Houthis Seize Mocha and Mayyun: How Iran Gained New Leverage Over Bab al-Mandab
By Moataz Khalil
The Houthi movement’s capture of Mocha, Dhubab, Mayyun Island and other positions along Yemen’s western coastline represents far more than another battlefield victory in Yemen’s long civil war. It changes the strategic geography of the Red Sea by giving the Houthis physical control over territory directly overlooking one of the world’s most important maritime corridors. For years, the group has demonstrated an ability to threaten shipping through missiles, drones and maritime weapons. What has changed is that those capabilities are now reinforced by control of strategically important coastal areas and islands around the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
This does not mean that the Houthis literally control every vessel passing through Bab al-Mandab, nor does it mean that they can shut the strait at will. The more important development is that they now possess a far stronger ability to monitor, threaten and potentially disrupt commercial traffic passing through the southern gateway to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. That distinction matters because maritime leverage does not require complete physical control of a waterway. A force capable of surveilling vessels, launching anti-ship missiles and drones, and operating from territory adjacent to a narrow shipping corridor can impose substantial economic and strategic costs even without maintaining a formal blockade.
The development is particularly consequential because it comes as Iran is already exerting significant pressure around the Strait of Hormuz. Together, these two theaters create the possibility of a much broader regional pressure strategy in which Iran and an Iran-aligned armed movement possess leverage around two of the Middle East’s most important maritime chokepoints.
The Houthis Now Have the Weapons and the Geography
Bab al-Mandab connects the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean to the Red Sea, Suez Canal and Mediterranean, making it essential to trade between Asia, Europe and the Middle East. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, around 8.1 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products moved through the strait during the second quarter of 2026, underscoring how important the route has become as disruptions elsewhere in the region have reshaped energy flows.
Mayyun, also known as Perim Island, sits directly within the Bab al-Mandab Strait, while Dhubab faces the island from the Yemeni mainland and Mocha provides additional strategic depth farther north along the Red Sea coast. Reuters reported that Yemeni government forces had withdrawn from Mayyun and that the Houthis had also taken Dhubab following their capture of Mocha and rapid expansion along the western coastline.
The importance of these positions lies not only in geography but in how geography interacts with the Houthis’ existing military capabilities. The group has already shown that it can use missiles, drones and maritime weapons to alter shipping behavior across the Red Sea. Beginning in 2023, repeated Houthi attacks persuaded major shipping companies to reroute vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding thousands of nautical miles to some journeys and increasing fuel costs, insurance premiums and freight rates. The EIA found that Red Sea insecurity had already significantly altered global oil and energy shipping routes well before the Houthis’ latest territorial gains.
The difference now is that these asymmetric capabilities are supported by direct territorial control. The Houthis no longer merely possess the weapons required to threaten Bab al-Mandab; they also occupy positions that improve their ability to observe maritime traffic, support targeting and maintain operations near the strait.
Iran’s Emerging Two-Chokepoint Strategy
The most important strategic consequence of the Houthi advance may be the way it complements Iran’s existing position around the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has long understood that it does not need to permanently close Hormuz in order to affect global markets. The credible threat of disruption is often enough to influence oil prices, shipping decisions, insurance costs and the calculations of governments that depend on Gulf energy exports.
The Houthi advance creates a similar source of leverage at Bab al-Mandab. Chatham House described the capture of Mocha as the most consequential shift in Yemeni territorial control in years and warned that Iran and its allies can now exert pressure around two strategically important maritime chokepoints.
This fits into a wider Iranian regional strategy that has been built over decades. As MidEast Journal previously examined in “How Iran Built Its Proxy Network: The Evolution of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iraq's Militias,” Tehran has invested heavily in allied armed movements capable of generating strategic pressure far beyond Iran’s borders. Yemen became Iran’s principal southern pressure point, allowing the Houthis to threaten Red Sea shipping while retaining their own local agenda and political interests.
