AMMAN, Jordan — Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen seized a key port city on the Red Sea on Thursday, providing what could be substantial leverage for the Iranian regime in the ongoing U.S.-Iran war.
Videos shared online, verified by The Washington Post, showed militants shouting Houthi slogans rolling in trucks down the main thoroughfare of the coastal city of Mokha, which had been held by forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government.
In another video, filmed in the city’s port area, just north of the airport, two men linger near what appears to be a mine-resistant military vehicle produced in a joint venture between U.S. manufacturer Oshkosh and Saudi Arabia’s Al Tadrea Manufacturing Co.
Analysts and a Yemeni official confirmed what the videos suggested: The Houthis had taken control of the city, amid renewed fighting in Yemen and between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, in the latest front of the multipart conflict that has swept the region over the more than six months since Israel and the United States attacked Iran.
Since Iran largely blocked maritime traffic through the Strait of Hormuz in late February to exert economic leverage in the face of attacks, the Bab al-Mandab Strait off Yemen has become an increasingly crucial waterway for global shipping, including oil exports from the Persian Gulf.
In a sweeping ground offensive that brought Houthi forces to Mokha, about 30 miles from Bab al-Mandab, some analysts say the Houthis have accrued substantial leverage of their own — and for their main backer, Iran.
President Donald Trump in 2025 declared victory over the Houthis, following a military campaign against the rebel group following its attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
A Yemeni official in the country’s Saudi-backed administration said that his government hoped that the U.S. would strike the Houthis again. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive details, said it was unclear whether the U.S. had plans to do so.
Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based research organization, said Iran “100 percent has more leverage” following the Houthi offensive in recent days.
“The Houthis had already frozen a lot of shipping, but now they can do more,” he said. “If Iran wants to escalate its attacks on global shipping, now it can.”
The prospect of a full closure of the Bab al-Mandab Strait sent global oil prices to more than $108 per barrel.
Fighting in Yemen continues, Nagi said, with the Houthis pushing farther south to take territory next to the strait and the Saudi-backed coalition forces ramping up their counterattack.
Cargo traffic in the Bab al-Mandab Strait had already slowed significantly after the Houthis declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia in July. But analysts said that events in recent days were a significant escalation.
“They are consolidating control of the Red Sea,” said Adam Baron, a fellow with the Future Security Program at New America, a Washington think tank, who studies the Houthis. “This has implications for the Houthis as the Houthis, but also as a member of Iran’s axis of resistance. … It means that an Iranian ally could take control of a crucial maritime choke point at a moment that Iran is looking for any leverage it can get over the U.S.”
The takeover of Mokha gives the Houthis control of a second major port on the Red Sea, beyond Hodeidah, and access to large swaths of Yemen’s coast, said Toby Matthiesen, a professor and Gulf expert at the University of Bristol.
The historic port city of Mokha was once a hub for Yemen’s coffee exports, from which chocolate-flavored coffee known as mocha derived its name.
Houthis taking the city “is a major blow to the Saudi-backed forces and to Saudi Arabia itself,” Matthiesen said, adding that it was unclear whether Saudi Arabia would activate its new defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan, inked last month, or “if any of these partners will indeed come to Saudi Arabia’s help.”
Pakistan on Thursday signaled it would stay out of the fight for now. A spokesperson for the nation’s Foreign Ministry told reporters at a weekly news briefing that his government was not discussing any plans to respond to recent Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities. The Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, signed in August by the two nations and Turkey, holds that an attack on one country would be regarded as an attack on all three.
The seizure of Mokha followed days of escalation. On Tuesday, the Houthis struck oil and civilian infrastructure at multiple locations in Saudi Arabia, and authorities said 73 people were injured in four southwestern cities. The Houthis said that those strikes were in response to Saudi Arabia’s bombing attack on a prison in which 11 people were killed.
Yemen’s Saudi-backed government launched a counteroffensive, including rocket and drone strikes against Houthi positions in multiple provinces.
Yemen’s deputy defense minister, Samir al-Sabri, said on state television that the government forces aim to “retake Sanaa,” the capital, which has been under Houthi control for more than a decade.
“There has been huge progress,” said Hussain al-Bukhaiti, a pro-Houthi commentator whose brother is a senior political officer in the group. “The west coast of Yemen is just the beginning. We want the liberation of the country.”
Al-Bukhaiti said that the group is not being directed by Iran but that its goals, as always, include free movement at Yemen’s ports and airports, the exchange of all prisoners of war and the use of Yemen’s oil revenue — much of which is under Saudi control — to pay salaries for civil servants and for services across the country.
From 2015 to 2022, Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia fought a war that brought Yemen to the brink of famine and contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, according to findings by the U.N. Development Program. The war ended with a fragile truce in 2022.
The truce left Houthis in control of northern Yemen, including Sanaa, while the internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia controls the south.
The U.S. Embassy in Yemen said in a statement Wednesday that the Houthis “have brought Yemenis nothing but suffering and have made their country a base for the Iranians to undermine Arab unity and security.”
Houthis and their Iranian backers, the statement said, have “miscalculated by underestimating the resolve of the Republic of Yemen’s legitimate government, the Yemeni Armed Forces, and the Yemeni people.”
El Chamaa and Haidamous reported from Beirut, and Kelly from Washington. Alex Horton, Dan Lamothe and Dylan Moriarty in Washington contributed to this report.
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