The capture of Perim Island and Yemen’s Red Sea coast by forces from Sana’a in September 2026 is more than another turn in Yemen’s long war. It may prove a precedent for how non-state actors can exercise influence over the infrastructure of globalization.

Bab el-Mandeb is not simply a narrow waterway. It connects the Red Sea and Suez Canal to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, linking Asian production to European markets. Its strategic importance has become even greater as the war around the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted another major energy artery. The seizure of Perim, which divides the strait’s two channels, gives Sana’a a physical position from which it can reinforce a capability it had already demonstrated: the ability to make commercial operators reconsider whether the shortest route is still the safest.

That distinction matters. A state does not need to close a chokepoint formally to make it economically unusable. If the perceived risk of attack raises insurance costs, forces ships to wait, or makes a longer route around Africa commercially preferable, the result is effectively a partial closure. Recent reporting indicates that shipping through the Red Sea has already fallen sharply, while oil markets have reacted to the growing threat to both Bab el-Mandeb and Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has also temporarily suspended its East-West pipeline after a drone attack, adding pressure to an already strained energy system.

The strategic lesson extends beyond Yemen. Global commerce depends on a relatively small number of geographical passages whose security has traditionally been treated as a function of state power. Bab el-Mandeb challenges that assumption. A non-state actor does not need a blue-water navy or control of the global trading system. It needs only enough military capability, geographic leverage and political resilience to alter the risk calculations of companies operating thousands of kilometers away.

That is why the response from Washington is as significant as the advance itself. Saudi Arabia reportedly sought direct U.S. strikes as Sana’a’s forces moved toward the Red Sea coast and Perim. President Donald Trump declined, while Washington offered intelligence and targeting assistance. The decision does not mean American power has disappeared. It does, however, demonstrate that U.S. military power can no longer be assumed to translate automatically into a guarantee that every threatened commercial artery will be defended at any cost.

For Saudi Arabia, the dilemma is especially acute. Riyadh has invested heavily in alternative transport and export infrastructure, but the simultaneous pressure on Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb demonstrates the limits of redundancy when several strategic routes are threatened at once. The problem is no longer simply protecting ships. It is protecting the geographical architecture on which national economic strategies depend.

The longer-term answer cannot be another cycle of military escalation followed by temporary calm. Nor can maritime security remain indefinitely outsourced to external powers whose priorities may change with the next regional crisis. The Red Sea requires a security framework in which its littoral states treat freedom of navigation, ports, energy infrastructure and undersea communications as shared interests.

That will require difficult diplomacy, including engagement with states and actors that regional rivals regard as adversaries. But geography leaves little alternative. A waterway connecting three continents cannot be governed sustainably through deterrence alone.

The real Bab el-Mandeb precedent, therefore, is not that a non-state actor can seize an island. It is that a relatively small actor can acquire disproportionate influence over systems far beyond its territory. In an interconnected world, control of geography can still outweigh control of scale.

If that lesson is ignored, Bab el-Mandeb will not be an exception. It could become a warning of what the next crisis at Hormuz, Malacca or Panama may look like.

Written by Fuad AL-Maznaee

Fuad AL-Maznaee is a veteran Yemeni diplomat and geopolitical analyst with more than three decades of experience in international diplomacy, humanitarian affairs, and Middle Eastern politics. From 1990 to 2016, he represented the Republic of Yemen at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), where he later served as Advisor on Humanitarian Affairs to the Secretary-General.