Since February 2026, the Strait of Hormuz crisis has dominated the global energy and economic agenda. That crisis has now expanded into a new theatre. At the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the southern gateway to the Red Sea, tensions between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis have escalated into a new maritime blockade.

Although this development may appear to represent a new crisis, it is in fact the latest escalation of the Yemen conflict, which has persisted for nearly a decade. After the Houthis seized the capital, Sana'a, and overthrew the Hadi government in September 2014, Saudi Arabia viewed the rise of an Iran-aligned actor on its southern border as a direct threat to its national security and launched a military intervention in March 2015. Yemen subsequently became one of the principal theatres of the Saudi-Iranian proxy rivalry. Although the United Nations-brokered ceasefire reached in 2022 significantly reduced hostilities, it failed to deliver a lasting political settlement. The maritime blockade announced on 20 July 2026 should therefore be understood not as an isolated incident, but as the latest escalation in a long-standing regional rivalry. 

Against this backdrop, on 20 July 2026, the Houthi movement in Yemen declared an official maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia. The Houthis' Sana'a-based Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center (HOCC) instructed shipping companies not to load or unload cargo at Saudi ports. Houthi spokesperson Yahya Sarea stated that the decision was taken in response to Saudi Arabia's recent attacks on Yemen—particularly on Sana'a International Airport—and to the blockade it had imposed. In response, Saudi Arabia announced that it would protect its vessels in accordance with international law.

This raises the question of whether the development represents a genuinely new theatre or a different version of the 2023–2024 Red Sea crisis. More importantly, at a time when the Strait of Hormuz is effectively closed, what does the new tension in Bab al-Mandeb mean for the global energy system? Drawing on the experience of the 2023-2024 Red Sea crisis, this paper seeks to answer these two questions and assess the limits of the current risk.

You may read evaluation note from here.