Houthi Red Sea gains leave Trump caught between Saudi pressure and restraint

In mid-September, a rebel group long dismissed as Iran's foot soldiers seized two pieces of territory that would reshape the calculus of Middle Eastern power. The Houthis took Mokha, a major port city on Yemen's coast, and Perim, a small island that sits like a cork in a bottle—the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow waterway that funnels oil and cargo from the Arabian Peninsula to the rest of the world. With those captures, they gained near-total control of Yemen's Red Sea coastline and positioned themselves to threaten any vessel attempting passage through one of the planet's most critical shipping lanes.

The strait itself carries a weight that belies its modest geography. Known in Arabic as the Gate of Tears, it has channeled trade for millennia, but its modern importance crystallized with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Today it connects the oil-rich Middle East to global markets, making it one of the busiest maritime chokepoints on Earth. When Iran moved on the Strait of Hormuz earlier this year, Saudi Arabia had pivoted to an alternative: the 1,200-kilometer East-West pipeline, built in the early 1980s, which carries crude from the kingdom's Abqaiq facility in the east to the Red Sea port of Yanbu in the west. From there, tankers carry Saudi oil—mostly destined for Asia—either through the Suez Canal toward Europe or through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait toward the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis' seizure of territory controlling that second route was not accidental. It was a calculated move to press their advantage against a kingdom they see as an occupier.

The group wasted no time acting on their new position. On September 8, they fired on Saudi oil facilities and tankers navigating the strait. Days later, an attack on the East-West pipeline—blamed on Iran-backed militias in Iraq—sent tremors through global markets. The Houthis then escalated further, striking fuel tanks near Riyadh's international airport and energy sites along Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast. The effect on shipping was immediate and severe. Crude oil crossing the strait plummeted from 9 million barrels per day in 2023 to roughly 4.2 million in 2025. Insurance companies grew nervous about sending vessels through contested waters, forcing shippers to seek alternate routes and driving up costs. The threat alone, analysts noted, was enough to paralyze commerce.

Saudi Arabia, the region's wealthiest and most powerful nation, found itself in an unfamiliar position: vulnerable. The kingdom had largely escaped the initial months of the broader Iran-U.S. conflict unscathed, but that reprieve was ending. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader and a crucial American ally in the Iran war, called President Trump twice in September, urging military intervention. On September 17, he called again, this time pleading for U.S. assistance. Military commanders prepared target lists. Troops loaded bombs onto aircraft. The operation was locked and loaded, according to reporting by the New York Times. Then, at the last moment, Trump called it off. There would be no U.S. strikes "for now."

The decision left Trump caught between competing pressures. Saudi Arabia, expecting American support as it had received under both the Biden and Trump administrations, now faced the prospect of confronting the Houthis alone. The kingdom had reached out to France and Egypt for help; only Britain agreed to provide defensive air support. Saudi Arabia had recently signed a security pact with Turkey and Pakistan—the Mecca agreement—but neither nation had entered the conflict. The Red Sea, once a secondary theater, had become a test of alliances and American commitment.

Analysts warned that the implications extended far beyond Saudi Arabia's borders. Dr. John Sfakianakis, chief economist at the Gulf Research Center in Riyadh, told ABC Radio that the situation was "monumental." Saudi Arabia had been spared during the Iran war, he said, but "today Saudi Arabia will not be spared if the Houthis in Yemen are not reined in." The disruption to shipping threatened to raise oil and gas prices globally. With both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait now under some form of closure or threat, getting crude oil to market had become, in Sfakianakis's words, "quite difficult." The Houthis, for their part, framed their actions as retaliation for what they called Saudi Arabia's "unjust blockade on shipping traffic to and from Yemen." Their stated goal was the end of all Saudi involvement in Yemen, including the kingdom's backing of the internationally recognized government. Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi declared in a televised speech that "Saudi arrogance is unacceptable and the Saudi regime is an occupying power."

The group's actions also served a broader strategic purpose. By demonstrating that relatively cheap, unsophisticated weaponry could disrupt global shipping, the Houthis were teaching a lesson—one that benefited their patron, Iran, which now had another potential source of leverage as the United States worked to contain Tehran's influence at the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. The Red Sea had become an active and evolving theater where multiple actors operated and could collide at any moment. Trump's decision to hold back from military strikes left the outcome uncertain and the region more volatile than before.