Iran’s Chokepoint Strategy: Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb, and the Battle for Global Shipping
The U.S. war with Iran was supposed to be about regime change, along with destroying its missiles, aircraft, naval power, and nuclear infrastructure.
Instead, it is increasingly becoming a battle over something far more important to the global economy: the routes through which the world moves its energy and goods.
The pattern is difficult to miss.
The United States strikes Iranian vessels. Iran responds against American military positions and naval assets.
Washington escalates again. Tehran retaliates. Then, almost as if the battlefield is widening by design, Iran-aligned forces in Yemen advance towards another major maritime chokepoint.
Now the pressure is moving from the Strait of Hormuz towards Bab al-Mandeb.
The latest Houthi offensive along Yemen's Red Sea coast has brought the group to the strategic entrance of the Red Sea, with reports that Houthi forces have reached Perim Island in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
At almost the same time, attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure have raised fresh questions about whether the kingdom's alternative routes around Hormuz are actually as secure as previously assumed.
That is where Iran’s chokepoint strategy becomes significant.
Tehran does not necessarily need to control every barrel of oil or every ship moving through the region. It needs to make the routes uncertain enough that governments, insurers, traders and shipping companies begin changing their behaviour.
And that is exactly what appears to be happening.
From Hormuz to Bab al-Mandeb
For months, the Strait of Hormuz has been the centre of the confrontation between the United States and Iran.
The waterway connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and is one of the world's most important energy corridors. Before the war, more than one-fifth of global energy shipments passed through it.
Iran's ability to threaten the Strait therefore gives Tehran leverage far beyond the battlefield.
But Hormuz is not the only chokepoint that matters.
To the southwest lies Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow maritime gateway connecting the Gulf of Aden with the Red Sea and ultimately the Suez Canal.
For years, Houthi attacks have disrupted shipping through the Red Sea. The latest territorial advances are different because they potentially give the Iran-aligned movement a stronger physical position around the waterway itself.
Al Jazeera reported that Houthi forces had seized Yemen's Red Sea coastline and pushed onto islands around Bab al-Mandeb.
The Institute for the Study of War assessed that the advance improves the Houthis' ability to threaten shipping and supports Iran's broader objective of increasing pressure on the United States.
This creates a remarkable strategic scenario.
Iran is pressuring one side of the Arabian Peninsula through Hormuz.
Its Houthi allies are gaining ground near the other major maritime gateway.
The result is not necessarily a formal Iranian blockade of two straits. It is something more subtle and potentially more powerful: uncertainty across multiple routes at the same time.
Iran’s Chokepoint Strategy Is Spreading the Risk
The significance of the Houthi advance becomes clearer when viewed alongside Saudi Arabia's efforts to bypass Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia has long had alternative infrastructure that lets some oil move toward the Red Sea rather than through the Persian Gulf. The logic is straightforward: if Hormuz becomes dangerous, alternative routes can reduce the kingdom's exposure.
But those alternatives are only useful if they remain secure.
Recent attacks affecting Saudi oil infrastructure have demonstrated the problem.
Reports indicate that a major Saudi pipeline was forced to shut down following attacks, while concerns have emerged over the amount of oil that could be affected.
AP reported that drone attacks attributed to Iran-backed forces forced the shutdown of a major Saudi oil pipeline, undermining one of Riyadh's key alternatives to Hormuz.
That does not mean that all Saudi oil exports have suddenly stopped.
It means something strategically more important: the alternative route itself is now exposed to geopolitical risk.
That is precisely the problem FTN examined in The Cost of Risk and How Maritime Insurance Is Rewriting Global Trade Routes.
Shipping does not have to stop for a chokepoint to become economically powerful physically.
If insurers raise premiums, vessels reroute, transit times lengthen, and shipping companies begin avoiding high-risk waters, the economic impact arrives long before a physical blockade takes hold.
The latest developments around Yemen and Saudi Arabia demonstrate that principle in real time.
Hormuz, Bab al-Mandeb and the Failure of the Easy Bypass
For years, global energy planners have treated maritime chokepoints as simple logistical problems with straightforward fixes.
The conventional wisdom suggested that if the Strait of Hormuz became risky, trade could divert through pipelines, while dangers in the Red Sea could be avoided by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, and instability in Panama could be bypassed using alternative sea routes.
Yet while these substitutes sound practical on paper, every alternative carries its own distinct vulnerabilities in practice.
That is the central argument behind FTN's Hormuz, Malacca, Panama: The Chokepoints Accelerating the Global Energy Transition.
The global economy was built around the affordable movement of goods through a handful of strategic corridors, meaning that when several of these routes become unstable simultaneously, re-routing trade becomes far more costly.
While a vessel sailing around Africa avoids immediate military threats, it adds thousands of nautical miles to its journey; similarly, a pipeline bypassing the Strait of Hormuz remains vulnerable to missile or drone strikes, and alternative ports may stay open yet lack the capacity to handle redirected cargo.
The Tit-for-Tat War Is Moving Beyond the Battlefield
The military confrontation itself has followed a similarly expanding pattern.
American forces have attacked Iranian maritime assets and targets.
Iran has responded with missiles and drones against American positions at sea and regional allies.
The United States destroyed five Iranian oil tankers after attacks on a U.S. Navy warship.
Iran retaliated with ballistic missiles against Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, damaging one A-10 Thunderbolt II and approximately eight F-15E Strike Eagles.
The A-10 suffered severe wing damage, while the eight F-15Es and an unspecified number of Black Hawk helicopters sustained lighter damage, leaving the base effectively unusable for operations.
And then came another extraordinary episode: Iran's capture of a U.S. underwater drone near Hormuz.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards captured a U.S. uncrewed submarine identified as an Anduril Dive-LD.
U.S. officials acknowledged the loss of an underwater drone but said it had malfunctioned more than a day earlier and was an older model without classified sonar or radar.
Whatever interpretation Washington or Tehran puts on the incident, the imagery itself carries strategic value.
The vehicle was reportedly recovered largely intact.
Reuters later reported that Iran's possession of the drone could allow Tehran to study and potentially reverse-engineer the system, representing a setback for the Pentagon and its manufacturer.
The episode is a clear illustration of how the war has evolved.
A military confrontation that began with strikes on strategic targets is now also being fought through ships, drones, undersea systems, energy infrastructure and the maritime corridors that keep global trade moving.
The battlefield is no longer confined to Iran or the Gulf. It now stretches across the infrastructure on which the global economy depends.
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