Iran’s Allies Could Target Bab al-Mandeb If U.S. Strikes Iranian Power Infrastructure, Report Says
Iran asked their Houthi allies in Yemen to prepare to close the Bab al-Mandeb Strait should the U.S. attack Iran’s power infrastructure, Reuters reported—renewing concerns that oil shipping through another crucial waterway could be throttled after Hormuz.
Iran recently asked the Houthis to stand ready to close the Bab al-Mandeb, two senior Iranian sources and one regional source told Reuters.
Another source told the news agency the Houthis have already deployed missiles and drones that could target ships in the Red Sea and are awaiting orders to begin strikes, and members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Yemen will decide when exactly to close the Bab al-Mandeb.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to target Iran’s power plants and other civilian infrastructure, including bridges and desalination plants.
Throughout the first phase of the war, Iran repeatedly suggested it could close the strait—in an English language post on X in April, Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, said the U.S. opposition “views Bab al-Mandeb as it does Hormuz.”
Although Iran does not border the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Yemen does, and Iran is closely allied with the Houthis, the Yemeni militant group that previously conducted dozens of strikes against Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea in 2023 and 2024 in response to the war in Gaza.
The Houthis launched missiles at Saudi Arabia on Monday after accusing the country of striking an airport in Sana’a, and previously launched strikes against military targets in Israel earlier in the war.
“Today, the unified command of the Resistance front views Bab al-Mandeb as it does Hormuz,” Velayati wrote in April. This could refer to Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” the loosely aligned groups of militias and other groups supported by Iran, which include the Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq. “If the White House dares to repeat its foolish mistakes, it will soon realize that the flow of global energy and trade can be disrupted with a single move,” Velayati added.
The closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait could further disrupt global trade, blocking yet another chokepoint for the petroleum exporting nations to ship oil and natural gas out of the region. An estimated 4.1 million barrels of petroleum products traveled through the strait per day in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. In comparison, about 20 million barrels traveled through the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, according to the International Energy Agency. The Bab al-Mandeb Strait is one of the alternative routes for petroleum exporters to ship oil to Asia. About 7 million barrels of oil are now shipped to the Saudi Arabian city of Yanbu, a port on the Red Sea, through a pipeline, ABC News reported citing data from maritime intelligence firm Kpler. The oil that reaches Yanbu then transits through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Trump’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz comes only days after Saudi Arabia announced it restored full pumping capacity through the pipeline to prewar levels—about seven million barrels per day—after the pipeline came under attack from likely Iranian missiles and drones.
The Houthis have not attacked vessels in the Bab al-Mandeb yet, instead targeting Israel with missiles, but analysts who spoke to Politico and Al Jazeera predicted the group could start targeting ships in the strait, similar to the campaign they undertook in recent years during the Gaza war. Earlier in March, Iran’s state-affiliated Tasnim News Agency quoted an Iranian military source that threatened “insecurity” in the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea if the U.S. struck Iran’s Kharg Island. Outside of oil, the Bab al-Mandeb, located on the sea route to Asia after passing through the Suez Canal, sees about 12% of all global trade, the Associated Press reported.