The relationship between Tehran and the Houthis should not be oversimplified. The Houthis are not simply an Iranian military unit, and they have repeatedly demonstrated a significant degree of autonomy. At the same time, Iranian weapons, technology, training and technical assistance have been central to the development of Houthi military capabilities. Reuters has also reported that Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisers provided direct guidance during the latest offensive toward Mocha, citing Iranian, Yemeni and regional sources.
The strategic effect is therefore difficult to dismiss. Iran can generate pressure around Hormuz, while its most capable regional ally now possesses much greater leverage around Bab al-Mandab. Even without a centrally coordinated blockade, this combination could force governments and commercial operators to manage serious risks at both ends of the Arabian Peninsula at the same time.
Saudi Arabia Faces an Immediate Strategic Problem
For Saudi Arabia, the timing is particularly problematic because instability around Hormuz has increased the importance of its western export infrastructure. Riyadh has invested heavily in its East-West pipeline and the Red Sea port of Yanbu precisely to reduce dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and preserve an alternative export route during periods of regional escalation.
That alternative is now more exposed. Reuters reported on September 10 that Saudi Arabia had been loading millions of barrels of oil through Yanbu as an alternative to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Houthi control of positions surrounding Bab al-Mandab does not automatically prevent those exports, but it increases the risks facing tankers moving south from the Red Sea toward Asian markets.
This is where the interaction between Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab becomes strategically significant. Pressure around Hormuz pushes Saudi Arabia to rely more heavily on the Red Sea, while greater Houthi leverage at Bab al-Mandab makes the Red Sea route less secure. The two chokepoints therefore reinforce one another, creating a broader regional vulnerability that neither can fully explain when examined in isolation.
Egypt and the Suez Canal Are Also Exposed
Egypt faces a different but equally serious risk because Bab al-Mandab is effectively the southern gateway to the Suez Canal. Ships moving between Asia and Europe through Suez must first travel through the Red Sea, meaning that any sustained increase in insecurity around Bab al-Mandab can directly affect traffic through one of Egypt’s most important sources of foreign currency.
The consequences of earlier Houthi attacks demonstrated how quickly shipping behavior can change. EIA data show that oil flows through Bab al-Mandab fell from 9.3 million barrels per day in 2023 to 4.1 million in 2024 as ships avoided the Red Sea, while traffic around the Cape of Good Hope surged.
For Egypt, this means that Houthi leverage is not merely a security problem in distant Yemeni waters. It carries direct economic consequences for Suez Canal revenues and therefore for an economy already vulnerable to regional instability. For European and Asian economies, the impact comes through longer transit times, higher fuel and insurance costs and less predictable supply chains. For Gulf states, the concern is strategic: one of their principal maritime links to global markets becomes increasingly vulnerable to an armed movement aligned with Iran.
A Strategic Gain That Also Creates Houthi Vulnerabilities
The Houthi advance nevertheless contains an important paradox. Territorial expansion increases the group’s leverage, but it also increases its exposure. Mobile missile launchers, dispersed drone systems and underground facilities are difficult to locate and destroy, whereas fixed coastal positions, ports, radar installations and forces deployed on islands are considerably easier to identify and target.
Holding Mocha, Dhubab and Mayyun therefore imposes new military responsibilities on the Houthis. They must defend territory, maintain supply lines, protect command centers and preserve infrastructure that is valuable precisely because it is geographically fixed. Their new positions strengthen their ability to influence maritime traffic, but they also create targets that could become vulnerable in a major regional confrontation.
The strategic question is therefore not whether the Houthis have become invulnerable. They have not. The more important question is whether their control of these positions becomes sufficiently entrenched that their ability to threaten Bab al-Mandab becomes a permanent feature of the regional security environment.
From a Yemeni Armed Movement to a Maritime Power
The Houthis were already a regional military actor long before the capture of Mocha and Mayyun. They had attacked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, launched missiles and drones toward Israel and targeted international shipping across the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Their military reach had clearly moved beyond Yemen’s borders.
What has changed is the nature of that power. Previously, the Houthis possessed the weapons required to threaten Bab al-Mandab from a distance. They now possess both those weapons and the geography from which to use them more effectively. That combination matters because maritime chokepoints do not need to be physically closed to become sources of strategic coercion. A limited number of attacks, or simply a credible expectation of renewed attacks, can persuade commercial operators to reroute vessels voluntarily.
