The US-Iran war is threatening to open a second front, this time at sea, and this time aimed at America’s own Gulf allies.
Yemen’s Houthi rebels claimed early Thursday that they had struck two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, part of what the group calls a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia. The attack came as the US military launched its 12th consecutive night of strikes against Iran, a campaign that has widened from eastern targets to western and central Iran.
The Houthi strikes, if confirmed, would represent a significant escalation. Until now, the Houthis have largely confined their Red Sea attacks to Israeli-linked or US-linked vessels. Targeting Saudi oil tankers is a direct threat to Riyadh’s economic lifeline, and a message that the Houthis can make the war personal for Saudi Arabia whenever Iran asks them to.
A second chokepoint
The Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, is already effectively closed by the Iran war. Oil tankers cannot transit safely; global prices have risen accordingly. A Houthi blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea would trap what remains of the global oil trade between two fires.
The Houthis said the tankers violated their “blockade.” Reuters reported that the group claimed the strikes as part of a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, threatening to create a second chokepoint on global oil supplies.
The US military said its own strikes are designed to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten civilian mariners and commercial vessels transiting regional waters.” CENTCOM described the 12th night of bombing as part of the ongoing campaign to regain control of the Strait of Hormuz and restore the flow of international shipping.
So far, that campaign has not succeeded. The strait remains effectively closed. And now a second waterway is under threat.
The widening air campaign
The 12th night of US strikes on Iran marks a shift in scale and geography. What began as targeted strikes on Iranian naval assets and missile sites in the east has expanded to include targets in western and central Iran, deeper inside the country, closer to population centers.
The US says the bombing is degrading Iran’s ability to threaten ships. Iran says the attacks are drawing it into a quagmire. Neither claim can be independently verified, but the duration of the campaign, 12 nights and counting, suggests that whatever the Pentagon expected when it began, it did not expect to still be bombing nearly two weeks later.
Saudi Arabia caught between
The Houthi attack on Saudi tankers puts Riyadh in an uncomfortable position. The kingdom is formally allied with the US in the war on Iran. But it has shown reluctance to fully commit, it briefly denied the US access to its airspace earlier in the conflict, and it has pursued its own interests, including the nuclear deal signed this week, independently of Washington’s war aims.
Now the Houthis, Iran’s proxy, are attacking Saudi economic assets directly. Riyadh can respond militarily, which risks drawing it deeper into a war it has tried to keep at arm’s length. Or it can absorb the attacks and hope the US-Iran conflict resolves quickly, which is not a strategy.
The third option is the one that keeps Middle East analysts awake: Riyadh decides the United States cannot protect its interests, and begins making its own arrangements, with Russia, with China, or on its own nuclear terms. The nuclear deal signed this week is, in part, a hedge against that scenario.
What comes next
A second chokepoint on global oil shipping would mean prices that make the current level look cheap. The Bab el-Mandeb is narrow, difficult to defend, and within easy striking distance of Houthi-controlled Yemeni coastline. If the Houthis can sustain a blockade there while Iran keeps the Strait of Hormuz closed, the world’s oil supply chain is cut in two.
The US military has not indicated whether it will extend its strike campaign to Houthi positions in Yemen, a separate war on top of the one it is already fighting. Doing so would mean expanding a conflict that is already on its 12th night with no end in sight.