It’s not just Hormuz. There’s a second strait in the Middle East vital to global energy markets that Iran is threatening to close if President Donald Trump fails to wind down the Iran war.
The world is already experiencing the worst disruption to global energy markets in history following U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran. But if Iranian proxies close the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a busy Red Sea choke point — it would compound global financial woes and likely push oil prices to $150 a barrel, experts said.
An Iranian military official told the country’s semiofficial news agency Saturday that if the U.S. and Israel attack more of the country’s energy infrastructure, Iran would escalate “insecurity in other straits, including the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Red Sea.”
The strait, hundreds of miles from the Strait of Hormuz, at Yemen’s southwestern tip, is a pathway for ships carrying about 10 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas supplies.
Bab el Mandeb has been targeted previously by the Houthis, a Yemen-based rebel group supported by Iran that blocked the strait by attacking ships, using drones and missiles.
“I have no doubt in my mind that eventually the Houthis will enter and they will do two things — first, block the Bab el Mandeb strait, and second, try to prevent the Saudis from having tankers in [its] Yanbu port taking oil,” said Danny Citrinowicz, a former top Iran researcher for the Israeli Defense Forces.
In the past month, the strait has become an alternative route to get Middle Eastern oil to market as Iran’s threats have effectively shut down Hormuz. And while the Houthis agreed to a ceasefire last year, their leader warned this month that “our hands are on the trigger when it comes to military escalation.”
“If the war escalates, we should expect them to get involved and resume their maritime campaign,” said Noam Raydan, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and an expert on energy and maritime risks in the Middle East.
The Houthis slowed global shipping through Bab el Mandeb from 2023 to 2025. Despite the ceasefire, the group never stopped threatening the region and could seek to replicate Iran’s success in Hormuz, Raydan added.
“I will not say, ‘Start a maritime campaign,’ because the Houthis never stopped. They paused it last year, but this threat remains,” Raydan said.
The world’s two largest shipping companies, Switzerland-based MSC and Denmark’s Maersk, are already worried enough about attacks on Bab el Mandeb that they are now avoiding the region.
Nate Swanson, who was director for Iran on the White House National Security Council from 2022 to 2025, said he is surprised Iran has not worked to close the Bab el Mandeb strait.
“It could be strategic patience, it could be diminished capabilities, or it could be some kind of side deal with the Saudis,” said Swanson, who is now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.
'Harder than they have ever been hit'
White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told reporters Wednesday that negotiations with Iran are ongoing as Iran seeks an off-ramp to the conflict, but warned that Trump could “unleash hell” starting with energy infrastructure targets.
“If Iran fails to accept the reality of the current moment, if they fail to understand that they have been defeated militarily and will continue to be, President Trump will ensure they are hit harder than they have ever been hit before,” Leavitt said.
If negotiations stall or fail, shutting the Bab el Mandeb strait will be one of Iran’s most powerful political levers, which could draw the Houthis into the war, Citrinowicz said.
“If things escalate and Trump attacks energy facilities, the Iranians will be in a very hard situation,” he said, adding that closure of the Bab el Mandeb strait might represent the next level of economic pain from the conflict. The Iranian regime is not as desperate for a deal as Trump appears to believe, Citrinowicz said.
Closing the strait would be a natural escalation of Iran’s asymmetric approach that focuses on maximum disruption because it is overwhelmed by U.S. air power. The strait connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and is the fourth-largest global shipping choke point. Situated between Yemen on the east and Djibouti and Eritrea on the west, it is just 20 miles wide at its broadest point.
The strait is a critical shipping route for many global products, including electronics, clothing, furniture, household goods and food supplies like wheat, corn and coffee. It connects markets in Africa, Europe and Asia including the Middle East.
The Houthis have refrained from joining the fight, but that could change if the U.S. and Israel escalate, said Gregory Brew, an Iran analyst at the Eurasia Group.
“If the Houthis decide to get off the sidelines and join this war — and even to do so in a pretty small way, fire a couple missiles, fire a couple drones — then offloading tankers becomes impossible, and this goes from a 10 million barrel a day disruption to a 15 [million] to 17 million barrel a day disruption,” Brew said. Crude oil prices would quickly spike from the current levels of $90 to $100 a barrel to $150 per barrel, he said.
Saudi Arabia has ramped up pipeline capacity to its Yanbu port on the Red Sea, which lets the country ship out up to 3 million to 5 million barrels of oil per day by avoiding Hormuz.
Iran unlikely to capitulate
Trump has stated in recent days that negotiations to end the war are underway with Iranian leaders, but it’s unclear whether those talks will provide a legitimate off-ramp to the war.
After Trump wrote on Truth Social early Monday that he was delaying his promised assault on Iranian energy infrastructure amid negotiations, oil prices dropped 10 percent to under $90 a barrel, before rising again to more than $100.
Trump has said the U.S. is in a “good bargaining position” and that Iran is “defenseless.”
“We'll have control of anything we want,” Trump said, referring to Hormuz. “Look, if we can end this without more lives being down, without knocking out $10 billion electric plants that are brand new and the apple of their eye, I'd like to be able to do that.”
For all of Trump’s talk of ending the war with a deal, thousands of Marines are shipping out for the region, with an initial wave expected to arrive in a few days, around the deadline for a possible U.S. assault on Iran’s energy infrastructure.
White House officials are still working to court Iranian leaderswho might be willing to negotiate, even though the last rounds of talks happened while U.S. and Israel were finalizing a plan to assassinate Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It’s not clear that the regime is ready to make deals.
In recent weeks, the Iranian regime has learned how much global power it can exert by closing Hormuz and causing worldwide economic pressure, said Citrinowicz, the former Israeli expert on Iran. If Trump escalates by attacking Iran’s Kharg Island, where 90 percent of Iran’s oil is exported, or by attacking regional energy infrastructure, Bab el Mandeb would become an important way for the regime to flex its power.
“We are not in a situation where the Iranians are capitulating as Trump is also desperate for negotiation,” Citrinowicz said. “The other day, he blinked first.”
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