Houthis Threaten Twin Oil Arteries After First Missile Salvo on Israel

Great-power contests have choked sea lanes before: the 1956 Suez Crisis shut the canal for five months, and the Ottoman closure of the Dardanelles in 1915 rewired World War I logistics. Today’s twin-strait squeeze reprises that playbook but on a far denser, just-in-time trading system. The Houthi move reflects two structural shifts: non-state actors now wield precision missiles that can swing macro-economics, and Gulf energy exporters increasingly depend on alternate pipelines that are themselves exposed. Whether Bab el-Mandeb actually closes matters less than insurers’ perception—risk premia alone can replicate a blockade. Over a 100-year horizon, such events accelerate diversification away from single-point oil transit and reinforce the long arc of maritime chokepoint vulnerability shaping imperial, then super-power, and now multipolar strategy.