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houthis
The Urgency of Recognizing the Ansar Allah Government in Yemen
Recognition of Ansar Allah as the legitimate interim or transitional government of Yemen would be an important step to align the international response with the reality on the ground and with the Yemeni people’s desperate need for peace and self-determination.
Sep 22, 2026
The Trump administration came perilously close to launching another bombing campaign against Yemen this weekend. According to a September 20 New York Times report, US commanders had approved their targets, American troops were loading bombs onto warplanes, and an attack on Yemen's Ansar Allah forces was about to begin when President Donald Trump abruptly reversed course.
For two weeks, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had been pleading with Trump to intervene as Ansar Allah (Houthi) forces swept through Saudi-backed forces’ positions along Yemen's Red Sea coast. Trump initially resisted, but after another urgent call from the Saudi crown prince, he instructed the Pentagon to prepare for airstrikes. By Sunday, he had changed his mind again, at least temporarily.
The New York Times reported that many of Trump's closest advisers opposed joining the Saudi war. US military officials also questioned whether renewed bombing would accomplish anything, given that Ansar Allah had withstood more than 1,000 US strikes during a seven-week campaign in 2025. That operation consumed roughly $1 billion in munitions and other military resources in its first month alone.
It is simply wrong, legally and morally, to claim that a collection of Ansar Allah’s opponents holed up in Aden and hotels in Saudi Arabia are the legitimate government of Yemen, and that the government that has run the country and defended it against a decade of outside aggression is illegitimate.
Meanwhile, Ansar Allah has assured Washington that it does not intend to attack American ships. US officials recently met Ansar Allah representatives in Oman in an effort to preserve that agreement. A new American bombing campaign could undo those diplomatic gains and threaten shipping through the Bab al-Mandab Strait just as the Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted.
The crisis spawned by the US war on Iran spread to this dangerous new front on July 13, when the 2022 ceasefire between Saudi Arabia and the de facto Ansar Allah government in Yemen was shattered by a Saudi missile strike on the airport in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital.
The Saudi attack was designed to prevent the landing of an Iranian Mahan Air civilian plane carrying passengers returning from the funeral of Iran’s assassinated Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran. The flight was forced to divert to Hodeidah, 140 miles away on the Red Sea coast.
Yemen’s Ansar Allah forces retaliated by attacking the Saudi airport at Abha, near the Yemeni border, with missiles and drones. Since then, hostilities have escalated dramatically.
Ansar Allah forces have captured the strategic port city of Mocha and the remainder of the Red Sea coast from Saudi-backed forces. They are still fighting to consolidate control of the Kahbub mountains that overlook the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, but they are already preventing Saudi ships from sailing through the Red Sea.
The Saudis have responded with hundreds of air strikes on Yemen. Ansar Allah, in turn, has attacked Saudi airbases and oil infrastructure with missiles and drones. Either the Yemenis or their allies in Iraq struck pumping stations on Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, which was the Saudis’ best alternative to the Strait of Hormuz as a route for their oil exports, shutting down the pumping stations, and full operation of the pipeline, for at least a month.
The United States has dispatched an estimated 200 additional troops to Saudi Arabia to provide intelligence and targeting expertise for Saudi airstrikes, using programs like Palantir’s Maven AI system, which the US and Israel also use in Gaza, and which US officials now admit was used in the massacre at the Minab girls’ school in Iran in February.
The US State Department has also approved a $5 billion weapons sale that would provide Saudi Arabia with 5,000 2,000-pound bombs and 5,000 500-pound bombs, along with JDAM guidance kits and fuses. This comes in addition to a planned $24 billion sale of 48 F-35 fighter jets to the Saudis and follows record US arms sales to Saudi Arabia for $110 billion in 2018 and $142 billion in 2025.
Congress has not yet consented to these latest Saudi arms sales that can only mean more death and devastation for the people of Yemen. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), backed by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has filed a Joint Resolution of Disapproval that can stop the sale if it receives enough votes. Here’s a link to ask your senators to support it.
US support for Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen is based on US recognition of the Saudi-based Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), chaired by Rashad al-Alimi, as the government of Yemen. The council was created in 2022 after former Yemeni president Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi resigned, following the United Nations-brokered truce.
