Saudi Arabia is seeking to form a new multinational coalition to pre-empt any effort by Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Al-Monitor reported on Wednesday.
Following Saudi airstrikes on Yemen’s Sanaa International Airport earlier this month, Ansar Allah has targeted oil infrastructure inside Saudi Arabia and has announced a maritime blockade on Saudi ports, attacking at least three tankers, a policy the group calls a “blockade for a blockade.”
While the new blockade has disrupted shipping in the region, Ansar Allah hasn’t announced a blanket ban on shipping through the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Some Chinese ships loaded with Saudi crude have also been able to pass through the strait, and Reuters reported that Beijing had cleared each passage with Sanaa.
But as the US-Iran war and conflict across the region are escalating again, the chances of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait being completely closed are rising. The Al-Monitor report, which cited two diplomatic sources and an unnamed US official, said that Riyadh has invited around 50 nations to join the Red Sea coalition, but that US support was seen as vital for the initiative to take off, and it was unclear at this point if Washington would participate.
So far, the Trump administration has strongly backed Saudi Arabia’s escalations in Yemen, with President Trump reportedly giving the green light for the strikes on the Sanaa airport, which were carried out to prevent a plane landing that took off from Iran and was carrying a Yemeni delegation that attended the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The US has also recently advanced arms sales to the Kingdom, signed a nuclear deal with Riyadh, and carried out major joint strikes with Saudi Arabia targeting Shia militias in Iraq.
Similar efforts to counter Ansar Allah attacks on shipping have failed in the past, including President Biden’s 2024 formation of a multinational coalition, dubbed Operation Prosperity Garden. The idea was to stop attacks targeting Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, which were being carried out in response to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza. Biden’s effort involved US and British airstrikes in Yemen, but it only escalated the situation, as Ansar Allah expanded its attacks to target US and British shipping in response.
President Trump also tried and failed to get Ansar Allah to end a blockade on Israeli shipping, which began after Israel violated the January 2025 ceasefire deal. The US bombing campaign, which killed over 250 civilians, lasted from March 15, 2025, to May 6 of that year and ended with a ceasefire between the US and Ansar Allah, which technically remains in effect.
Ansar Allah also sustained a brutal seven-year war from 2015-2022, launched by a US-backed Saudi/UAE-led Gulf coalition. The goal was to oust the Houthis from Sanaa, which the group took control of in 2014, and reinstall the government of former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who died in Riyadh earlier this year, but it failed, and the two sides agreed to a ceasefire in 2022, which held relatively well until the Saudi strikes on the Sanaa airport.
