On July 21, I wrote that while we were all obsessed over the Strait of Hormuz, a quieter vulnerability lay in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the “Gate of Tears” to the south and west of Saudi Arabia:
With the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut for months, Saudi Arabia has been routing crude overland through the East-West Pipeline, built in the 1980s for precisely this scenario. It runs to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, moving several million barrels a day that would otherwise have to transit Hormuz. That workaround has kept a full-blown global supply shock at bay. A Houthi blockade at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Red Sea chokepoint that oil has to pass through to reach Asian and European buyers, would cut off that relief valve entirely.
Unfortunately, that is almost exactly what happened this week.
On Sept. 10, Houthi forces took the port city of Mokha on Yemen’s Red Sea coast. The next day, they captured Perim Island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, after Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces fell back and left their vehicles behind for the Houthis to seize.
The Houthis now control Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline. Meanwhile, drones struck the East-West Pipeline itself, prompting the Saudis to shut it down as a precaution.
Overnight into Sunday, the fighting crossed the border into Saudi Arabia. A projectile struck al-Tawwal in Saudi Arabia’s Jazan province, wounding two people and damaging a mosque and other buildings. Saudi civil defense blamed the attack on the Houthis. Separately, the Houthi military claimed a strike on a Saudi military base in Sharurah in the Najran region.
The instability is reaching into oil markets and pocketbooks. Brent crude is currently trading above $108 a barrel. American consumers are paying roughly 40 percent more at the pump than they were on Feb. 28, the day the U.S. and Israel began the war on Iran.
The bottom line is grim. Iran and its proxies now hold meaningful leverage over two of the world’s major oil chokepoints at once: the Strait of Hormuz on one side of the Arabian Peninsula and the Bab el-Mandeb on the other.
It didn’t have to be this way.
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The warnings on the record
On July 23, two days after I wrote about the danger at Bab el-Mandeb, Trump issued a “red line” warning: If the Houthis struck Saudi tankers again, after having hit two just the night before, “the U.S. will hold Iran responsible, in that the Houthis are a Surrogate and/or Proxy of Iran, and major military punishment will be inflicted upon Iran and, of course, the Houthis, themselves.”
But the Houthis, to no one’s surprise, ignored the threat. They struck Saudi shipping and oil infrastructure again within days. This being Trump, he didn’t follow through. No “major military punishment” followed, against Iran or the Houthis.
The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs called on the White House to act before the Houthis could seize control of the strategic strait, writing on July 29 that Tehran’s proxies had moved “from bellicose rhetoric to strikes on both Red Sea shipping and Saudi oil infrastructure,” and that Washington needed to prevent “both the Houthis and Tehran from weaponizing the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”
The Institute for the Study of War tracked the buildup in real time beginning in August. It assessed that the Houthis were “setting conditions to establish the [Bab el-Mandeb] Strait as an Axis of Resistance-controlled body of water” and that allowing them to consolidate control would prove “unacceptable” for U.S. national and economic interests. ISW warned that the Houthis’ capture of Mokha and their landings near the strait “may set conditions for potential Houthi efforts to establish themselves as a legitimate authority and guarantor of passage through the strait, as Iran has attempted to do in the Strait of Hormuz.”
Cambridge Middle East specialist Elisabeth Kendall described the same endpoint months earlier. Asked in March what a Bab el-Mandeb blockade, layered on top of the Hormuz closure, would mean, she told Al Jazeera it would create a “nightmare scenario,” adding that “if you have restrictions on the Strait of Hormuz at the same time as restrictions are escalating in the Bab al-Mandeb, then you really will disrupt, if not cripple, trade toward Europe.”
Retired Saudi Air Force Maj. Gen. Abdullah Ghanem Al-Qahtani reassured reporters in July that while the Houthis could threaten maritime traffic, they lacked the capability to close the strait outright. That assessment now appears overtaken by events; as of this writing, the Houthis are not allowing any Saudi vessels to transit Bab el-Mandeb.
