The US warned that Iran-backed Houthi militants could start firing on vessels in the Bab El-Mandeb Strait after Tehran raised the possibility of extending barriers to global shipping during the ongoing war.
The US Department of Transportation’s Maritime Administration issued an advisory notice on Thursday about the Yemen-based Houthis, which significantly disrupted shipping with a series of attacks on the Red Sea in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“Although the Houthi terrorist group has not attacked commercial ships since the Israel-Gaza ceasefire agreement in October 2025, the Houthis continue to pose a threat to US assets, including commercial vessels, in this region,” the Maritime Administration said in its notice.
The Bab El-Mandeb Strait — located at the mouth of the Red Sea — has been used as a route for picking up Saudi Arabian oil flows from the port of Yanbu in the west of the kingdom. Riyadh is sending several million barrels a day of crude there from its eastern fields via a pipeline, a means to get around Iran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz.
The US note on Bab El-Mandeb comes after Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency warned of the potential opening of a new “front” in the war in response to the Trump administration moving troops into the region.
Energy prices have already soared due to the effective closure of Hormuz, a conduit for about a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.
In a video released on Thursday, Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said the group will respond militarily to US and Israeli attacks should developments in the war on Iran require such a response.
The Bab El-Mandeb Strait links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the wider Arabian Sea.
Tasnim quoted an anonymous Iranian military official saying the “Bab el-Mandeb Strait is considered one of the world’s strategic straits, and Iran has both the will and the ability to create a completely credible threat against it.”
In a separate notice on Thursday, the Joint Maritime Information Center — an international naval task force monitoring the area — said the threat level in the Bab El-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden remained moderate because of the “hostile posture” of the Houthis and the ongoing regional conflict.
“The group retains both the capability and demonstrated intent to conduct maritime attacks in the region,” the JMIC said. “Known threat vectors include anti-ship missiles, one-way attack UAVs, and uncrewed surface vessels.”
Copyright 2026 Bloomberg.
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