At the narrow passage where the Red Sea meets the Gulf of Aden, Houthi forces have seized two strategic islands, drawing tighter a knot that now threatens the flow of energy sustaining much of the modern world. With Iran having closed the Strait of Hormuz and Saudi Arabia's overland pipeline damaged by rebel strikes, the corridors through which civilization's commerce moves are narrowing one by one. What unfolds near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is not merely a regional skirmish but a reckoning with how fragile the arteries of global interdependence truly are — and how swiftly human displacement a
Houthis seize Red Sea islands as regional tensions escalate over shipping routes
Nearly 94,000 people have fled their homes in Yemen since fighting escalated this month, with over 2,000 fleeing across the sea to Djibouti, and more than 500 killed in a single week.