Two chokepoints. One war. And now, a threat to shut them both at once.
A senior Houthi official just said it out loud: if the fighting keeps escalating, Bab el-Mandeb will close.
Not Hormuz this time. The other one.
Stay with me — this one hits differently.
Hormuz already got hit back in February.
Iran choked it. Oil spiked. The world panicked.
So Saudi Arabia did what smart operators do.
👉 It rerouted.
More than 70% of its daily crude exports got redirected to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
Shipments there jumped from 973,000 barrels a day last year to 4 million bpd now.
Bab el-Mandeb quietly became the market's escape hatch.
Total petroleum flowing through Bab el-Mandeb hit 7.4 million barrels per day in June.
That's roughly 7% of everything the planet produces.
Close it, and there's no backup exit left.
Both of the Gulf's major arteries — gone at the same time.
A Houthi official didn't mince words on this: oil could rocket toward $200 a barrel in what he called a "dreadful shock."
Crude is already sitting near $85 after a brief summer calm.
Imagine what happens next.
Not simple Iranian puppets. Not fully independent either.
This time feels different from 2023, though.
Back then, Gulf oil was flowing freely when Houthi attacks began — cargoes just got diverted.
Now, oil is actually being loaded from Red Sea ports.
Shutting the strait wouldn't just reroute ships.
It would strand the oil itself.
Iran's commanders have hinted at this for months — "fingers on the trigger," they've called it.
But the Houthis have stayed unusually quiet through most of this war.
Maybe they're saving this card for exactly this moment.
The moment Hormuz alone isn't enough pressure.
One strait shut the market down once already.
Two, and there's nowhere left for the oil to go.
That's all for now!
