Ansar Allah, the Yemeni resistance government, declared the Bab al-Mandab Strait closed to Saudi ships on July 20, shutting down traffic through the Red Sea in response to Saudi strikes on Yemen’s Sanaa Airport earlier this month.
Saudi Arabia struck the airport in mid-July after airplanes from Iran landed, returning previously-stranded Yemenis as well as delegates attending the historic, massive resistance rallies and funeral for Iran’s assassinated leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Yemeni Armed Forces spokesman Yayha Saree said the resistance government was imposing an “equation of blockade for blockade” in his declaration of the closure.
Now, Ansar Allah is considering charging fees for commercial passage through the Strait following Iran’s tactic with the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reports.
About 12% of global oil trade and 30% of global container traffic travels through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, making it the third busiest maritime choke-point in the world. Fiber optic cables connecting Europe, Africa, and Asia also pass through, responsible for 90% of Europe’s internet.
Yemen struck three Saudi-linked tankers that violated the blockade on July 23, with global oil prices rising in response.
On July 25, the Yemeni Armed Forces struck Saudi oil facilities and an airbase with drone and missile attacks, causing extensive damage and forcing closures of key oil facilities in response to Saudi attacks on Yemeni economic infrastructure.
By July 26, 16 Saudi-linked oil vessels had reversed, heeding the Yemeni blockade according to Al Mayadeen English, with their source claiming zero Saudi ships had dared to run the blockade.
The closure of the Red Sea to Saudi cargo ships strangles the flow of Saudi oil, compounding the pressure on US imperialism amid its war of aggression on Iran as the Strait of Hormuz remains shut by Iran in defiance of US bombings and threats. Saudi Arabia had redirected its oil exports previously destined for Hormuz westward at great expense to the Red Sea ports, where it now finds itself thwarted again.
Saudi Arabia, on behalf of the US-Zionists, waged a genocidal war against Yemen since 2015 until a ceasefire with Sanaa in 2022, which Ansar Allah has now declared broken by the latest Saudi aggression. The Saudi-US-Zionist war imposed mass starvation on the Yemeni people through blockade and Nazi-Zionist-style airstrikes against hospitals and other civilian sites. Ansar Allah has now vowed to break the Saudi-US-Zionist siege of the country, declaring an end of patience after four years of Saudi stalling on the ceasefire.
Backed by mass anti-imperialist mobilizations of the Yemeni people, Ansar Allah imposed a blockade on US-Zionist vessels in the Red Sea shortly after the opening of the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood in October 2023. The blockade forced the major Israeli port Eilat into bankruptcy in 2024. Ansar Allah defended and maintained the blockade after defeating a US-Israeli campaign against Yemen in 2025 in what US media described as the most intense naval warfare the US has faced since World War 2. The blockade was lifted in October 2025 after the Palestinian resistance and its allies conquered a ceasefire with Israel.
Image: The Yemeni Armed Forces launch retaliatory missiles. Credit: Image released by Yemeni Armed Forces, retrieved from Press TV.
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