But the renewed war raises a fundamental question: Why is the United States still treating a Saudi-based council as the legitimate government of Yemen, while refusing to recognize the government that actually controls the capital and governs most of the country’s population?
Since 2015, international recognition of Saudi-backed governments-in-exile has served to justify a decade of war and economic strangulation against 80% of Yemenis who live in the area governed by Ansar Allah, including Sana’a, the capital.
Between 2015 and 2022, with full US support, Saudi Arabia and its allies dropped over 69,000 bombs and missiles on Yemen, including thousands on civilian targets, killing at least 8,983 civilians, according to Iona Craig’s Yemen Data Project. By the end of 2021, the UN estimated that the war, blockade, and resulting humanitarian crisis had caused 377,000 deaths.
So how did Yemen end up in such a frightful predicament? How can the United States, other countries, and even the UN continue to recognize exile governments that have supported bombarding and starving their own people for over a decade?
The roots lie in Yemen’s failed political transition after the Arab Spring. In 2011, a mostly peaceful uprising brought down Yemen’s corrupt, repressive, US-backed president, Ali Abdullah Saleh. His vice president, Hadi, was appointed to a two-year term as interim president in 2012. Ansar Allah, based in Saada in north Yemen, played a leading role in the uprising against Saleh and participated in the National Dialogue that was supposed to guide the transition.
But Hadi failed to organize the planned election by February 2014. His term was extended for another year, but the transition again stalled. That’s when Ansar Allah moved south from its base in Saada, combining popular protests over fuel prices and the stalled political transition with an armed advance toward Sana’a. Its fighters entered the capital in September 2014, defeating government forces. Ansar Allah was subsequently granted seats in a UN-approved interim government under President Hadi.
But the power-sharing arrangement quickly broke down. Tensions between Ansar Allah and Hadi’s government escalated over the drafting of a new constitution and the division of political power. In January 2015, Ansar Allah seized the presidential palace, and Hadi resigned and retired to his home in Aden. Ansar Allah formed a ruling council to fill the vacuum.
However, a month later, with support from Saudi Arabia, Hadi rescinded his resignation and tried to reclaim the presidency. A few days later, he fled from Aden to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, and, in March, 2015, the Saudis attacked Yemen, with US support. This led to a devastating seven-year-long bombing campaign, with other Arab countries sometimesproviding warplanes and ground forces. But the Saudis failed to restore Hadi to power or to capture the most populated parts of the country.
Both Hadi’s claim to the presidency and Saudi Arabia’s military intervention on his behalf lacked legitimacy from the outset. The Saudi assault on Yemen was not approved by the UN Security Council, making it a violation of the UN Charter’s prohibition on the use of military force.
As the Saudi-led, US-backed war raged on, splits appeared in both the anti-Houthi forces and the countries backing them. The UAE backed a separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Aden, whose goal was an independent South Yemen.
The UAE finally withdrew its forces at the end of 2025, and the Saudi-based PLC defeated the STC in Aden. But Saudi-funded mercenaries, mostly from Sudan, and eight disparate Yemeni groups that still hold territory in the south and east, had neither the strength nor the unity to resist Ansar Allah’s offensive along the Red Sea coast.
Ansar Allah, by contrast, has grown stronger. Skilled Yemeni engineers have learned to manufacture missiles and drones, using parts imported mainly from China, and its forces have fought successful wars to defend Yemen from its enemies and exert control over shipping in the Red Sea, despite heavy US bombing campaigns in 2024 under Joe Biden and 2025 under Trump.
They have also gained global support for their defense of Palestinians when they launched missiles and drones at Israel and disrupted Red Sea shipping during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Ansar Allah is now a well-established, and seemingly popular, nationalist government. This reality contradicts the Western assertion that they are simply an Iranian proxy.
In fact, Ansar Allah is deeply rooted in Yemen itself, emerging from the Zaydi religious and ethnic group of northern Yemen whose Imams ruled Yemen for centuries.
Zaydis currently make up between 35% and 45% of Yemen’s population, and have historically co-existed peacefully with their Sunni neighbors. It is simply wrong, legally and morally, to claim that a collection of Ansar Allah’s opponents holed up in Aden and hotels in Saudi Arabia are the legitimate government of Yemen, and that the government that has run the country and defended it against a decade of outside aggression is illegitimate.
