The Bab el-Mandeb Falls: Perim Island, Mokha, and the Week the Houthis Took the Strait

The last government position on the Bab el-Mandeb did not fall in a battle. It was walked away from. Yemeni government forces withdrew from Perim Island on Thursday, and by Friday morning armed Houthi fighters were patrolling its shoreline in military vehicles, per reporting from the ground. A senior Yemeni government military source put it plainly to Middle East Monitor: the takeover completes Houthi control of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. One of the world's great maritime chokepoints, the gate between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, now belongs to a militia that Iran arms, funds, and by multiple accounts directs.

Seven Days to the Strait

The offensive that ended on Perim began a week earlier, far up the Red Sea coast. Houthi columns pushed south out of Hodeidah province, taking the towns of Hays and al-Khawkhah, then rolled down the western Taiz coastline. On Thursday they took Mokha, the port city that Saudi-backed forces spent years fortifying as the anchor of Yemen's west coast. TIME called it the Houthis' largest territorial gain since the 2022 ceasefire. Government forces retreated south toward Dhubab, then lost that too, pulling back into Lahij province and leaving the coastal road to the strait open.

The human cost of the week is grim even by Yemen's standards: more than 500 dead, most of them combatants, per Euronews. Saudi aircraft answered with daily strikes, including on the airport at Mokha after it fell, according to Houthi-run media cited by AP. Offshore, the advance kept pace with the land war: Houthi boats put fighters on Zuqar and the Hanish islands in the southern Red Sea before the final move on Perim.

Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, told an emergency Security Council session what everyone watching already knew: "This renewed war should alarm us all. It marks the end of calm Yemen has experienced for over four years since the UN-brokered truce."

Perim Island: The Rock That Splits the Strait

Perim Island and the Yemeni coast from orbit. Photo: NASA, public domain

Perim, also called Mayun, is a small volcanic island sitting 3.5 kilometers off Yemen's coast, directly in the narrowest section of the Bab el-Mandeb. It divides the strait into two shipping channels and has its own airstrip. Whoever holds Perim holds overwatch on every hull that passes. That is why Saudi-backed forces spent years keeping it out of Houthi hands, and why its quiet loss matters more than any single town on the coast.

The channel is where this gets practical. The Houthis do not need to occupy sea lanes to close them; the Red Sea campaign of 2024 proved that coastal anti-ship missiles, drones, and cheap unmanned surface vessels can do the job from shore. Now the shore includes an island in the middle of the fairway. The blockade math is already visible: after the Houthis declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia on July 20, overall traffic through the strait fell roughly 24 percent per TIME, and tanker transits dropped about 40 percent, according to data from United Against Nuclear Iran. On August 14 a strike on the Egyptian cargo ship Tihamah killed four crew and two Yemeni rescuers, the first shipping deaths since the US and Iran went to war in February.

The Bab el-Mandeb Math: Oil Over 100 Dollars and a 40 Percent Drop

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait from space, Yemen to the right. Photo: NASA, public domain

Around 12 percent of global trade moves through the Bab el-Mandeb in a normal year, and nearly a third of global container traffic rides the Red Sea route it feeds. Add the context of 2026: since February, Iran has militarized the Strait of Hormuz in its war with Washington, which means the world's two most sensitive oil chokepoints, which together handle over a quarter of seaborne crude and petroleum products, are now both contested. Brent pushed past 100 dollars a barrel as the offensive peaked, per Euronews.

Saudi Arabia is the intended victim. The Houthi blockade names Saudi-linked vessels specifically, with navigation declared "safe, except for Saudi vessels." It is working: Saudi crude exports have fallen to 13-year lows, and production dropped 23 percent from July to August, per TIME. There is one real limit to the chokehold, and analysts keep repeating it. As the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Richard Goldberg put it, unlike Hormuz, shippers can go around the Red Sea if they must. The Cape route adds days and real money, but it exists. Bab el-Mandeb is a tourniquet on Saudi Arabia and a tax on everyone else, not a single point of failure.

Riyadh Calls Washington, Twice

Sailors aboard the destroyer USS Mason during Red Sea operations off Yemen. Photo: US Navy, public domain

The most consequential part of the day may have happened on the phone. Axios reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called President Trump twice on Thursday as Mokha was falling, the second time to directly request American strikes on the Houthis. Trump declined. Washington will provide intelligence and targeting data, and CENTCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper flew to Saudi Arabia the same day, but the roughly 200 US personnel in the kingdom stay in a non-kinetic role. A senior administration official framed it as protecting freedom of navigation "while empowering our regional partners to take the lead." The directive underneath, per Axios: keep American forces focused on Iran and Hormuz, and do not open a second front.

That is a remarkable reversal from July, when Riyadh insisted it could handle the Houthis without American help. It also leaves the ground problem unsolved. As the Southern Transitional Council's Amr Al Bidh told Fox News, naval patrols protect individual ships; you have to be on the ground to secure the Bab el-Mandeb. The only forces on the ground at the strait tonight are Houthi.

Why It Matters

This channel has spent two years documenting how cheap drones and missiles closed the Sea of Azov, emptied Novorossiysk, and made the Black Sea Fleet homeless. The Red Sea is the same playbook run by a different Iranian-supplied force, and Moscow is not a bystander in it: back in 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported Russia passed satellite targeting data to the Houthis for attacks on shipping. The axis that sends Shahed airframes to Russia and targeting help back now holds a chokepoint that Europe's economies, the same economies funding Ukraine's air defense, depend on for a third of their container trade. Every dollar oil gains above 100 is revenue for the Russian war budget, and every escalation in the Red Sea is bandwidth Washington is not spending on Ukraine, on the Pacific, or anywhere else.

What to Watch

Watch whether the Houthis actually emplace anti-ship missiles and radar on Perim, or trade its return for blockade relief in the talks Iran is already proposing. Watch whether Saudi Arabia accepts targeting support as enough, or shops for partners. And watch insurance rates in the strait: war-risk premiums, not communiques, will tell you whether the gate is open.

The channel will be tracking all of it. For the live feed, follow us on Telegram at t.me/TheLeaflet, and come back tomorrow for The Daily Sitrep.

Read next: Dead in the Water: Iran Fishes a US Navy Dive-LD Drone Out of the Strait of Hormuz and The Azov Padlock: 242 Ships, a 90 Percent Collapse, and Six Weeks of a Closed Kerch Strait.

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Sources

AP, Euronews, TIME, Axios, Middle East Monitor, Fox News, Defence Blog, the Wall Street Journal, and UN Security Council remarks by Special Envoy Hans Grundberg. Photos: NASA and US Navy, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.