehran and are likely to prioritize domestic considerations over Iranian requests, as they have since the start of the Iran war.
3. Where do the Saudis draw the line?
Riyadh has been in a vulnerable position with the Houthis for years. The group has routinely threatened to resume missile and drone attacks against the kingdom since the 2022 truce, using the threats to extract concessions and weaken the Saudi-backed Yemen government. During the Gaza war, renewed Houthi attacks threatened to put Riyadh on what many in the country believed to be the wrong side of a war against Palestinians. At the height of the Iran war this year, Riyadh harbored concerns that renewed Houthi attacks would tax Saudi air defenses aimed at Iran and Iraq, in addition to threatening Saudi oil exports.
There are several reasons for Riyadh to resist a return to war and seek a renewed path to a negotiated settlement in Yemen. To begin with, the Gulf is still dealing with Iranian attacks and disruption to the Strait of Hormuz. Just as important, the Saudi-led coalition campaign against the Houthis between 2015 and 2022 failed to weaken the Yemeni group and triggered an international backlash against Riyadh.