Iran-aligned fighters take the island dividing the waterway within a day of capturing Mocha, raising stakes at a second global chokepoint
Houthi forces captured Perim (Mayun) Island on Friday, Reuters, AFP, the BBC and NBC reported, seizing the landmass that sits in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait roughly 24 hours after taking the Red Sea port of Mocha. Government forces withdrew from the island as Houthi fighters also took the mainland town of Dhubab, directly opposite it.
The advance follows Thursday's fall of Mocha — confirmed to the Associated Press by both National Resistance Forces commander Ahmed Baash and Houthi political bureau member Hazam al-Assad — and reported gains on Zuqar Island after what Yemeni sources described as rocket attacks and a seaborne assault. NRF commander Maj Gen Tareq Saleh called the retreat south of Mocha "strategic," acknowledging his forces "paid a heavy price — martyrs and wounded." Crisis.Zone's earlier reporting tracked the opening of this front.
From coastline to chokepoint
The distinction matters: Mocha gave the Houthis a Red Sea port. Perim gives them a position inside the strait itself. UN envoy Hans Grundberg described the shift as entering "a new and more dangerous phase," warning the Houthis now hold "a direct presence on the approaches to one of the world's most vital straits."
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam insisted on X that "freedom of navigation and international trade through the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab remain safe and uninterrupted," a line echoed by the group's coordination centre — except, it added, for Saudi vessels. That gap between stated intent and territorial fact is the analytical center of this story: an actor asserting it poses no threat to shipping while occupying the one piece of ground that lets it contest the waterway at will.
Observers are reading: why Riyadh has struck Houthi targets everywhere except the newly seized coast.
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Markets and the widening ledger
Brent crude rose roughly 4% Thursday above $105 a barrel, on track for its first weekly close above $100 since May, while US diesel prices topped $6 a gallon for the first time, according to GasBuddy. Saudi Arabia's Red Sea export workaround via the Yanbu terminal — built to bypass a degraded Hormuz — now sits closer to the contested strait. The kingdom has launched roughly 40 airstrikes on Houthi positions elsewhere but not on the captured coast, a restraint analysts read as reluctance to invite heavier retaliation. The UN's IOM says displacement has reached at least 46,000 and is "rising by the hour." Whether Riyadh and Washington — which Axios reports declined direct strikes in favor of intelligence support — move to contest Dhubab, or allow the Houthis to hold the strait's gate as leverage rather than a blockade, should become clearer within days.
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