As the UN General Assembly meets in New York this week, world leaders have a chance to address this injustice and its catastrophic impact on the long-suffering people of Yemen. China and other countries have long called for a political settlement. In 2018, 63 US Senators voted to withdraw US support for the war after the Saudis murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And in 2022, the UN successfully brokered a ceasefire that prevented large-scale hostilities for several years.
UN officials and world leaders should use this occasion to work for a diplomatic solution.
Recognition of Ansar Allah as the legitimate interim or transitional government of Yemen would be an important step to align the international response with the reality on the ground and with the Yemeni people’s desperate need for peace and self-determination.
At the very least, it is high time for the United States, the United Nations, and the media to stop referring to a self-appointed gang of Saudi collaborators as Yemen’s “internationally recognized government.”
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Oil Hits $109 per Barrel as Photos Show Extensive Damage to Key Saudi Pipeline
Revelations about damage to the pipeline come as the global oil market is "screaming for barrels," said one analyst.
Sep 14, 2026
Fears of a global energy shortage are rising amid new revelations about damage inflicted last week on a key oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia.
According to a Monday report in The Associated Press, Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, which is used to transport oil to the Red Sea, will be shut down for weeks after being hit last Thursday by a drone strike.
Anonymous officials in the region told the AP that repairing damage from the attacks, which the Saudi government has blamed on Iran-backed militias based in Iraq, "could take three to five weeks, including at a major pumping facility."
The Guardian reported Monday that "Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for export" if the pipeline isn't repaired within days, which could lead to "the loss of up to 4% of global supply."
Satellite photos published on Sunday showed extensive fire damage suffered by a pumping station connected to the pipeline. Saudi Arabia had been using the pipeline to divert oil supplies to the Red Sea and away from the Strait of Hormuz, which has been mostly closed to commercial shipping traffic since President Donald Trump launched an illegal war against Iran in February.
In a news analysis published Monday, Bloomberg's Alex Longley noted that damage to the pipeline couldn't come at a worse time for global energy markets, which have already been under strain for months thanks to both the Iran War and continued fighting between Russia and Ukraine.
"Whatever happens, the oil market will need a quick fix," Longley wrote of the pipeline's closure. "It's currently screaming for barrels."
Even if the pipeline were repaired quickly, it would not bring immediate relief to global energy prices, given that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, Houthi fighters in recent days have ramped up their campaign to disrupt oil shipments through the Red Sea, and Trump's refusal to forge a diplomatic solution with the Iranians continues with no end in sight.
The Houthis on Thursday seized the Yemeni port city of Mocha from Saudi-backed forces, giving the group a greater ability to launch attacks on vessels trying to transport oil through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
The price of Brent crude surged past $109 per barrel during trading on Monday after news broke that the damaged Saudi pipeline would take weeks to fix.
The rising cost of oil has been creating pain for US consumers in the form of higher prices for gasoline and diesel fuel. Data released Monday by the American Automobile Association showed that the average price of gas in the US now stands at $4.32 per gallon, while the price of diesel hit another record high of $6.23 per gallon.
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85,000+ Yemeni Civilians Displaced by Renewed Fighting Kicked Off by Trump's Iran War
"Behind every number is a family who's lost everything," said a top UN official. "Many have been displaced multiple times."
Sep 13, 2026
The United Nations agency for migration issues said Sunday that 85,818 Yemeni people have been forcibly displaced in recent days by renewed fighting between Houthi forces and the Saudi-backed government as the Houthis seized control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway for global oil shipping.
More than 2,000 people fled to Djibouti in recent days, and more are expected to arrive as fighting continues to escalate along the western coast of Yemen and Taiz province, near the port city of Mocha, which the Iran-allied Houthis seized from government forces on Thursday.
Nearly 56,000 people have been forced to leave their homes in Taiz, where heavy ground fighting and counterattacks have been taking place.
Abdusattor Esoev, chief of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Yemen, told Al Jazeera that the capture of Mocha, where the UN has maintained a strong infrastructure in recent years, has caused difficulty for aid agencies trying to reach people in need of food, water, medicines, and other humanitarian aid.
"Behind every number is a family who's lost everything," saidd Amy Pope, director general of IOM. "Many have been displaced multiple times. People are crossing the sea with nothing because they have no other choice left. Yemen is a country torn by poverty and conflict, and it cannot carry this crisis alone."
