Houthis Declare a Naval Blockade on Saudi Arabia
The move could increase pressure on already-strained global energy markets.
By Alexandra Sharp, the World Brief writer at Foreign Policy.
July 20, 2026, 4:56 PM
Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at another Middle East threat to global energy markets, the United Kingdom’s new prime minister, and rising political unrest in Ukraine.
First, Hormuz. Now, Red Sea.
Houthi rebels in Yemen declared a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia on Monday, opening another potential pressure point for global energy markets that are already suffering from Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh has yet to formally respond.
Last week, the Tehran-backed proxy group accused Saudi Arabia of bombing Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport to stop an Iranian plane from landing. The aircraft was reportedly carrying members of Houthi leadership who had attended the funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Although the plane was able to successfully land at another Yemeni airport, the Houthis quickly retaliated with missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s Abha International Airport. And on Monday, the group expanded its retribution by vowing to block Saudi shipping between the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.
Since the Iran war effectively stalled all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, Riyadh has relied on a pipeline to the Red Sea to export millions of barrels of oil. At the same time, Tehran has pressed the Houthis to close the Red Sea’s Bab el-Mandeb Strait if the United States continued targeting Iranian power infrastructure; U.S. forces carried out their ninth consecutive day of strikes against Iran on Monday.
Should the Houthi blockade prove to be effective, and if Tehran orders the rebel group to close off Bab el-Mandeb, then global oil supplies could be further reduced, as most Saudi crude exports would be unable to leave the region. Experts warn that this could have drastic consequences for energy markets.
Efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and restore disrupted supply chains have proved to be futile thus far. On Monday, Iranian Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni arrived in Islamabad for a two-day trip focused on renewing negotiations with the United States, during which Momeni is expected to meet with Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. And on Tuesday, foreign ministers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are expected to push for a full reopening of the critical thoroughfare.
Yet the United States appears unwilling to engage in diplomacy for now. “Their behavior has to change in order for ours to change,” U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on Sunday, referring to Iranian leadership.
That day, U.S. Central Command confirmed that U.S. strikes had hit “Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks.” Meanwhile, Iranian state media accused Washington of killing at least one person near the northwestern city of Tabriz, which is believed to have underground missile bases run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Although the U.S. military said that the operation was intended to further degrade Tehran’s ability to attack commercial shipping, U.S. President Donald Trump stressed that the Sunday attacks were carried out “in honor of” the recent deaths of several U.S. service members. That includes at least two soldiers who were killed in Jordan on Friday during an Iranian missile and drone attack and another service member who was killed in Iraq on Saturday during the “controlled detonation” of a downed Iranian drone.
Iran responded to the United States’ recent slew of strikes with more attacks on Bahrain and Kuwait on Monday.
