Houthis take Greater and Lesser Hanish, tightening the Red Sea oil route

Yemen's Houthi movement now holds Greater Hanish and Lesser Hanish, two islands that sit about 160 kilometres north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Government officials and a Houthi official told the Associated Press on Monday that fighters moved onto the islands after hundreds of government-allied troops left the archipelago. Yemen Shabab TV said nearly 1,000 soldiers who had been stationed on the Hanish group and nearby Zuqar Island arrived in Djibouti after a Houthi attack.

The islands had been held by the United Arab Emirates and its southern Yemeni allies. Their loss, coming days after the Houthis took the Red Sea port of Mokha and Mayun Island (also called Perim) inside the strait itself, gives the group a chain of positions along the only remaining large-scale oil route out of the Gulf for Saudi crude.

Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, which in peacetime carries about a fifth of the world's traded oil and gas, in the opening days of the current war. Saudi Arabia then shifted exports toward the Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea. That detour now runs past Houthi-held ports and islands. China, a major buyer of Middle East crude, said on Monday it was deeply concerned about further Houthi attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure and called those strikes unacceptable.

The East-West Pipeline, which moves crude from Gulf fields to Red Sea ports, was hit by drones on 10 September. Two regional officials told AP that repairs could take three to five weeks and that the line would stay mostly out of service while work proceeds. Oil prices on Monday traded above $107 a barrel as markets reopened after the weekend.

Fighting inside Yemen has also widened. Government forces launched attacks along the Red Sea coast on Sunday. The Houthis fired into Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognised government in Aden. The Yemeni government called the fall of Mokha a painful defeat and said it would send more troops to the coast. The International Organization for Migration put displacement since the latest escalation at nearly 94,000 people, with about 48,000 of them in Taiz and Lahj, a 25 percent rise. About 2,000 people have crossed to Djibouti. The World Health Organization said more than 500 people were killed in Yemen in the week ending Saturday and that seven health facilities were damaged or taken out of service.

The Hanish group sits between Yemen and Eritrea. Control of Greater and Lesser Hanish, together with Mayun, lets a force watch both shipping lanes that split around Perim and the coastal road that feeds Mokha. The islands are about 32 kilometres from the United States military presence in Djibouti, across the strait. That distance is short enough for small boats and drones. It is also far enough that any attempt to retake the islands would need ships, air cover and a landing force the Aden government has not shown it can assemble quickly.

A 2022 truce had largely frozen the Yemen war. That freeze is now gone. The current offensive is the first sustained Houthi push toward the Bab el-Mandeb since the Iran war began, and it is the first time the group has taken both the mainland port and the islands that frame the strait in the same week. For Riyadh, the practical question is whether tankers can still leave Red Sea terminals without escort and insurance premiums that wipe out the advantage of avoiding Hormuz. For Tehran, the same facts add a second choke point to the one it already holds at Hormuz.

Oman had planned to host talks on Monday between Iran and Gulf states on shipping through Hormuz. Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said the meeting was postponed in the interests of consensus. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei said Saudi Arabia had demanded that the session be cancelled for the time being. Iran had described the talks as a proper opportunity to restore security in the waterway. Bahrain had already said it would not sit with Tehran until diplomatic ties were restored.

The United States Energy Secretary, Chris Wright, used the same day to criticise Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency gathering in Vienna. Austria refused a visa to Iran's nuclear chief, Mohammad Eslami. Wright called Iran's record with inspectors egregious negligence and said time is up. Iran called the visa refusal completely unjustified.

These files sit on one table. The islands are a military fact. The pipeline outage is an engineering fact with a three-to-five-week clock. The postponed Muscat meeting is a diplomatic fact that leaves Hormuz without a regional schedule. None of those three items, taken alone, closes the Red Sea. Together they raise the cost of using it, which is the point of holding Hanish.

What happens next depends on whether Saudi-backed forces can return to the islands before the Houthis install longer-range weapons, and on whether insurers still treat Bab el-Mandeb as a usable alternative. As of Monday night, neither question had an answer that would bring the oil price down.