Pope called on donor countries to rapidly scale up support for Yemenis arriving in Djibouti and for 5.2 million people who have been internally displaced in Yemen over 12 years of conflict since the Houthis seized the country's capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
More than 900 people have been killed in this month's escalation, Al Jazeera reported.
A UN-brokered truce in 2022 temporarily halted major battles.
In July, the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi ships in the Red Sea, which Saudi Arabia had been using to ship oil due to Iran's effective blockade in the Strait of Hormuz—a retaliatory measure Iran took in response to the war that the Trump administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began in February.
As Common Dreams reported last week, the Houthis see the war being perpetrated by President Donald Trump as a "golden opportunity" to advance against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government.
The Houthis also launched missile and drone strikes on southern Saudi Arabia in recent days.
Mohammed al-Basha, founder and lead analyst of the Basha Report Risk Advisory, told Al Jazeera that Saudi Arabia is likely providing air support to the Yemeni government forces and is under pressure to launch a wider military campaign.
Trump reportedly refused a request from Saudi Arabia to launch airstrikes against the Houthis last week, and said Saturday that the Houthis had reached out to Washington, asking the Trump administration not to intervene in the conflict.
The renewed conflict in Yemen has sparked intensified calls for the White House to end its war on Iran, which has also led to casualties across the Middle East, including in Lebanon.
A woman named Aman Murshed told Al Jazeera on Saturday that her family, including five children, has been displaced in a refugee camp for five years in Taiz, and they were forced to flee again this past week.
“The last four years were calm, and our hopes of returning home grew stronger," she said at the al-Malika camp in al-Maafer district in Taiz. "But suddenly, fighting erupted near our camp three days ago, and we found ourselves fleeing again toward an unknown destination. The only priority was to carry the children and flee as quickly as possible, because any delay could mean death. It was around 5:00 am, and there were no cars in the camp or the surrounding area since it is on the front line. So, we walked for more than two kilometers until we found a pick-up truck that brought us to this camp for free.”
Mohammed Ali, a journalist in Taiz, told Al Jazeera that "the broader US-Iran conflict effectively brought an end to the 2022 truce, as the Houthis have been attempting to advance to take control of the Bab al-Mandeb strait to serve Iran’s agenda."
“The warring sides are escalating, but it is civilians who pay the price," he said. "A single visit to one of the camps for displaced families is enough to see the severe toll this escalation has taken on the Yemeni people.”
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Fresh Calls to End Iran War After Trump Reportedly Denies MBS Request to Bomb Houthis
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars," said one observer.
Sep 11, 2026
Calls to halt the Iran War and avert yet another US bombing campaign in Yemen intensified Friday after President Donald Trump reportedly declined a request from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to launch airstrikes against Houthi forces amid their stunning advance toward a vital global shipping lane.
According to Axios' Barak Ravid, Mohammed bin Salman, who is also the Saudi prime minister, made two urgent calls to Trump on Thursday as Houthi forces captured the strategic Yemeni port city of Mocha and advanced toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints. MBS reportedly pressed Trump to intervene militarily, but the president declined to order US attacks at this time.
"With Iran already disrupting traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthi control of Bab el-Mandeb could give Tehran a powerful new point of leverage over the US and its Gulf allies," Ravid wrote.
However, he added that "US officials stressed the administration has no plans to intervene directly against the Houthis for now."
Understanding that Trump's apparent refusal of MBS' request could be temporary, opponents of a wider Middle East war are urging the US leader to refrain from any further strikes on Houthi targets.
Instead of attacking Yemen, Matt Duss, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy and a former foreign policy adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), said on social media that a "better idea" would be to "end the war on Iran and remove US forces from the Middle East."
California-based Israeli academic Shaiel Ben-Ephraim said on social media that "Trump wisely decided not to get involved in the Yemeni civil war. Stop expanding all these wars."
"Imagine if we had just built on the JCPOA and created a stable Middle East through cooperation instead of these endless wars in Syria, Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza," he mused, referring to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the Iran nuclear deal unilaterally abandoned by Trump during his first term, despite Tehran's full compliance with its terms.
