01 Sep The Chokepoint that Stays Closed – The Houthi Blockade of Saudi Arabia and the Limits of a Hormuz Settlement

Key Judgements

• The Houthi campaign has outgrown the maritime blockade the group declared on 20 July. The 5 August strike on a Saudi tanker off Yanbu, on a domestic coastal run far north of the declared zone, indicates that rerouting away from the Bab al-Mandeb is almost certainly no longer adequate mitigation for Saudi-linked shipping.
• Houthi leverage is a function of the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed. Because the Iran-Oman track has stalled rather than delivered, Saudi dependence on the Red Sea corridor will probably persist through the autumn, sustaining the value of the blockade.
• No negotiating channel for the Bab al-Mandeb exists comparable to the one operating at Hormuz. A negotiated end to the blockade is therefore unlikely within the next 60 days, and containment will probably depend on Saudi military action rather than diplomacy.

Objective

This report examines why the Houthi maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia has expanded beyond its declared scope, assesses how the stalling of the Strait of Hormuz negotiations affects the strategic value of the Red Sea corridor, and evaluates the prospects for containment over the next 60 days.

Context

On 13 July 2026, forces of Yemen’s internationally recognised government struck the runway at Sanaa International Airport to prevent an Iranian aircraft carrying a returning Houthi delegation from landing. The Houthis attributed the strike to Saudi Arabia and fired ballistic missiles and drones at Abha International Airport the same day, ending the informal truce that had held since 2022. On 20 July the group declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia at the Bab al-Mandeb, framing it as a siege in answer to a siege.

Enforcement followed quickly. The group claimed attacks on the tankers Encelia and Layla on 22 July, NCC Masa on 24 July, NCC Ghazal on 28 July, and NCC WAFA on 5 August. FDD’s Long War Journal counted claimed attacks on eight Saudi-linked vessels by 6 August. Coastal infrastructure was targeted in parallel. Missiles and drones set the Aramco refinery at Jizan, which processes 400,000 barrels per day, ablaze on 25 July, and Aramco suspended operations at the site. Two ballistic missiles aimed at Yanbu were intercepted by a Patriot battery operated in Saudi Arabia by the Greek military. Jizan was struck again on 9 August and on 18 August, and the group claimed two further drone attacks on 20 August against Najran airport and a Saudi facility.

Saudi Arabia responded militarily and diplomatically. Riyadh struck Hodeidah and Kamaran Island on 24 July, and Houthi forces attacked the government-held Red Sea port of al-Makha on 9 August, killing seven. Riyadh announced a maritime security alliance on 30 July in a joint statement issued on behalf of 14 countries, and signed a trilateral defence pact with Türkiye and Pakistan on 7 August under which an attack on one is treated as an attack on all.

The Hormuz track has not delivered. Iran and Oman agreed shipping lane coordinates on 6 August, and Iranian state media described terms barring US and Israeli vessels and fining violators up to 20 percent of cargo value. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi stated on 10 August that the waterway would not reopen until Washington eased sanctions and paid war reparations. Iranian parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf restated those conditions on 18 August, and US President Trump said the same week that no talks were underway or scheduled. The United Arab Emirates suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran on 17 August after Iranian missile launches toward its territory. CNBC reported on 21 August that the anticipated agreement never materialised.

Analysis

A blockade that has outgrown its declared scope. The 20 July declaration was framed as a chokepoint measure against Saudi-linked shipping at the Bab al-Mandeb. The 5 August strike on NCC WAFA breaks that frame. Windward assessed that the vessel, a Saudi-flagged products tanker, was struck off Yanbu in the northern Red Sea while on a routine domestic run to Jizan, hundreds of kilometres from the declared blockade zone, having gone dark on 19 July. The Houthi statement explicitly tied the strike to Saudi tankers rerouting north to avoid the strait. Read together with the repeated strikes on Jizan and Yanbu, the campaign is better understood as directed against Saudi export capacity wherever it sits, rather than against transit through a specific waterway. That distinction matters operationally, because it removes route avoidance as a mitigation and shifts the burden onto air and missile defence of fixed coastal infrastructure.

