Iran war escalates as Houthis threaten to sever Saudi oil exports

The kingdom has been shipping up to 7 million barrels of crude per day through the Red Sea port of Yanbu since its main Gulf export terminal at Ras Tanura – the world’s largest – was shut down by the Iran conflict.

According to Arshin Adib-Moghaddam, co-director of the Centre for Iranian Studies at SOAS University of London, there should be “no doubt that the alliance system built up by Iran will continue to coordinate its tactics”.

A decisive inclusion of the Houthis “has been postponed, exactly because closing both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb could be a game changer, if the US and Israel do not deliver a persuasive peace deal to Iran that includes some of the demands of Iran’s allies”, said Adib-Moghaddam, a professor of global thought and comparative philosophies at SOAS.

Brussels-based academic Guy Burton, author of China and Middle East Conflicts: Responding to War and Rivalry from the Cold War to the Present, noted that the Houthis had already shown their capability and willingness to target shipping in the Red Sea, following the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in 2023.