Drop Site News national security and foreign affairs reporter Murtaza Hussain called on the Gulf Arab states—which have borne the brunt of Iranian counterattacks—to circumvent the United States and negotiate an agreement with Tehran.
The Houthi victories give the group—officially called Ansar Allah—a commanding position near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow waterway links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and carries an estimated 12% of global goods, including approximately 4-5% of the world's total seaborne-traded oil and petroleum products.
Saudi Arabia launched Friday airstrikes on Mocha's airport, while the Houthis attacked targets including Saudi pipeline infrastructure used to circumvent the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis said that maritime traffic would be safe except for Saudi vessels.
Oil prices surged more than 6% on Thursday, with both major benchmarks trading at over $100 a barrel amid the Houthi advances and continued instability stemming from Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz despite over six months of unsuccessful efforts by the US military and Trump administration to reopen the vital waterway, through which around one-fifth of the world's oil previously transited.
The average US price of a gallon of gasoline reached nearly $4.30 on Friday, a 37% increase from when Trump—who promised both no new wars and $2 gas—entered office in January 2025.
US forces have carried out airstrikes and ground raids on al-Qaeda and other militants in Yemen for decades. According to the UK-based casualty monitor Airwars, an estimated 445-643 Yemeni civilians have been killed by US forces since 2009.
Starting under then-President Barack Obama in 2014, the US provided arms and support to the Saudi-led coalition during Yemen's civil war. International experts attribute more than 150,000 Yemeni deaths to a US-backed, Saudi-led bombing campaign and blockade, which has fueled mass starvation and disease in the country of approximately 43 million people.
A report published Thursday documented more than 500 Yemeni civilian casualties caused by US attacks between December 2023 and May 2025. All but seven of 46 strikes covered by the report occurred during Trump's presidency, including massacres at the Ras Isa oil port and at a detention center for African migrants in Saada.
During Israel's war on Gaza, the US, Israel, and the United Kingdom carried out repeated airstrikes in response to Houthi attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea that the group said were intended to pressure Israel as it killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Responding to the latest developments, UK political commentator Bushra Shaikh said that "America went to war for Israel, seeking to dominate the Middle East."
"Now Trump is negotiating with Iran, Saudi Arabia is looking towards regional diplomacy, Pakistan says the Mecca Pact won't be used against Yemen, and the Ansar Allah Houthis retain leverage over Bab el-Mandeb," she continued.
Shaikh added: "The ultimate humiliation? America will come out of this war having failed to defeat Iran while pushing the very region it wanted to control towards strategic independence from Washington."
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Chaos Unleashed by Trump's Iran War Escalates as Houthis Seize Key Port City in Yemen
The increased fighting is putting even more pressure on global energy markets, with the price of Brent crude topping $107 per barrel during Thursday trading.
Sep 10, 2026
Houthi fighters on Thursday took control of a key port city on the west coast of Yemen, putting them in a stronger position to disrupt commercial shipping—and to potentially send oil prices rocketing even higher.
According to Reuters, the Houthis seized the city of Mocha from Saudi-backed forces before moving toward the Hanish Islands, located to the northeast.
Reuters further reported that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps provided the Houthi fighters with weapons and guidance ahead of their successful assault.
The Houthis' seizure of more territory along the Red Sea gives the militant group a greater ability to launch attacks on vessels trying to transport oil through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Petroleum exporters in the region have had to rely more heavily on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait ever since Iran shut down shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice, which he launched in February without authorization from Congress.
Restricting shipments through both straits would put even greater pressure on global oil markets, which have already been under strain since the start of the Iran War.
A Thursday report from Bloomberg noted that Saudi Arabia, whose ships have been targets of Houthi attacks, revealed that its oil output has dropped to 6.24 million barrels per a day, its lowest level of oil production since 1990.
The price of Brent crude topped $107 during Thursday trading, a 6% increase from the day before. Data released Thursday by the American Automobile Association showed that the average price of gas in the US has reached $4.28 per gallon while the average price of diesel has reached a record high of $5.98 per gallon.
Fawaz Gerges, professor at the London School of Economics, said in an interview with The New York Times that the Houthis, despite receiving assistance from Iran, have their own distinct goals and see Trump's illegal war as a "golden opportunity" to make advances against Yemen's Saudi-backed government.
