Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis said on Monday they were imposing a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, a move that opens a new front against the United States in its war on Iran and widens the threat to global energy supplies and trade beyond the Gulf.
The announcement came despite signs that Tehran and Washington wanted to resume diplomacy to halt an escalating cycle of attacks that has all but wrecked a fragile interim agreement signed last month. Oil prices briefly rose after the Houthis’ statement but fell back due to traders’ hopes for a diplomatic breakthrough.
Iran had been pressing the Houthis to close the Bab el-Mandeb gateway to the Red Sea if the U.S. continued to attack Iranian power infrastructure. The full closure of the strait would cut global oil supply by 7% as it would leave most Saudi oil exports unable to leave the region. The disruption would add to the massive cut to global oil flows from the war in the Gulf, which has already reduced shipments by 10% of global supply.
In their statement, the Houthis’ armed forces said they were declaring “a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of ‘an eye for an eye’, effective immediately” in response to what they called “an unjust and oppressive siege” imposed on Yemen by the Saudis.
There was no immediate response from Saudi Arabia.
DIPLOMATIC PUSH TO RESTORE CEASEFIRE
A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday that Tehran had received a proposal from mediators for a 10-day ceasefire in an effort to salvage the interim deal, intended to pave the way to a lasting agreement to end the war that began on February 28 with U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry said mediators had recently presented proposals to Tehran, signalling that diplomatic contacts remain active.
Neither the ministry nor the official who spoke to Reuters gave any further details on the putative ceasefire discussions.
Separately, two Pakistani government sources said Iran’s Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni, on his second visit to Islamabad in less than a week, had asked Pakistan to resume its mediation role in Iran’s conflict with the United States.
The diplomatic push followed another night of U.S. strikes on Iranian cities and attacks by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on U.S. military assets across the region.
U.S. President Donald Trump, under mounting political pressure at home over rising gasoline prices, defended the latest strikes on Iran as honoring the deaths of up to three American service members in recent Iranian attacks.
Reuters