The economic effect can therefore resemble a blockade even in the absence of one. If shipping companies and insurers conclude that transit through Bab al-Mandab carries unacceptable risk, they can remove themselves from the route without the Houthis ever formally closing it.
What Happens If This New Reality Is Allowed to Harden?
The principal danger is not necessarily that the Houthis will suddenly shut Bab al-Mandab completely. A more plausible and potentially more enduring risk is that their current position becomes normalized and entrenched. If the movement is able to establish permanent missile sites, surveillance systems, logistics networks and military infrastructure around Mocha, Dhubab and Mayyun, the capacity to threaten Red Sea shipping could become far more difficult to reverse.
That would give the Houthis a continuing source of leverage over Saudi Arabia and other regional governments while also increasing Iran’s ability to impose economic costs indirectly through allied forces. Shipping companies would be forced to price the possibility of renewed Houthi escalation into every period of regional tension, while insurers could permanently raise the cost of Red Sea transit. Saudi Arabia would find it harder to treat Yanbu as a secure alternative to Hormuz, and Egypt could face recurring pressure on Suez traffic.
More broadly, Iran would gain a strategic advantage that goes beyond any single battlefield. Tehran would possess the ability, directly or through a powerful ally, to generate pressure around both Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab. Even if those pressures were never exercised simultaneously in a coordinated fashion, the existence of the capability would itself shape regional calculations.
What a Response Would Have to Address
Any serious regional or international response would have to address more than the immediate protection of commercial vessels. Maritime patrols and naval escorts can reduce risks to individual ships, while air and missile strikes can degrade launch sites, radars and fixed infrastructure. Yet neither approach by itself changes the territorial balance inside Yemen or prevents the Houthis from rebuilding military capabilities over time.
Diplomacy may reduce short-term escalation, but an agreement that freezes current front lines while leaving the Houthis permanently entrenched around Bab al-Mandab could also institutionalize much of the leverage they have just acquired. At the same time, attempts to reverse Houthi territorial gains will remain difficult as long as Yemen’s anti-Houthi forces remain divided, poorly coordinated and dependent on competing external sponsors. Chatham House has argued that the latest Houthi offensive exposed years of fragmentation and command problems within Yemen’s government-aligned camp.
A durable response would therefore have to combine maritime security with a broader effort to prevent the Houthis from turning their latest territorial gains into permanent strategic infrastructure. That could include stronger intelligence-sharing among Red Sea states, improved defenses around critical ports and energy facilities, pressure on Iranian supply networks, and greater coordination among Yemeni forces opposed to Houthi rule. The precise mix of diplomacy, deterrence and military pressure will differ among governments, but the central objective is clear: preventing Bab al-Mandab from becoming a permanent instrument of regional coercion.
The Bottom Line
The Houthi capture of Mocha, Dhubab, Mayyun and other positions around Bab al-Mandab does not mean that the group exercises absolute control over every vessel passing through the strait. What it does mean is that the Houthis have combined sophisticated missile, drone and maritime capabilities with direct control of territory overlooking one of the most important commercial corridors in the world.
At the same time, Iran continues to demonstrate the economic and geopolitical leverage created by pressure around the Strait of Hormuz. Taken together, these developments create the possibility of a new regional maritime architecture in which Iran and its allies can generate complementary pressure around two critical chokepoints linking the Gulf, Indian Ocean, Red Sea, Suez Canal and global energy markets.
If the Houthi position becomes entrenched, the long-term danger is therefore not simply another temporary disruption of Red Sea shipping. It is that coercive leverage over Bab al-Mandab becomes a permanent feature of the strategic balance in the Middle East, giving Iran and its partners another mechanism for imposing costs on regional rivals and the global economy whenever the next crisis arrives.
Moataz Khalil is an Egyptian, London-based journalist and media researcher specializing in Iran and Middle East affairs. He is a senior contributor to Middle East 24 and MidEast Journal and has written for media platforms across the Middle East.