Houthis seize Red Sea island, escalating threat to global shipping routes

In the ancient waters of the Red Sea, where trade has flowed for millennia, Yemen's Houthi forces have seized a strategic island, placing a non-state actor in direct command of one of the world's most consequential maritime corridors. The capture, swift and largely unanticipated, is less a skirmish than a declaration — that Iran's regional ambitions have found physical form in territory once thought beyond reach. As oil tankers, gas carriers, and container ships trace their familiar paths between Asia and Europe, they now do so under the shadow of a new and unsettling authority. The world's po