Houthis take Greater and Lesser Hanish after Mokha and Mayun

Houthi forces deployed on Greater Hanish and Lesser Hanish in the southern Red Sea on Monday, Yemeni government and Houthi officials told the Associated Press, extending a week-long run that has already taken the port of Mokha and Mayun Island inside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The Hanish islands sit about 160 kilometres, or 100 miles, north of the strait. Officials said hundreds of government-allied troops withdrew from the archipelago before Houthi fighters moved in. The same sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk. Last week the rebels took Mokha on the mainland and Mayun, also called Perim, which splits the strait into two channels between Yemen and Djibouti.

Bab el-Mandeb is the southern gate of the Red Sea and the Suez route. It is the alternative to Hormuz for cargo that can still move. With Hormuz constrained by the Iran war, insurers and operators had already been treating the Red Sea as the remaining artery. A force that holds Mayun, Mokha and the Hanish group can see, and in principle hit, that artery from both the beach and the islands.

The advance also puts Houthi positions about 20 miles, or 32 kilometres, from the U.S. military base in Djibouti on the African side of the strait. That is a geography fact, not a declaration of intent. It is close enough that any further move toward the waterway will be read in Combined Joint Task Force headquarters as well as in Aden.

Sunday was violent on both sides of the Saudi-Yemen line. Yemeni government forces tried to push back along the Red Sea coast after the loss of Mokha. The Houthis fired into Saudi Arabia. State media in Riyadh released video of damaged homes and a mosque in Jazan province and blamed the Houthis. The Houthis said they had struck a Saudi military base in a neighbouring province and claimed more than 100 Saudi air raids over two days. Riyadh has not confirmed that raid count.

Aden's internationally recognised government last week banned Iranian goods from the territory it still controls, a political reply to a military loss. Officials in Aden have called the fall of Mokha and Mayun a painful defeat and said more forces would be sent to the coast. Sending men toward islands that have already been vacated is a different order.

Shipping desks do not need a full blockade to change behaviour. They need a credible risk that a missile or a drone can reach a hull from a new piece of dry land. Mayun inside the strait is that land. Hanish north of it extends the radar and the firing line. War-risk premiums on the Red Sea, already higher this year, now have a fresh coordinate to price.

The campaign is part of the wider U.S.-Iran war, not a separate Yemeni civil-war chapter. The Houthis are aligned with Tehran. Saudi Arabia backs the Aden government and has been trying, with mixed results, to keep its own territory out of the exchange. The East-West pipeline that Riyadh uses to avoid Hormuz ends at Yanbu on this same Red Sea. A fight that closes both Hormuz and the Red Sea gate would leave Saudi crude with fewer doors than the market is currently assuming.

Monday's island seizure is small in square kilometres and large on a chart. Greater and Lesser Hanish do not have Mokha's cranes. They have line of sight. For a movement that already fires at ships, that is the asset. The next signal to watch is whether commercial traffic keeps using the strait at night, and whether Aden can put men back on any of the ground it gave up this week.