Yemeni forces fighting for the internationally recognized and Saudi-backed government announced Sunday they were withdrawing from an area overlooking the strategic Bab el Mandeb Strait, handing control to the Iran-aligned Houthis.
The government’s withdrawal from the Bab el Mandeb region gives the Houthis greater influence over the maritime bottleneck, creating “a powerful pressure point on global shipping as Iran continues to disrupt traffic in the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.”
This double squeeze would further isolate Gulf oil producers from their main shipping routes.
The Bab el Mandeb Strait is one of the world’s most important and busiest routes for global maritime shipments of goods and merchandise, particularly from Asia to Europe via the Suez Canal in Egypt.
South Yemeni forces said they were redeploying to Aden, where the government is based, as the Houthis – who control much of the north, including the capital Sanaa and Yemen’s most populated areas – increase pressure on southern areas still under government control.
“The southern armed forces announce the implementation of a redeployment operation of their forces from Dhubab airport and the Bab el Mandeb region, west of Taiz governorate,” the southern forces said in a statement.
“This measure is taken based on the priority of securing the capital, Aden, and neighboring governorates, as well as strengthening the front lines and confronting existing threats. »
Government forces launched a military campaign in October to retake strategic coastal areas from powerful militias, who had pushed south in September in a bid to take control of Yemen’s entire Red Sea coast. The lightning offensive brought the Houthis within range of Bab el Mandeb.
The escalating fighting, which broke a UN-brokered truce in 2022, has become another volatile front in the broader US-Israeli war against Iran, as the Houthis continue to launch attacks on Saudi Arabia, a key US ally and the world’s largest crude exporter.
Houthi attacks on the kingdom, which had enjoyed relative calm during the early months of the nine-month war with Iran, disrupted flights and oil supplies as the Houthis struck Saudi ports, airports and facilities of state oil company Saudi Aramco – including the kingdom’s Red Sea oil export center at Yanbu.
In response, Saudi Arabia struck Houthi targets in Yemen, a country mired in civil war since 2014, when the Houthis pushed the government south. Poor Yemen is grappling with one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Fighting intensifies around the western Taiz region, with humanitarian conditions deteriorating. The city, home to around half of the 300,000 people displaced across Yemen following the latest fighting, remains under siege. Humanitarian supplies cannot enter and civilians cannot exit.
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