The workaround created the vulnerability. Saudi Arabia’s answer to the Hormuz closure was the East-West Petroline, which runs approximately 1,201 kilometres from Abqaiq to Yanbu and was pushed beyond its design capacity of five million barrels per day by converting parallel natural gas liquids lines to crude service. The pipeline solved the Hormuz problem by relocating it. Reuters reported at the time of the blockade declaration that Saudi Arabia had diverted approximately 70 percent of its energy exports through the Red Sea. Every barrel arriving at Yanbu must still exit through the Bab al-Mandeb, roughly 29 kilometres wide at its narrowest, carrying approximately eight percent of global oil supply according to the US Energy Information Administration. The Houthis did not create Saudi exposure in the Red Sea; the rerouting did, and the group has moved to exploit a dependency that did not exist in comparable form before March 2026.

The asymmetry of diplomatic access. The central structural point is that the two chokepoints are not equally negotiable. At Hormuz, Iran holds a recognised riparian claim, sits opposite a willing mediator in Oman, and is party to a bilateral track with Washington that has produced agreed shipping lanes even while the wider settlement stalls. At the Bab al-Mandeb, the blockading party is a non-state actor that is not a signatory to any US-Iran arrangement, has no formal standing in maritime law, and faces a Saudi government that publicly denies conducting talks with it. Reporting suggests an Omani channel exists, which qualifies rather than removes the asymmetry. The consequence is that a Hormuz settlement, whenever it arrives, would not carry the Red Sea with it. Bab al-Mandeb is likely to remain contested after Hormuz is resolved, inverting the sequencing most assessments assumed in the spring.

Riyadh’s response across three dimensions. Economically, the kingdom has absorbed real but bounded cost. Kpler recorded Yanbu crude and condensate loadings falling to between 2.4 and 3 million barrels per day in the week commencing 20 July, from 4.23 million the previous week. Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser stated that the attacks caused some production interruptions but had no material operational or financial impact, a claim that sits uneasily against the suspension of operations at Jizan and repeated strikes on the same site. Diplomatically, Riyadh has widened its coalition rather than opened a bilateral track, through the 30 July maritime alliance and the 7 August pact with Türkiye and Pakistan, both of which internationalise the problem without addressing the Houthi demand set. Militarily, the response has been retaliatory strikes on Hodeidah, Kamaran Island, and al-Makha rather than a sustained campaign. ACLED assessed on 19 August that this constitutes the most serious escalation since 2022 while noting that full-scale war has not resumed, and that a Saudi decision to escalate would likely aim at seizing the coastal al-Hodeidah governorate to degrade Houthi launch capacity.

The fee regime and the Hormuz template. Reuters reported on 29 July that the Houthis were weighing transit fees on most vessels using the strait, that the proposal was discussed with Iranian officials during a delegation visit to Tehran, that Iranian advisers were assisting in establishing a regulatory authority, and that Chinese-linked vessels would be exempted. Houthi political bureau member Hizam al-Assad denied the reporting on 29 July, and the group’s Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center issued a further denial on 1 August describing its safe transit service as voluntary and free. The denials address the charging, not the architecture. A registration system that issues passage assurances already exists and functions as a permit regime, which places the group one administrative step from monetising it. The structure closely resembles the Persian Gulf Strait Authority that Tehran established at Hormuz, including the Chinese carve-out, and suggests the transfer of a model rather than an improvisation. Confirmation would probably signal that Iranian advisers are shaping Houthi maritime strategy more directly than the group’s public positioning implies.

Two precedents, and what each one clarifies. The July 2018 episode is the closest structural analogue. After Houthi missiles struck two Saudi tankers near the strait, Riyadh suspended all oil shipments through the Bab al-Mandeb, then resumed them ten days later. It is instructive because it shows the Saudi playbook is temporary suspension followed by resumption once escorts and insurance are arranged, and because it establishes that the kingdom has treated Red Sea disruption as tolerable before. The comparison breaks down on the alternative: in 2018 the Strait of Hormuz was open, so suspending Red Sea loadings cost Riyadh a routing preference rather than an export outlet. In 2026 there is no second route to fall back on, which removes the option that made 2018 manageable. The September 2019 attack on Abqaiq clarifies a different point. That strike removed roughly half of Saudi production in a single operation, and Aramco restored output within weeks, which established that Saudi upstream infrastructure is more resilient to spectacular one-off attacks than markets initially assumed. The current campaign is not attempting that. It is attritional and aimed at export routing rather than production, which is why Nasser can accurately report no material financial impact while loadings fall by roughly 40 percent. Resilience against a single large strike does not translate into resilience against sustained pressure on a single outlet.