Additionally, said Gerges, "Iran directly and indirectly benefits from what the Houthis have been doing," since "all-out war could have major implications for the global energy supply."
Brett Erickson, managing partner at Obsidian Risk Advisors, wrote in a social media post that Iran and the Houthis have all the incentive in the world to keep the pressure on global petroleum shipping.
"Brent Crude just spiked over $107 per barrel," Erickson wrote. "Just a mere month ago, it was trading at $85. That’s a 25.9% increase in a month. And with no off-ramp for Trump until at least the midterms are over, we’re looking at a long period of elevated oil prices now."
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After Months of Denials, Pentagon Says US Killed and Wounded Hundreds of Civilians in 2025 Yemen Airstrikes
The US Department of Defense had initially denied that any civilians were killed in its operations in Yemen.
Aug 11, 2026
An internal review conducted by the US Department of Defense found that US airstrikes in Yemen last year killed and wounded hundreds of civilians.
As reported by The Washington Post on Tuesday, the Pentagon review estimated that US strikes killed more than 150 Yemeni civilians while wounding nearly 250 others.
The strikes were carried out as part of an operation authorized by President Donald Trump targeting Houthi rebels, who were suspected of launching attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea.
The body count from US strikes in Yemen could be even larger than the Pentagon's current estimates, which only cover three attacks that were determined to have "more likely than not" harmed civilians. An additional 15 incidents are still being reviewed by the DOD.
The deadliest operation carried out by US forces was a strike on Ras Issa Port in the city Hodeidah, which the DOD estimates killed 80 people and wounded 171 others.
As noted by NBC News, the DOD initially said the Yemen strikes did not cause any civilian deaths, and the Pentagon "has yet to publicly acknowledge the casualties or share a full account with Congress."
Stanford University historian Robert Crews remarked that the internal DOD report shows that there is "no end in sight for America’s brutal colonial wars" and "still no substantive domestic anti-colonial movement in the US."
Human rights groups have long been critical of US operations in Yemen, and Human Rights Watch last year described the attack on Ras Issa Port as "an apparent war crime."
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Houthis Announce Maritime Embargo of Saudi Arabia as US Oil Reserves Fall to Lowest Level in 40 Years
"The Titanic is now hitting the iceberg and there are not enough lifeboats for the world economy," said one observer.
Jul 20, 2026
Houthi rebels in Yemen on Monday announced they were imposing a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in yet another threat to global petroleum supplies amid the US war on Iran.
Yahya Saree, spokesperson for the Houthis, said in a video announcement that the militia would be enforcing the shipping embargo in retaliation for last week's bombing of Sanaa Airport, which the group blamed on the Saudis.
BREAKING: Yemen's Houthis announce 'sea navigation ban' on Saudi Arabia. pic.twitter.com/HDzghEi9Ct
— Clash Report (@clashreport) July 20, 2026
After Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz in response to US President Donald Trump's illegal war of choice earlier this year, global oil markets became even more dependent on shipping supplies through the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a waterway adjacent to the coast of Yemen.
According to Javier Blas, energy and commodities columnist at Bloomberg, Saudi Arabia has been shipping roughly 4.5 million barrels of oil per day through shipping channels in the Red Sea, with "most of it" traveling through the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb.
The Houthis' announcement of an embargo against the Saudis comes as the US has continued burning through its crude inventories.
Data released by US Energy Information Administration revealed that US crude inventories fell by 1.7 million barrels over the week ending July 10, leaving stocks at their lowest level since 1983.
University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape warned that the Houthis shutting down another vital global shipping lane could be a disaster for the global economy given that it could mean a "loss of another 4 to 5 million [oil] barrels a day."
"The Titanic is now hitting the iceberg," Pape added, "and there are not enough lifeboats for the world economy."
Nicholas Grossman, professor of international relations at the University of Illinois, noted that there are now multiple factors throttling global energy shipments.
"Iran blocking Strait of Hormuz," Grossman wrote. "US blocking Iranian shipping. Iran bombing energy facilities in Gulf Arab states. US bombing energy facilities in Iran. Ukraine bombing energy facilities in Russia. Houthis disrupting Red Sea shipping. Oil and gas reserves running dry. It's a lot, and adding up."
