AMMAN, Jordan — Iranian-backed Houthi fighters on Friday said they had expelled Saudi-backed forces from Yemen’s Red Sea coast, securing a substantial strategic advantage for Iran in its war with the United States and unnerving the global energy market.
The Houthi territorial claims, following a large-scale military operation, would mean that Iran and its Houthi proxies can now threaten — if not entirely block — energy and other cargo shipments through two key chokeholds in the Middle East: the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea.
“This is the first day that Iran really started winning the war,” said a Yemeni official, who is part of the country’s internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government.
The Yemeni official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said that the Houthi fighters were being closely directed by Iranians on the ground and appeared to have prepared the operation for months.
The Yemeni and a Houthi official confirmed Friday that the Houthis had seized Perim Island, which is inside the Bab al-Mandab Strait and divides its shipping channels, as well as the Yemeni town of Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait.
“The Houthis are now positioned to asphyxiate one of the escape valves for an energy market already being strangled in the Strait of Hormuz,” said Brett Erickson, a risk advisory consultant who tracks energy markets.
“With two critical maritime arteries simultaneously being choked, the world is facing an increasing constriction of the energy flows that keep the global economy alive,” Erickson said.
Hundreds of Saudi-led military coalition forces were killed, injured or captured in the fighting, a Houthi spokesman, Yahya Saree, said at a news conference on Friday. In all, the Houthis said they had seized control of 2,000 square miles of land along Yemen’s western coast.
Neither Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry nor its military coalition have addressed Saree’s claims.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization, said that the Houthis made substantial advances even since Thursday
Nagi said that for the Iranians, the Houthi advances provide “leverage over key U.S. interests in Bab-Al Mandeb and beyond,” noting that Djibouti, which is home to the biggest U.S. military base in Africa, is just 20 miles from the strait.
Some 10 percent of all global shipping flows through Bab al-Mandab, and experts said the narrow waterway would be key to restoring trade of oil and other products to the levels that existed before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February.
“This is layering on a new disruption,” said Ami Daniel, the co-founder and CEO of Windward, a shipping platform. “That strait is needed a lot. Assuming the war with Iran gets solved, now you also have to solve this situation with the Houthis. You need two solutions, not one.”
Daniel said tracking data shows that in recent days there has been a 40 percent increase in tankers anchoring and staying put in the area, rather than sailing through, as companies examine the risks. “They are in wait-and-see mode,” Daniel said.
Iran and the Trump administration for months have been locked in a bitter standoff over the Strait of Hormuz. To break Iran’s hold on the waterway, Washington has imposed heavy economic sanctions, but Tehran so far has not capitulated.
Since late February, when Iran’s blockade of Hormuz began, Bab al-Mandab has become an increasingly crucial waterway for global shipping, and especially for oil exports from Saudi Arabia.
As the Houthis advanced in recent days, energy markets have been rattled. Brent oil, the global benchmark for crude, soared past $100 per barrel.
Diesel fuel in the U.S. now costs, on average, more than $6 per gallon, the highest price in history. It is nearing $8 in California, according to the price tracking platform GasBuddy. Gasoline prices are $1.10 higher than they were a year ago.
“The rise in prices is not slowing down- national average price of gasoline continues to rise alongside diesel, which continues to climb further into record territory,” Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at the platform, posted Friday on X.
Iran on Friday expressed its support for the Houthi rebels, with the Iranian Foreign Ministry calling for an end to the “illegal and inhuman blockade” of Yemen, which Houthi militants have accused Saudi Arabia of imposing on the country for years.
The statement, carried by state media, called for an “immediate resumption of dialogue” and condemned the “unprecedented oppression and expansionism of the Israeli regime with U.S. complicity.”
The Houthi rebels and Yemen’s military, backed by Saudi Arabia, were at war from 2015 until 2022.
That war brought Yemen to the brink of famine and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis, according to findings by the U.N. Development Program. It ended with a fragile truce in 2022.
“What is currently happening in Yemen cannot be separated from the developments of the past decade,” the statement from Iran’s Foreign Ministry said.
The Houthis have in recent years grown increasingly frustrated with what they say is a blockade on their country by Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognized government in the south. The truce left the Houthis in control of the country’s north.
But in recent days, the Houthis mounted a ground offensive that captured key port cities along the Red Sea, including Mokha on Thursday.
Yemen’s Saudi-backed coalition forces withdrew, the Yemeni official said, adding that his government hoped that the U.S. would strike the Houthis, as it did in 2025, but that it was unclear whether it would do so.
Housam Al Assad, a member of the Houthis’ political bureau, said that the group’s goal is to “lift the siege on our people and on the local population.”
“There is hunger and there is human suffering as a result of the Saudi siege,” Al Assad said, condemning the international silence on what the United Nations described in 2018 as the world’s worst man-made disaster.
The moment represents “a huge opportunity for the Houthis to negotiate from a position of power,” said Adam Baron, a fellow with the Future Security Program at New America, a Washington think tank, who studies the Houthis.
“They have a tremendous amount of momentum behind them,” he said. “So they are going to use it to get concessions on their own terms. And if the Houthis get what they want, this will most likely be in a way that also fits with Iran’s interests.”
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