Steelmanning the limits of the capability. The blockade’s reach should not be overstated. Lloyd’s List Intelligence recorded 269 transits through the strait in the week beginning 20 July, down 24 percent from 354 in the preceding week, and 266 in the following week, indicating that overall traffic stabilised rather than collapsed. Three Chinese very large crude carriers and two Pakistan-flagged tankers loaded Saudi crude and transited during the active blockade without incident, which suggests enforcement is selective by flag and ownership rather than comprehensive. Interception has worked at least once at Yanbu. Vessels are also adapting, with Bloomberg reporting on 14 August that tankers are going dark for longer periods to move Middle East crude, and mid-August assessments finding most vessels at Yanbu operating with transponders switched off. The Houthis are additionally fighting a two-front problem, having engaged in their fiercest clashes with government forces in years, including missile strikes from al-Jawf on 13 August that Yemeni government sources said killed at least 30 soldiers. Sustaining a maritime campaign, an air campaign against Saudi infrastructure, and a ground war simultaneously will probably strain the group’s stocks of longer-range munitions.

Alternative Scenarios

Three trajectories are plausible over the next 60 days. First, attritional stalemate, probably the most likely near-term path: the blockade persists at current intensity, Saudi loadings remain suppressed, Riyadh confines itself to retaliatory strikes, and neither side seeks a settlement. This becomes more likely if the Hormuz track continues to stall on the conditions Ghalibaf restated on 18 August, if Saudi interception rates hold, and if Aramco continues to report no material financial impact, since each of those conditions lowers the pressure on Riyadh to choose between escalation and negotiation. The absence of any scheduled US-Iran talks as of late August makes this the base case.

Second, Saudi ground escalation: Riyadh backs a government offensive toward the Hodeidah coast to push Houthi launch sites out of range of the strait. This becomes more likely if strikes on Yanbu succeed rather than being intercepted, if the Petroline itself is targeted, or if the Hormuz negotiations collapse outright and leave the Red Sea as the kingdom’s only outlet indefinitely. It would almost certainly end the post-2022 truce framework and produce the largest Yemeni displacement event since 2018.

Third, Omani-brokered de-escalation: the reported channel between Riyadh and Sanaa produces a shipping understanding, possibly formalising the safe transit registration in exchange for an end to strikes on Saudi infrastructure. This becomes more likely if Hormuz reopens and reduces the strategic value of the Red Sea route to both parties, if Houthi munitions expenditure on the Yemeni ground front constrains the maritime campaign, or if Tehran concludes that a settlement at Hormuz is worth more than continued pressure on Riyadh. Such an outcome would probably institutionalise a Houthi permit regime as the price of resumption.

What Would Disprove This Assessment

The central claim is that the blockade is a general campaign against Saudi export capacity rather than a chokepoint measure, and that it will outlast the Hormuz closure that gave it value. Sustained Houthi attacks confined to vessels actually transiting the strait, alongside a halt to strikes on Yanbu and Jizan, would indicate the narrower reading is correct. A rapid collapse of the blockade following a Hormuz reopening would falsify the claim that the two are separable. Two competing explanations were considered. The first holds that the campaign is Iranian-directed pressure on Riyadh, timed to the US-Iran negotiations, and would end when they conclude. This is credible given the reported Tehran consultations and the Iranian advisory role in the proposed fee authority, but it does not account for the Houthi demand set predating the Iran war, nor for the group’s attacks on Yemeni government forces, which serve local rather than Iranian objectives. The second holds that the blockade is primarily leverage for a Yemeni internal settlement, with Saudi shipping the instrument rather than the target. This is harder to rule out and remains the strongest alternative reading; it would be supported if Houthi negotiating demands through the Omani channel centre on salary payments, port revenues, and recognition rather than on the Saudi blockade of Yemen itself.