Juliette Kayyem, senior lecturer at Harvard's Kennedy School and a former Obama administration official, wrote that the potential shutdown of global energy supplies should make US policymakers rethink what they can achieve using American military force.
"A bunch of military and conventional wisdom analysts assured the American public that our air dominance was unparalleled," wrote Kayyem. "The 'never right but always certain' crowd didn’t realize the war was going to be fought on water."
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Gas Prices in US Already Up 35% as Iranians Threaten to Close Another Strait Over Trump War
Rep. Don Beyer blamed the surge in gas prices on President Donald Trump's decision to wage "an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy."
Apr 06, 2026
As President Donald Trump continues threatening to commit war crimes in Iran by bombing power plants, Iran is signaling that it could put a further squeeze on global oil prices by shutting down yet another strait used for transporting petroleum outside the Middle East.
Ali Akbar Velayati, a former Iranian foreign minister and a top adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, threatened in a Sunday social media post to close down the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, a waterway adjacent to the coast of Yemen that is under control of Iran-backed Houthi militants.
“If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes," Velayati cautioned, "it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move."
As Al Jazeera noted in a Monday report, the Houthis already shut down the strait during Israel's war on Gaza, and doing so again at the same time Iran has shut down the Strait of Hormuz could send global energy prices to unprecedented highs.
"The strait is a vital route through which Saudi Arabia sends its oil to Asia," Al Jazeera reported. "If Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz were both shut, that would block 25%... of the world’s oil and gas supply."
Oil prices have shot up since Trump launched his illegal war with Iran more than a month ago, and on Monday the price of Brent crude oil futures was trading at $110 per barrel, while the average price for gas in the US rose to $4.12 per gallon, according to data from AAA.
Democratic members of the US Congress Joint Economic Committee (JEC) last week released a study estimating that, thanks to Trump's war, Americans are paying 35% more to fill up their cars than they were paying a month earlier.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), a member of the JEC, pointed to the report in a Monday social media post and said Americans were getting hit with major price shocks because "President Trump decided to wage an illegal war against Iran with no plan or strategy."
Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH), Ranking Member of the JEC, told WMUR that Trump's Iran war took an already bad situation for American families and made it worse.
"Families are already being pushed to the brink," Hassan said. "That was true before the war started, by the cost of everything from groceries to rent to healthcare insurance premiums and prescriptions and even more. But now they're being forced to pay more at the pump."
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'This Crisis is Expanding': Trump's Iran War Escalates as Houthis Launch Missile at Israel
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?... The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing," said one journalist.
Mar 28, 2026
The Houthis on Saturday took credit for launching a ballistic missile at Israel, opening a new front in the war US President Donald Trump illegally started with Iran nearly one month ago.
As reported by Axios, the attack by the Houthis signals that the Yemen-based militia is joining the conflict to aide Iran, which has been under aerial assault from the US and Israel for the past four weeks.
Although the Houthi missile was intercepted by Israeli defenses, it is likely just the opening salvo in an expanding conflict throughout the Middle East.
Axios noted that while the Houthis entered the war by launching an attack on Israel, they could inflict the most damage on the US and its allies in the region by shutting down the strait of Bab al-Mandeb in the Red Sea.
"Doing that," Axios explained, "would dramatically increase the global economic crisis that has been created due to the war with Iran" and its closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which has sent global energy prices skyrocketing.
Sky News international correspondent John Sparks reported on Saturday that the Houthis' entrance into the war shows that "this crisis is expanding, it is escalating."
'This crisis is expanding and escalating.'
Houthi rebels in Yemen have confirmed they launched a missile at Israel, marking the Iran-backed group's first involvement in the war.
@sparkomat reports live from Jerusalem
https://t.co/Leuc4SnGfG
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— Sky News (@SkyNews) March 28, 2026
Sparks argued that the Houthis' decision to fire a missile at Israel signals that "the geographical spread of this conflict is expanding," adding that "the Houthis have shown the ability to attack shipping in the Red Sea and the waters around the Arabian Peninsula."
Sparks said that even though Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio "have been projecting confidence" about having the war under control, "it's not playing out that way... on the ground."
Danny Citrinowicz, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies, argued that the Houthis' main value to Iran isn't launching strikes on Israel, but their ability to increase economic pressure on the US.
