Mohammad Amin Ahmadi Informed Comment
What was Iran trying to achieve by closing the Strait of Hormuz?
The obvious answer is to put pressure on the United States. But there was a larger calculation behind it: if Iran could turn the war from a conflict fought mainly on Iranian territory into a wider crisis affecting global trade and energy markets, Washington would face a very different cost for continuing the war.
The Strait of Hormuz was therefore more than a military target. It was Iran’s economic weapon. By restricting one of the world’s most important oil routes, Tehran could create pressure far beyond the battlefield and potentially make the continuation of the war too costly for the United States and its partners.
That strategy has already produced a major disruptionl. Oil prices moved above $100 a barrel last week, shipping through Hormuz has fallen dramatically, and the International Energy Agency has described the disruption as the largest supply shock in the history of the global oil market. Yet the pressure has not, so far, forced Washington to end the war or accept the kind of concessions Tehran would want.
The question, then, is what Iran could do differently if the war starts again.
The answer may lie not in Hormuz itself, but on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.
Hormuz Has Not Been Enough
Iran has already demonstrated that it can make the Strait of Hormuz extremely difficult for commercial shipping. Before the war, roughly 20 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products passed through the strait every day. The current flow is only a fraction of that. On September 18, just four commodity vessels were recorded passing through Hormuz, compared with a ten-day average of 16.
Yet the United States and its partners have found ways to reduce the consequences.
Before the recent bombardment by Iraqi militias, Saudi Arabia had redirected substantial volumes through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea. In about a month, after repairs, the Saudis will be able again to move oil on this pipeline. The UAE has used its pipeline to Fujairah to bypass Hormuz. The IEA says emergency stock releases, alternative export routes, increased production from other suppliers and changes in global demand have all helped absorb part of the shock. In March, the IEA also coordinated a major release of emergency stocks.
These measures have not restored normal conditions. But they have prevented the disruption from becoming an uncontrollable collapse of global oil supply. That distinction matters for Iran. The strategic problem for Tehran is not simply whether it can disrupt Hormuz. It clearly can. The question is whether it can create enough pressure on the global energy system to change Washington’s calculation about continuing the war. And this is where the situation has changed dramatically.
The Second Chokepoint
The most important development may not be taking place in the Persian Gulf at all.
In Yemen, the Houthis have rapidly expanded their control along the Red Sea coast. They captured the strategic port city of Mocha and then seized Mayun, also known as Perim, an island located at the entrance to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Their new position gives them much greater control over the approaches to one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.
Bab el-Mandeb is not currently closed. Commercial vessels are still passing through it. But that is not the most important point. The important change is that the Houthis are now in a much stronger geographical position to threaten the waterway if they choose to do so. Mayun sits directly in the strait, while Mocha gives the group control over an important section of the nearby Yemeni coast. Analysts have pointed to the importance of these positions for monitoring and pressuring shipping.
This gives Iran something it did not have in the same form during the earlier phase of the war: a second potential pressure point on the global energy system.
The Houthis have already shown that they are prepared to confront major powers and attack commercial shipping when they consider it part of their wider conflict. Their latest territorial advances also mean that their position around Bab el-Mandeb is no longer based only on missiles and drones fired from a distance. They now have territorial positions immediately around the chokepoint.
For Saudi Arabia, the implications are particularly serious. Bab el-Mandeb has become increasingly important precisely because the normal Gulf route through Hormuz has been disrupted. Saudi Arabia has already faced attacks on energy infrastructure, while its ability to move crude through alternative routes has come under pressure.
Iran Could Combine the Two
This is where the next war could look very different. If another Iran-US war begins while Hormuz is already under severe pressure, Tehran would not necessarily need to make Hormuz completely impassable. It could maintain pressure there while seeking to create a second disruption farther west.
In such a scenario, Iran could ask the Houthis to temporarily close or severely disrupt Bab el-Mandeb. That would not necessarily require a permanent closure. A disruption lasting days or weeks could be enough to create a new wave of panic in energy markets, particularly if Hormuz was already operating at a fraction of its normal capacity.
The significance would come from the combination. Iran would be putting pressure on the world’s major energy route out of the Persian Gulf, while the Houthis would be putting pressure on another critical route connecting the Red Sea with the Indian Ocean. The two disruptions would reinforce each other.
The market is already showing how sensitive it is to such developments. Brent crude was trading near $100 a barrel at $97.39 on September 24, while the IEA has warned that continued restrictions on Middle Eastern supplies could create further upward pressure as inventories are depleted.
At the same time, the options for replacing lost supplies are limited. The IEA estimates that only Saudi Arabia and the UAE have operational crude pipelines capable of bypassing Hormuz, with roughly 3.5–5.5 million barrels per day of potential available capacity under normal conditions. Those alternatives become far less useful if the Red Sea route is also threatened.
Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Red Sea (US Marine Corps Photograph Cpl. Nathan Reyes). Public Domain. Via Picryl
This is the key difference between the two scenarios. During the first war, the United States could respond to pressure on Hormuz by drawing on emergency stocks, increasing production elsewhere and shifting oil through alternative routes. In a new war, Iran could potentially attack the same vulnerability from one side while its Houthi partners create another vulnerability from the other.
The result would not necessarily be a complete shutdown of global oil supplies. It would, however, create a much harder problem for Washington to contain. And that is ultimately what matters for Tehran. Iran does not need to prove that it can permanently close every maritime route in the region. It needs to make the economic and political costs of continuing the war high enough to alter the American calculation.
If Hormuz remains heavily disrupted and Bab el-Mandeb is added to the crisis, the resulting shock could push oil prices toward — and potentially beyond — their previous historical highs. More importantly, it could make the energy consequences of another prolonged war much harder for the United States and its allies to absorb.
The real strategic change, therefore, is not simply that the Houthis now control more territory in Yemen. It is that Iran may enter a future war with access to pressure on two major maritime chokepoints rather than one. The unfinished question from the first war was whether Iran could turn control of Hormuz into enough economic pressure to force Washington to change course. A second war could give Tehran another opportunity to answer that question — this time by linking Hormuz to Bab el-Mandeb.
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