The lightning-fast drive down the Red Sea coast all the way to the Bab al-Mandab Strait by the forces of the Ansarallah Houthi movement on Thursday and Friday has caused a real shock, as it now gives them, along with their Iranian allies, de facto control over the two most important choke points in Southwest Asia—with global implications. The Houthis now control the entirety of Yemen’s Red Sea coast to include Mayyun Island (also called Perim), the island in the strait that divides it into two channels, and Zuqar Island about 160 km to the north. The Houthis were reported last night to then be advancing eastwards towards Taiz while the Saudi-backed forces of the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) were desperately fleeing away from them until they clashed with the third armed forces in the country, the UAE-backed southern militias outside of Aden.

In the midst of all this, Axios’s Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, citing his usual unnamed White House sources, reported that Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman had called President Trump twice on Thursday, the second time to ask him to launch strikes on Houthi targets, but Trump refused him. U.S. officials stressed to Axios that the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now. “With Iran already disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of Bab al-Mandab could give Tehran a powerful new point of leverage over the U.S. and its Gulf allies,” Ravid comments. U.S. Central Command chief Adm. Brad Cooper, however, traveled to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent coordination meetings, two unnamed sources said.

As for the strategic significance of the Houthi operation, Al Mayadeen’s assessment is similar to that of Axios. “Whoever commands the coastlines of Bab al-Mandab holds decisive leverage over the trade routes linking Asia, the Arab world, and Europe,” it says. “Beneath the surface, roughly 15 to 17 subsea fiber-optic cable systems carry a substantial share of the data traffic connecting Europe, East Africa, West Asia, and South Asia, making the strait a crucial node for global digital communications as much as for shipping,” it explains. “Wheat, rice, sugar, and fertilizer move through this corridor alongside crude and LNG, a category of food security and agricultural trade that US officials have repeatedly flagged when assessing the risks of a Bab al-Mandab disruption.”