Citrinowicz also outlined ways the Houthis could further drive up the global price of energy.
"This raises a key question: whether the Houthis will escalate further by targeting Saudi infrastructure and shipping lanes more directly, or whether they will preserve this capability as an additional lever of pressure as the conflict evolves," he wrote. "With each passing day of the conflict, particularly in light of its expanding scope against Iran, the likelihood of this scenario materializing continues to grow. It is increasingly not a question of if, but when."
Journalist Spencer Ackerman similarly pointed to the Houthis' ability to cause economic havoc as the biggest concern about their entrance into the conflict.
"You thought it was bad when Iran throttled the Strait of Hormuz?" he asked rhetorically. "The Houthis have already proven they can keep the Red Sea closed despite a year of US Navy skirmishing."
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Israel Becomes First Nation to Recognize Somaliland—But Still Rejects Palestine
One foreign policy analyst said that Israel views Somaliland as a "strategic location as a launch pad for strikes on Yemen and potentially a place to forcibly 'relocate' Palestinians to."
Dec 26, 2025
Israel became the first nation to recognize Somaliland as a sovereign state on Friday, a move that was met with criticism from international observers who questioned its continued unwillingness to recognize a Palestinian state.
Somaliland, a breakaway region in the north of Somalia that is home to more than 6 million people, declared independence in 1991, but until now, no United Nations member states have recognized its claim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described his government's recognition of the territory as being “in the spirit of the Abraham Accords,” a deal brokered by US President Donald Trump for Israel to normalize relations with some of its Arab neighbors, which has itself been accused of disregarding the issue of Palestinian sovereignty.
Speaking over a video call with Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi, the president of Somaliland, Netanyahu said he was signing "Israel's official recognition of Somaliland and its right of self-determination," calling the friendship between the two nations "seminal and historic."
In a statement, Abdullahi said Israel's recognition "represents a milestone in Somaliland's long-standing pursuit of international legitimacy, reaffirming its historical, legal, and moral entitlement to statehood."
However, a report from the Guardian suggested that Israel's recognition of Somaliland has less to do with the self-determination of its people than with Israel's military interests. It cited a November report from a prominent Israeli think tank, which argued that Somaliland could be used as a base of military operations against Yemen's Houthis.
Somaliland, located in the horn of Africa just south of the Arabian Peninsula, already hosts an air base that the United Arab Emirates has used to conduct operations against the Yemeni militant group, which—until a "ceasefire" agreement was reached in October—launched regular attacks on Israel and its vessels in the Red Sea in what it said was an effort to pressure it to stop its genocidal military campaign in Gaza.
Egypt and Turkey condemned Israel's agreement with Somaliland, saying, "This initiative by Israel, which aligns with its expansionist policy and its efforts to do everything to prevent the recognition of a Palestinian state, constitutes overt interference in Somalia’s domestic affairs.”
Foreign ministers for the two nations joined those of Somalia and neighboring Djibouti on a call following the development, where they called for the continued unity of Somalia as an institution and condemned Israel's efforts "to displace the Palestinian people from their land."
Adil Haque, a professor at Rutgers Law School, pointed out on social media that, in August, Netanyahu met with Somaliland's leadership "offering recognition in exchange for helping Israel to illegally deport Palestinians from Gaza."
Somaliland was one of many nations reportedly approached by Israel to warehouse Palestinians exiled from the strip permanently—others included Indonesia, Uganda, South Sudan, and Libya.
Following reports at the time that Somalia was also in consideration, its president, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, responded that "the idea of removing Palestine from their own land and putting them into another, other people’s land—I don’t see that that’s a solution at all."
A senior Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity with Israel's Channel 12 reportedly agreed that Netanyahu's recognition of Somaliland undermines his repeated assertions that there will never be a Palestinian state. As the Times of Israel summarized: "The official... points out that while Israel is the first country to grant recognition to Somaliland, the rest of the world considers the breakaway region an integral part of Somalia."
Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a fellow at the Palestinian Policy Network and a producer at AJ+, said: "To state the obvious, Israel wouldn’t recognize anyone unless there was something in it for them. Israel doesn’t give a shit about Somaliland apart from its strategic location as a launch pad for strikes on Yemen and potentially a place to forcibly 'relocate' Palestinians to."
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