On Sept. 10, the Houthis captured Mokha, a strategic port city on Yemen’s western coast that had for years been controlled by forces aligned with the internationally recognized government. After several days of fighting, government units withdrew south, giving the group a new foothold along the Red Sea.
The offensive continued on Sept. 11. According to two sources within Yemen’s government structures, Houthi forces reached the Dhubab area, which lies directly beside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and opposite Perim Island. That shifts the fighting from the Mokha coastline toward the maritime choke point itself.
Geography explains the scale of concern. Mokha lies roughly 65 kilometers from Bab el-Mandeb, the narrow passage between Yemen and the Horn of Africa through which ships leave the Red Sea for the Gulf of Aden. Its location was what historically made the city an important trading port.
Even before the offensive, the Houthis possessed weapons capable of striking ships from territory much farther north. Control of Mokha does not amount to automatic control of the strait, but it shortens the distance to it, expands the potential role of coastal systems and places additional pressure on government forces retreating southward.
Daycom’s analysis indicates that the main significance of Mokha’s fall lies not in the port itself, but in the fact that the Houthis have turned a potential threat to Bab el-Mandeb into a ground offensive directly toward the strait. If they establish themselves farther south, the risk to shipping will be shaped not only by missiles and drones, but by territorial control.
Bab el-Mandeb is especially important in 2026 because of the crisis surrounding another maritime corridor: the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic through Hormuz has fallen sharply since the conflict with Iran widened, forcing some exporters and carriers to look for alternative routes through the Red Sea.
The change is already visible in physical oil flows. U.S. energy statistics estimate that about 8.1 million barrels of oil and petroleum products a day passed through Bab el-Mandeb in the second quarter of 2026, up from 5.6 million in the first quarter. The strait became more important precisely as Hormuz became less reliable.
For Saudi Arabia, that overlap is particularly dangerous. The kingdom can move oil across its territory to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing Hormuz. But tankers still need to sail south through Bab el-Mandeb if their cargo is bound for Asian markets.
The Houthis had already announced maritime restrictions on Saudi tankers in July and in the following weeks attacked targets inside Saudi Arabia and shipping routes. That is why their advance toward the strait is seen not as an abstract strengthening of position, but as an expansion of their ability to enforce a policy they have already declared.
At the same time, the Houthis themselves say international shipping unrelated to Saudi Arabia is not under threat. A coordination center linked to the group has said the restrictions remain directed at Saudi vessels and that other navigation is supposedly safe.
The actual picture does not yet show the strait being closed. On Sept. 10, 26 ships passed through Bab el-Mandeb, a figure close to the recent average. The capture of Mokha therefore did not immediately stop trade, but it sharply increased the risk that shipowners and insurers now have to factor into their decisions.
Risk alone, without a physical blockade, can be enough to produce serious economic consequences. After previous Houthi attacks, major carriers rerouted ships around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope. That lengthens voyages, increases fuel and insurance costs and effectively removes part of the fleet from circulation for longer periods.
Markets reacted quickly, although Mokha was only one of several factors driving broader Middle East tension. On Sept. 11, Brent crude, after jumping to nearly $110 a barrel, was trading around $106, still more than 10% above its level at the start of the week. Concerns over maritime routes were among the factors behind the move.
For global trade, the implications extend far beyond oil. Bab el-Mandeb connects the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea, the Suez Canal and, beyond it, the Mediterranean. Containers, food, fuel and industrial goods moving between Asia and Europe all pass through this route.
That means control of coastal areas near the strait can create political leverage even without an attempt to shut the waterway entirely. Periodic attacks, or the credible threat of new ones, may be enough to push some companies onto different routes. For the Houthis, that creates the ability to influence decisions made thousands of kilometers from Yemen.
Mokha also has major importance inside Yemen. The city was one of the principal centers of forces loyal to Tareq Saleh, a member of the Presidential Leadership Council and commander of formations that held much of the western coastline on behalf of the anti-Houthi camp.
After the breakthrough, Saleh acknowledged serious losses and ordered his units to regroup and establish an alternative command center in a safer area. He described the withdrawal as a reorganization conducted in coordination with Yemen’s leadership and the Saudi-led coalition, but the loss of Mokha itself represents a major setback for his position.
The offensive has also exposed an old weakness of the anti-Houthi camp: fragmentation. Different formations fight the group under separate commanders, regional agendas and foreign patrons. Their ability to hold a long coastline collectively remains weaker than their total strength might suggest on paper.
Yemen’s war in its present form began after the Houthis seized Sanaa in 2014 and drove out the internationally recognized government. In 2015, Saudi Arabia led a military intervention in support of that government, while years of fighting turned the country into one of the gravest humanitarian crises of the modern era.
