How Yemen’s Houthis Could Worsen the Oil Crunch

One thing that’s helped to limit the damage in oil markets since the Iran war largely shuttered the Strait of Hormuz is the availability of an alternative route for getting crude from Saudi Arabia to Asia: the Red Sea.

The Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that controls much of Yemen, throttled much of the traffic through that crucial waterway for two years starting in late 2023. In response to Israel’s war in Gaza, they launched attacks on commercial and naval ships near the Bab el-Mandeb strait that connects the southern Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, causing what was then the biggest disruption to global trade since the Covid-19 pandemic.