Yemeni Government Forces Reported to Seize Ground at Bab al-Mandab

Two accounts of the same stretch of water are circulating this month, and they cannot both shape the Red Sea in the way their authors suggest. Reuters has reported, citing military sources, that Yemeni government forces have seized a district by the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. A Yemeni-focused outlet has gone further, stating that the forces have secured both the strait and Perim Island ^[1][2]. Separately, a Telegram channel that tracks Yemeni developments has claimed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard experts, Hezbollah operatives and Russian personnel reached the Houthi-held port of Hodeidah through a country on the Horn of Africa, with the aim of directing maritime strikes at Bab al-Mandab ^[3]. That second claim has no corroboration in the sources available to this desk.

The geography explains why the strait draws this kind of competition. At its narrowest, the passage between Yemen and the Horn of Africa is roughly 30 kilometres wide, and it is the southern gate to the Suez route that carries a large share of Europe-Asia trade ^[4]. Control of the shoreline on either side determines who can threaten vessels transiting the gap, and who can offer escorts or interdict arms shipments heading north.

The Houthis, whom the United States and several Western governments designate as a terrorist organisation, have attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea and launched fire toward Israel since late 2023. Any claim that Iranian-linked specialists have been embedded at Hodeidah would therefore matter well beyond Yemen, because it would suggest that the maritime campaign is being run with more technical direction than the Houthis have previously shown. Iran has long supplied the group with drones, anti-ship missiles and components, and the transfer of those systems depends on routes that run through the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden. A channel tied to Saudi-aligned circles has added a further claim: that Washington has not given Riyadh a green light for a broad air campaign in Yemen, and that any Bab al-Mandab occupation would damage the global economy ^[5]. That statement is a political position relayed through an unverified channel, not an official policy, but it reflects a real calculation in Riyadh about how far a renewed war would spread.

The gap between the two strands is the important part. If government forces have taken a district and the island, the strait has a land-based anchor that is not controlled by the Houthis, and that changes the calculation for any party planning strikes from the coast. If the IRGC-advisory claim is accurate, the same stretch of water would be a site of Iranian operational planning. Neither can be confirmed from the material available. Reuters’ headline describes government forces seizing a district, while the wire’s linked summary refers to taking the strait from the Houthis, and the Telegram claims describe a contest over Hodeidah that the wire reports do not mention. Readers should treat the Hodeidah account as an allegation until a government, the UN or independent maritime monitors corroborate it.

Iran’s regional posture is consistent with an effort to keep several fronts active at once, from Yemen to Lebanon and Iraq. Whether that pattern extends to deliberate coordination at Bab al-Mandab is the open question. A Houthi campaign that relies on an Iranian technical cell would be more dangerous, and harder to deter through sanctions on the Houthi leadership alone, than one that depends on local improvisation. What would change the assessment is a verified movement of personnel or equipment through the Horn of Africa, or a shipping incident with forensic evidence of Iranian-origin components. Until then, the shoreline control reported by Reuters is the fact that can be built on, and the advisory claims are the ones that need proof.