Houthi fighters landed on Mayyun Island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Friday, completing their capture of one of the world’s most important sea lanes and handing Iran’s closest ally a grip on roughly a tenth of global seaborne trade.
A Yemeni government official said boats carrying armed fighters reached the island — also called Perim — after government forces withdrew a day earlier, and that the group had “completed their takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb area.” Witnesses described gunmen fanning out along the shoreline in military vehicles.
Perim sits inside the 29-kilometer strait and splits it into two shipping channels. Holding the island and the facing coast at Dhubab, the Houthis can now reach passing ships with artillery and small boats, not only with the missiles and drones they fire from inland. The advance followed their capture of the port of Mokha on September 10 and of Zuqar Island, leaving them in control of nearly all of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline.
Two Chokepoints, Houthis Squeeze
Brent crude climbed past $105 a barrel Thursday as Mokha fell, and neared $110 Friday — pressure landing on a market already short of exits. Iran has disrupted the Strait of Hormuz since February 28, and US pump prices have reached $4.22 a gallon, the highest since June. Traders now face the prospect of both regional gateways sitting under hostile guns at once.
Shipowners have been paying for that risk for months. War-risk cover for voyages out of southern Saudi Red Sea ports touched 3 percent of hull value in July. Crude freight from the Gulf to China ran at about $78 a tonne by mid-year — roughly four times the five-year pre-war average. Most container lines already route Asia-Europe cargo around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10-14 days. Perim turns that detour into the permanent map.
The Mecca Agreement: Will Pakistan Actually Fight the Houthis?
Saudi Arabia signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Pakistan and Turkey on August 7 — a NATO-style pledge that an attack on one counts as an attack on all. Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said this week that spillover from Yemen would make the pact operational, insisting Islamabad faced “no ambiguity about that.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan together field close to 1.4 million troops.
The record points the other way. Pakistan’s parliament rejected a Saudi request to join the Yemen war in 2015 and chose neutrality instead. Islamabad shares a 900-kilometer border with Iran, governs a large Shia minority whose reach extends into its officer corps, and saw domestic unrest after the killing of Iran’s supreme leader. Pakistani officials have spent 2026 positioning their country as Tehran’s trusted interlocutor — bombing the Houthis would burn that role overnight.
The agreement itself gives Riyadh little to demand. Negotiators published no text, created no joint command and wrote no trigger mechanism. According to reports, senior officers from the three states met in Riyadh this week and agreed their forces would not enter Yemen, staging any response from Saudi soil instead. A second Pakistani source said Islamabad had made no decision on joining strikes at all.
Turkey shows no more appetite. Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan has said the pact names no common adversary and does not target Iran. Ankara keeps roughly 3,000 troops in Qatar — a force that stayed in barracks when Iran struck Al Udeid air base, and again during this year’s war. Both partners will likely offer what costs them nothing while still helping Riyadh: air defense, early warning, counter-drone kit and intelligence, which analysts argue matter more against Houthi drones than extra infantry ever would.
Trump Said No
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called President Donald Trump twice on Thursday, pressing him to strike the Houthis. Trump refused. His standing instruction keeps American forces pointed at Iran and Hormuz rather than opening a second front. Washington will pass Riyadh intelligence and targeting data instead; roughly 200 American personnel already serve in the kingdom in non-combat roles.
A senior administration official framed the policy as protecting freedom of navigation while “empowering our regional partners” to lead. Admiral Brad Cooper, who commands US Central Command, flew to Saudi Arabia on Thursday for urgent talks. The Saudi request marked a sharp reversal — in July, Riyadh had told Washington it could handle the Houthis alone.
The confrontation reignited that month after Saudi Arabia blocked an Iranian aircraft carrying Houthi officials from landing in Sanaa. The group then declared a blockade on Saudi-linked shipping and struck the kingdom’s tankers and energy sites. Houthi representatives reportedly discussed charging ships a transit fee during a visit to Tehran, though their maritime authority denied the plan. Saudi warplanes bombed Mokha airport on Friday, Houthi media said, while fighting spread to the Hanish Islands further north. The United Nations says the fighting has displaced at least 46,000 people.