What it costs and who is paying for it
Brent crude has climbed from roughly $72 a barrel in early July to above $108 today, a level not seen since May. American drivers are paying the price. The national average for a gallon of gas topped $4.15 on Labor Day, a record for that late in the year, according to GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan. He calculated that Americans are now spending about $700 million more per day for fuel than they did a year earlier. Diesel crossed the $6-a-gallon threshold for the first time on record, up from $3.71 a year earlier.
Higher diesel costs extend well beyond the pump. It’s the fuel that powers the freight trucks, trains, ships and farm equipment that move most of what Americans buy. Higher diesel prices therefore translate into higher transportation costs, which raise the price of groceries, clothing, furniture and deliveries. Amazon has already added a temporary fuel and logistics surcharge for some third-party sellers, and UPS, FedEx and the Postal Service have added fees of their own, citing fuel costs.
Perishable food is expected to feel the impact first because produce and meat are hauled and restocked frequently. Kroger CEO Greg Foran told investors this month that “the pressure is actually going to mount,” and Smithfield Foods CFO Mark Hall said the impact “is beginning to flow through in the second half of the year.” August inflation ran at 3.4 percent annually, with gasoline prices alone up 27.4 percent from a year ago.
Houthi control of the Gate of Tears will add to the oil supply crunch. Richard Bronze of energy research firm Energy Aspects noted that Saudi crude shipments through the Bab el-Mandeb had peaked at around 3 million barrels a day earlier this year before collapsing to roughly 400,000 by August. He attributed the drop directly to Houthi pressure on the route, which means the collapse predates this week’s seizure of Mokha and Perim Island.
With fuel prices likely to remain elevated if not worsen in the coming months, Republicans will soon find that a tough November election just got even tougher. The pipeline strikes and rapid Houthi seizure of the waterway are making headlines and causing turmoil after high gas prices already soured voters on Trump and the Republican Party. Now Saudi Arabia has asked Washington for military help against the Houthis, meaning U.S. military involvement in the region may escalate rather than recede.
Voters may recall that Trump promised the opposite. He assured Americans that oil prices would fall “precipitously” once the U.S. won the war in Iran, which the president said was very nearly over. He predicted gasoline at $3 a gallon and “eventually” below $2.
Analysts now expect price pressure to keep building rather than ease. Goldman Sachs raised its Brent forecast to $85 a barrel for December and warned prices could soar above $120 in 2027 if Gulf output remains suppressed, citing “more intense shipping attacks in Hormuz and the Red Sea” as the most likely driver. HSBC raised its 2026 Brent forecast to $90, telling clients the oil market will not rebalance until mid-2027, given no clear path to de-escalation. Bank of America’s baseline forecast assumes gradual normalization, but cautions that if “skirmishes curbing oil flows continue into year end,” Brent could trade between $95 and $120.
None of those forecasts priced in this week’s loss of Mokha, Perim Island or the East-West Pipeline shutdown when they were published.
Trump, traveling in Ireland, offered his own forecast Saturday, the day after Perim Island fell. Asked when the war might end, he said, “I think very soon, I think it’ll be right after the midterms, actually,” adding, “I would say shortly, and oil will come tumbling down when that happens.”
There is no basis in fact or on the ground to support that prediction.
The scorecard
As the midterms approach, Democrats will hammer home that Trump repeatedly declared the war won. Twelve days after the strikes started, he told a Kentucky rally, “Let me say, we’ve won… You never like to say too early you won: We won. We won the bet — in the first hour, it was over.” Weeks later, he called Iran “totally defeated.” In a CBS interview, he said the war was “very complete, pretty much. They have no navy, no communications, they’ve got no Air Force.”
Within hours, the Defense Department’s rapid response account posted a contradictory message: “We have Only Just Begun to Fight.” Days earlier, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had told 60 Minutes that “this is only just the beginning” and warned that more American casualties were likely.
Six and a half months in, Iran’s Houthi allies now hold Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline, Saudi Arabia is asking Washington for military help defending its oil infrastructure and Americans are paying record prices for gas and diesel.
Trump’s boasts notwithstanding, the U.S. has not won the war. With the newest attacks, it’s now clear that we’re losing ground and our strategic position is worsening the longer it drags on. The Pentagon has no apparent plan to get us out or even regain control of what are now two of the world’s most important energy chokepoints.
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