Houthis Seize Perim Island, Tightening Grip on Bab el-Mandeb Strait

Great-power leverage over maritime chokepoints has swung history before: Nasser’s closure of the Suez Canal (1956 and again 1967-1975) rerouted tankers round the Cape and sped the 1970s oil shocks; the same logic underpinned Iran–Iraq tanker wars of the 1980s. The Houthis’ push echoes those episodes but inverts the actors: a non-state militia, not a state navy, now sits atop a route that, because Hormuz is half-shut, has become the planet’s substitute artery. It illustrates two structural shifts: 1) the diffusion of precision-strike technology—cheap drones and Iranian missiles let irregulars impose costs once reserved for blue-water fleets; 2) the brittle dependence of a fossil-fuel system still moving 90 million barrels a day through half-dozen narrow waterways even as the world talks energy transition. On a century horizon this is a data point in the long decline of uncontested Western maritime dominance: control of sea lanes is fragmenting, and regional actors armed with affordable tech can now weaponise commerce—much as Barbary corsairs did before Pax Britannica, but with cruise missiles instead of cutlasses. Whether the Houthis hold Perim or are pushed back, insurers’ war-risk models and Gulf export strategies have already recalibrated; psychological control of the strait may outlast any counter-offensive.