Iran has told Yemen's Houthi movement to prepare to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea's southern gateway, if the United States follows through on President Trump's threat to strike Iranian power infrastructure. Three sources told Reuters Thursday that the request has been conveyed to Houthi leadership, and a source close to the group said missiles and drones have already been positioned near the waterway, with Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Yemen controlling the order to begin.
The One Number That Explains Why Oil Hasn't Spiked Further
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed since the conflict began, cutting off a route that once carried roughly 20 million barrels a day of crude and refined products. Oil prices have risen sharply since February but have not reached the crisis-level highs many traders initially feared, and the specific reason is Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline, also called Petroline, which now runs at its full 7-million-barrel-a-day capacity, moving oil overland to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Roughly 5 million barrels a day of crude and 700,000 to 900,000 barrels a day of refined products are currently flowing out through Yanbu, a route that exists entirely outside the Strait of Hormuz.
That is the route Thursday's threat targets. Oil loaded at Yanbu still has to transit the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait to reach international buyers in Europe and Asia. A closure there would not add a second, separate disruption alongside Hormuz. It would remove the specific mechanism that has kept the first disruption from becoming a full-blown price shock.
The UAE's Fujairah route exports directly into the Gulf of Oman and does not require Red Sea transit, which is why it is unaffected by a Bab el-Mandeb closure even though it serves the same bypass function as the Saudi route.
Base Case Versus Tail Risk
This is a conditional threat, not an active blockade. It depends on a US strike on Iranian power infrastructure that Trump has repeatedly raised but not yet carried out, and on a Houthi force that a source close to the group describes as having completed preparations but is still awaiting an order. Iran's own advisers have telegraphed the idea before: Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran's supreme leader, wrote in April that Iran's allied resistance groups view Bab el-Mandeb the same way they view Hormuz, suggesting this contingency has been under consideration for months rather than improvised this week.
The base case remains that the strait stays open, consistent with three years of Houthi Red Sea activity that disrupted shipping without fully closing the route. The tail risk is narrower but more consequential than a simple second front: it is the specific removal of the mechanism that has kept oil prices from repricing to the highs seen in past Middle East supply shocks. A US strike on Iranian power infrastructure, something Trump has floated repeatedly, is now the single event to watch as the trigger for this particular escalation path.