By Omar Abdel-Baqui, Stephen Kalin and Saleh al-Batati
Iran has successfully strangled the Persian Gulf, the most critical maritime route for energy supplies in the world. It hasn't yet prevented its foes from using a workaround that runs through the Red Sea.
That could change if the Houthis get involved.
The U.S. and its partners in the Middle East are keeping a close eye on the Yemeni militant group which -- armed and funded by Iran -- crippled shipping through the Red Sea for much of two years.
The Houthis have recently stepped up threatening rhetoric that has caught officials' attention. While they haven't started shooting yet, the militants are an important lever for Iran, if it decides to further squeeze the global economy or expand its targets to Saudi Arabia and nearby U.S. assets, such as a base in Djibouti.
"If the Houthis enter the conflict, it really raises the stakes," said Adam Baron, a fellow at think tank New America who specializes in Yemen and the Gulf. "It pulls the Suez Canal and the Egyptians in, it brings Saudi further in."
Iran has long cultivated militia allies across the Middle East as a way to project power and as a deterrent against attack. Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Iran-aligned militias in Iraq have jumped into the war to attack Israel and U.S. bases.
The Houthis are a notable holdout but have signaled they could jump in at any moment.
"Our finger is on the trigger," Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi official, said this past week. "Yemen joining the conflict is only a matter of time."
Long dismissed as sandal-wearing mountain fighters, the Houthis are formidable combatants. The group seized control of Yemen's capital and many of its population centers more than a decade ago in a long-running civil war, fending off an Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Houthi drone and missile attacks during the war in Gaza all but halted traffic through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, forcing shippers to take the longer journey around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. The group also hit Israel, more than 1,000 miles away.
President Trump launched a campaign against the Houthis a year ago that was a preview of the current war with Iran. The fight exposed U.S. sailors and pilots to a barrage of drones and missiles and ended after nearly two months in a simple cease-fire that left the Houthis battered but not broken.
While the two sides stopped shooting at each other, the Houthis continued to attack Israel and ships in the Red Sea. The group halted its attacks after the Trump administration brokered a Gaza cease-fire deal last fall, but shippers remain nervous about using the route.
The Red Sea is again in focus, with Iran bottling up oil supplies in the Persian Gulf by controlling the narrow Strait of Hormuz that leads to the Indian Ocean. Saudi Arabia has pipelines that allow it to partly circumvent the blockage by routing crude across the peninsula to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.
That exit path takes ships past hundreds of miles of Houthi-controlled coastline leading to another chokepoint at Bab al-Mandeb, the strait that links the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden.
"They've got super useful real estate," Baron said. "If you are Iran and your aim is to build pressure by shutting down another key maritime shipping network, then obviously the Houthis are the easiest way to do that."
Saudi officials said the kingdom has an agreement with the Houthis reached in 2022 not to attack its territory or ships. The kingdom intervened against the militant group a decade ago during Yemen's civil war but later withdrew and reached a detente that lowered the risk of attacks.
Saudi officials are working to maintain diplomacy with the Houthis to keep them out of the fight, a U.S. official said. The U.S. and Israel, meanwhile, are trying to avoid any provocation that would draw the Houthis in and add another layer of complexity to the conflict, the official said.
While funded and armed by Iran in recent years, the Houthis have their own domestic constituency to tend to. While fighting in the name of Gaza won the group popularity at home and across the Arab world, siding with Iran while it is shooting at Arab countries could backfire.
"They are not a point-and-shoot operation that Tehran uses in the way that Tehran has long used some Iraqi militias, for example," said Barbara Leaf, who was the State Department's top Middle East official during the Biden administration. "If you look at their attacks on Israel and on shipping over the course of the Gaza war, they were not doing much of their activity at the behest of Iran."
The stakes are high for the group, which doesn't want to be perceived as fighting Iran's battles and getting more Yemenis killed in the process.
Hezbollah's decision to join the war in support of Iran brought heavy Israeli airstrikes and an expanded ground invasion that has driven Lebanese civilians from more territory. Iraq has also become a battle zone again, with the U.S. pounding Iraqi militias and projectiles hitting the U.S. Embassy, the airport in Baghdad and a U.S. base at the Erbil airport.
U.S. attacks on the Houthis last year destroyed military infrastructure and killed a number of militant leaders.
But if feeling existentially threatened, Tehran could pressure the group to join the fray. The group's secretive leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said earlier in March that his fighters stand with Iran and are ready to escalate when required.
"There is broad consensus that the Houthis are still awaiting direction from the Iran-led Joint Command of the Axis of Resistance," said Mohammed al-Basha, founder of U.S.-based Middle East security advisory Basha Report.
"One view is that they are deliberately delaying action in order to preserve this option for zero hour, either as a knockout card that advances their interests or as a source of leverage in future negotiations," he said.
Write to Omar Abdel-Baqui at omar.abdel-baqui@wsj.com and Stephen Kalin at stephen.kalin@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 21, 2026 19:00 ET (23:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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