What happens when the Houthis enter the war?

The Straits of Hormuz are effectively closed to tanker traffic. Virtually no ships are entering or exiting the Persian Gulf. For all practical purposes, the flow of oil and natural gas from the Gulf to the rest of the world has stopped.

In response, tankers are now shifting to the Red Sea to load oil from the Saudi port of Yanbu. There are in excess of two dozen tankers loading oil there now. This appears to be a potential workaround allowing oil to flow from the region despite the ongoing hostilities. There’s just one problem.

To get in and out of the Red Sea, ships have to pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. The strait is 20 miles wide and is divided into two channels by Perim Island; the western channel is 16 miles across, and the eastern is 2 miles wide. That means running a gauntlet within missile and drone range of the Houthis, Iranian allies who have demonstrated many times over that they are willing and able to target commercial shipping. The Houthis have so far stayed out of this current war. That appears to be about to change.

On March 14, 2026, the Houthis officially declared their intention to join the ongoing war against the United States and Israel. While the group has not yet launched a large-scale military offensive, its leadership has signaled that “fingers are on the trigger” and they are preparing “surprises”.

They will have plenty of targets to shoot at. The Red Sea has now become the world’s oil lifeline. All hope of preventing an explosion in world energy prices is now resting on the oil being pumped to Yanbu via a 700-mile-long pipeline across the Saudi desert.

The amount of oil flowing this way is only increasing. Saudi Aramco chief executive officer Amin Nasser said on Tuesday that the kingdom was ramping up crude flows through the pipeline. The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Thursday that exports through the kingdom’s western ports had already hit 5.9 million barrels per day (bpd) on 9 March. That was a jump from just 1.7 million bpd in 2025.

“This is exactly what it was designed to do – bypass the strategic chokepoint of Hormuz if Iran shut it down and make Saudi Arabia the producer of last resort,” Jim Krane, a fellow and energy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas, previously told Middle East Eye (MEE).

Unfortunately, it also grants the Houthis enormous power. Every vessel bringing oil out of Yanbu has to pass twice through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – once to pick up Saudi crude, and again to bring it to market. Each time, they will potentially be under fire from Houthi forces armed, trained, and directed by Iran.

“This makes the Houthis important,” Greg Priddy, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest, told MEE. That may be the understatement of the year. It means the Houthis will be holding a knife to the world’s neck and in a position to largely shut down the economies of nations, particularly those in East Asia, that are not energy independent.

It is worth noting that the Houthis possess a significant arsenal of missiles and drones and have demonstrated their ability to use them. These include multiple versions of anti-ship ballistic missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles. These are not guys who are simply firing off missiles and hoping they hit something. They are employing sophisticated weapons. They have a lot of help from the Iranians, and they know how to employ all these weapons in complex layered attacks that even U.S. warships have had a hard time defeating.

As if all that were not bad enough, the Houthis also use remote-controlled suicide boats. Those drone boats are often made to look like fishing vessels common in the Red Sea region and are typically fashioned out of fiberglass or wood, per the Ambrey maritime security firm. In January of 2024, one washed up on shore in the Bab el Mandeb Strait. “Inspectors found three electronic switches connected to 25kg (about 55 pounds) of C4 explosives – approximately 33.5kg (about 74 pounds) of TNT equivalent, and 50kg (about 110 pounds) of TNT,” per Ambrey.

As with recent attacks in the Persian Gulf by Iranian forces using remote controlled boats, an operator in a second vessel often guides the kamikaze vessel to its target. In other cases, however, it appears the Houthis are using GPS and a video feed to steer the attack vessel.

Against all these Houthi weapons, an oil tanker is a sitting duck.

Every day, this war takes another step up the ladder of escalation. In the very near future, it appears all but certain that escalation will involve the opening of a second front by the Houthis in the Red Sea. And, when the Houthis enter the war, the world will finally be face-to-face with, at least temporarily, a full cutoff of oil and natural gas from the Middle East.

Originally published by AND Magazine