The Houthis’ advance on the key port city of Mocha, which severed the main road connecting Taiz to the Red Sea, has transformed the coast from another battleground in a domestic conflict into an integral element of security in the Red Sea, the Gulf and beyond.
The escalation consolidated Houthi control over the Bab al-Mandab Strait, enhanced their logistical capacity to monitor international shipping and enabled them to target oil tankers and commercial vessels—including deadly attacks on Saudi tankers.
The risk this poses for the Gulf states is defined less by its magnitude than its nature. What was once a sporadic threat that could be militarily contained and covered by commercial insurance has evolved into a structural risk that effectively links the straits of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab within a single, interconnected “chokepoint network.”
While the Strait of Hormuz is vital as an energy corridor, fully grasping this structural shift requires a precise understanding of Bab al-Mandab. More than a narrow geographical point separating Asia and Africa, it is a nexus for multiple maritime networks and flows of oil, gas, and petroleum, as well as Asia-Europe trade via the Suez Canal and regional shipping between the Gulf, the Horn of Africa, and the Eastern Mediterranean. Consequently, any disruption here has impacts for ports, insurance companies, shipping rates, supply chains, energy markets and economies reliant on the Suez Canal.
Simultaneous threats in both corridors thus create a “double choke-point” scenario, squeezing the Gulf’s eastern and western outlets, limiting GCC states’ options and compounding the costs of disruption in either corridor.
The Limitations of Traditional IR Theory
No theoretical framework can alone explain the strategic importance of Bab al-Mandab and the complex interactions around it. Political realism, supported by geopolitical literature and theories of maritime power, holds that any actor able to threaten it gains coercive power far exceeding its material resources.
By contrast, institutional liberalism and complex interdependence theory view the strait as a node of economic interconnection, whereby any disruption imposes collective costs. Thus, an effective response requires cooperative arrangements and institutions to distribute responsibilities, the sharing of information, and measures to minimize the risk of miscalculation and ensure that the cost of disruption outweighs any potential gain.
However, neither framework alone can explain the current situation. The situation in Yemen reveals a non-sovereign armed actor that can leverage the maritime domain without bearing the legal and political obligations associated with safeguarding it. Furthermore, while the concept of interdependence implies that disrupting a network imposes a cost on the disruptor and thus incentivizes moderation, an armed actor can instead offload much of that cost onto the local population and economy—all the while reaping political and symbolic dividends and negotiating leverage.
This highlights a disparity between the cost of the action and the cost of its impact. This imbalance is rooted in five interconnected layers: the demands of capacity, time, networks, perception and responsibility. The first concerns the way short-range missiles, one-way attack drones, explosive-laden boats and anti-ship missiles have lowered the barrier to entry into maritime conflict, enabling an armed group without a conventional navy to threaten international shipping.
The second layer is the temporal disparity. An attack can be executed in minutes, whereas containing its consequences and recalibrating shipping routes, insurance markets and supply chains takes weeks or even months. Consequently, the duration of the impact far exceeds the duration of the action that triggered it. The third manifests as a network disparity. An attack targets one location, yet its impact spreads across multiple networks—spanning energy, trade, insurance, ports and land transport—causing losses far from where the attack took place.
The fourth layer entails cognitive disruption: markets and shipping companies evaluate not only the damage caused, but also the likelihood of a repeat, the actor’s reach, and the reliability of those tasked with preventing or containing attacks. Consequently, demonstrating capability just once can lead to a repricing of risk that persists long after the attack itself. The fifth layer is the disruption of accountability, whereby an armed actor can cause disruption without bearing any legal responsibility for protecting the waterway or compensating those affected.
Deterrence and Vulnerability in the GCC
The Gulf states thus face a dual challenge. From a realist perspective, and led by Saudi Arabia, they seek to restore order, enforce freedom of navigation and raise the cost of targeting vessels and vital interests. This is evident in their military responses, the strengthening of defenses, and the forging of security partnerships such as the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, which embodies the logic of mutual defense and the distribution of strategic roles.
Yet seen through the lens of interdependence, the Gulf states remain highly exposed to any disruption. Their economies, development projects, exports and imports are tightly linked to global supply chains, insurance markets and ports. Thus, rather than seeking to dominate the waterway, they are driven by a fundamental interest in keeping it open, stable and accessible to all.
This calls for an approach consisting of four interconnected stages. The first involves protecting navigation, monitoring the waterways, sharing information, intercepting offensive assets and imposing direct costs on belligerent actors. The second involves restoring Yemen’s sovereign control by unifying the command structures of pro-government forces, securing the coast, roads and ports, and integrating local units into a clear command-and-control system.
The third phase entails regional institutionalization through the creation of a permanent framework for consultation, information-sharing, planning and crisis response, linking Red Sea security with that of the Gulf security, encompassing both Bab al-Mandab and the Strait of Hormuz. Diplomatic cover plays a crucial role here in transforming battlefield gains into legitimate, recognized arrangements and preventing armed actors from exploiting political ambiguity and international division.
The fourth phase focuses on economic and institutional fortification, by rebuilding ports, roads, services and the coastal economy under state authority, underpinned by transparent oversight mechanisms, implemented gradually and in tandem with the expansion of institutional control.
In this context, today’s structural threat is testing the ability of the Yemeni state, Gulf nations and world powers to transform sporadic, disjointed reactions into a sustained framework that moderates the Houthis’ behavior and prevents them from reviving the threat—particularly given the legitimate Yemeni government’s inability to protect navigation without external support.
While Gulf states have the economic, diplomatic and military clout to advance this process, they cannot substitute for the Yemeni state without creating a dynamic of tutelage, thus undermining already fragile local institutions. World powers should focus on protecting navigation, sharing information, monitoring the maritime domain and providing technical capabilities.
Measuring Security
The success of this strategy must be measured against indicators directly linked to its operations. A drop in attacks does not necessarily indicate successful deterrence—incidents may decrease simply because ships have rerouted via the Cape of Good Hope, rather than indicating a safer Bab al-Mandab.
Therefore, success must also be measured against the number of attacks and attempted attacks, interception rates and response times, plus metrics such as the traffic volumes, the rate of repeated crossings, and fluctuations in insurance and shipping costs.
The Yemeni state can be judged by the degree of unity in its military command, the sharing of information, its forces’ capacity to execute joint operations, and the extent of the coastline, ports and roadways under effective state control. Societal resilience can be gauged by a decline in new displacement, consistent service delivery, local trade flows and the extent to which coastal communities benefit from stability.
Regionally, the transition from reactivity to institutionalization could be measured against the establishment of a permanent maritime information and early-warning center, a mechanism for political and military consultation, joint response plans and periodic crisis-management exercises. While three months may suffice for an initial assessment of the effectiveness of maritime deterrence and response, it cannot measure institutional capacity-building and the restoration of sovereignty. Consequently, a second assessment should be conducted after six months, followed by a third after a year, to distinguish between any temporary tactical decline in attacks and a sustainable strategic shift in the environment that generates them.
Ultimately, Bab al-Mandab is more than a geographic chokepoint or a maritime issue to be managed through protective patrols. It is a testing ground for the ability of a stabilizing force to transform a convergence of interests and risks into a stable order, by combining deterrence, sovereign legitimacy, regional institutionalization and economic resilience.
Continuing to treat this narrow strip of water as a strictly maritime matter would amount to buying the next truce at the cost of the subsequent crisis. The security of the Bab al-Mandab does not begin at its shores, but in the power structures controlling the land.