The 2022 truce significantly reduced the intensity of large-scale fighting, but it did not produce a political settlement. In 2026, that fragile balance began to unravel, and battles on the western coast have become the most serious return to major ground warfare in years.
Mokha has shown that this new round of conflict differs from the last one. The Houthis now have far greater experience with ballistic missiles, cruise weapons and drones, gained not only in Yemen’s internal war but also through years of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
Iranian support remains an important part of those capabilities. Regional sources have described weapons supplies, technical assistance and advice from Iranian structures. Tehran, however, insists that it does not directly control Houthi decisions, and the extent of Iran’s operational influence remains disputed.
That distinction matters. The Houthis are an ally of Iran, but they also have their own domestic political agenda, territorial interests and a long-running conflict with Saudi Arabia. Their offensive can therefore be understood both as part of a regional confrontation and as a struggle over who will ultimately rule Yemen.
Representatives of the movement are increasingly demanding that their administration be treated as the country’s legitimate government. Capturing a new port and additional territory strengthens that claim: every new district increases the population, infrastructure and resources the group can bring to future negotiations.
Houthi political official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti has denied that simple territorial expansion is the goal, describing the offensive instead as a struggle for Yemeni sovereignty and against Saudi Arabia. Other southern factions, he said, could retain the areas they control until a future political process takes place.
For Riyadh, that argument changes little about the strategic problem. Saudi Arabia has spent recent years trying to reduce its direct involvement in Yemen’s war. The Houthi advance toward Bab el-Mandeb may now force the kingdom to decide again how much military power it is prepared to use to halt the offensive.
Saudi aircraft have already struck Houthi positions during the renewed escalation, but events on the ground have shown the limits of air superiority. Airstrikes can destroy equipment and positions, but they cannot replace forces capable of holding cities, roads and coastline once the opponent withdraws.
The situation on the islands remains especially uncertain. Government sources have reported the withdrawal of allied formations from Hanish and Zuqar, as well as Houthi advances in the area. At the same time, control over individual islands is changing with the fighting and has not been independently confirmed in every case.
The most important is Perim, also known locally as Mayyun, which sits effectively inside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Its status after the offensive remains unclear. Combined with control of Dhubab on the mainland, possession of the island would give any force a much stronger position for monitoring the waterway.
That is why the advance toward Dhubab may prove strategically more important than the seizure of Mokha itself. Mokha provides a port, a base and control over part of the coast. Dhubab and Perim are the geography of the strait itself, where military control directly intersects with international shipping.
It would nevertheless be an exaggeration to say the Houthis already “control Bab el-Mandeb.” The opposite shore lies near Djibouti and Eritrea, international naval forces continue to operate in the region, and commercial vessels were still passing through the waterway on Sept. 10 and 11.
The real change is different: the distance between Houthi-held territory and a critical global shipping corridor has shrunk sharply. That increases the number of tools the group could potentially use to influence shipping, while making the task more difficult for Saudi and Yemeni forces trying to push it back.
The situation is even more dangerous because it coincides with the crisis around Hormuz. The global energy system can normally compensate for trouble on one route by shifting to another. But when risk rises simultaneously around both maritime exits of the Arabian Peninsula, the room for such maneuver narrows sharply.
That is why the capture of a single Yemeni city can influence oil prices, freight rates and government decisions far beyond the Middle East. Markets are assessing not only what has happened today, but the possibility of a scenario in which two of the world’s key energy routes remain unstable at the same time.
What happens next will depend on whether the Houthis can hold Mokha and Dhubab and advance toward other strategic points. Equally important is whether government forces can gather enough resources for a counteroffensive and how actively Saudi Arabia supports an attempt to recover the lost coastline.
The reverse scenario cannot be ruled out. Rapid advances create longer supply lines and a need to hold new territory. If their opponents stabilize the front and make use of superior air power, the territory gained by the Houthis could shift from an asset into another arena of attrition.
The political effect, however, has already occurred. Mokha had been an important symbol of government control over the western coast, and its loss now shows that the balance that appeared relatively stable after the 2022 truce no longer holds. Yemen’s war is again becoming an open regional crisis.
Mokha’s name was once known around the world because of coffee: its port was one of the principal export points for Yemeni beans, and the city itself gave its name to an entire coffee tradition. Today, its global importance is defined by a different kind of trade — tankers, container ships and routes linking Asia with Europe.
The Houthis have not yet closed Bab el-Mandeb, nor have they gained full control of the strait. But after the capture of Mokha and the advance toward Dhubab, the distance between Yemen’s civil war and one of the planet’s most important trade corridors can now literally be measured in kilometers.
And that is what makes the fall of Mokha far more significant than a change of flag over a single port: the struggle for Yemen’s western coast is now becoming directly intertwined with the question of how safely the world can continue to use the Red Sea.
