Iran’s Two-Chokepoint Leverage

Saudi Arabia’s route around one maritime crisis is increasingly exposed to another. With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz severely constrained, Riyadh has relied more heavily on alternatives that move oil westward to the Red Sea. At the same time, Houthi advances along Yemen’s Red Sea coast and around Bab el-Mandeb have increased risks to shipping through the southern entrance to the Red Sea. A September 11 drone attack that temporarily shut Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline exposed an additional vulnerability: infrastructure designed to bypass a threatened waterway can itself become a target. The pipeline restarted on September 22 at reduced throughput, but full restoration was expected to take several more weeks.

The strategic significance extends beyond simultaneous pressure on two maritime passages. Pressure at Bab el-Mandeb can disable or raise the cost of the very adaptations used to mitigate disruption at Hormuz. The effect is therefore interactive rather than merely additive: disruption generates adaptation, but the adaptation creates new dependencies that can themselves become vulnerable.

This is the basis of Iran’s emerging two-chokepoint leverage. It does not require Tehran to command every Houthi operation, coordinate every attack, or physically close both straits. It requires sufficient insecurity across connected routes to narrow the alternatives available to exporters, importers, and commercial operators. Iran can benefit from that convergence even where Houthi objectives and decisions remain partly autonomous. Whether such leverage ultimately produces political concessions is a separate question.

Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb perform different functions. Hormuz connects the Gulf’s major energy exporters to the open ocean. Bab el-Mandeb links the southern Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and routes onward toward Asia. According to the International Energy Agency, approximately 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products traversed Hormuz in 2025—about one-quarter of global seaborne oil trade. Only an estimated 3.5–5.5 million barrels per day of pipeline capacity was potentially available to bypass it.

That asymmetry explains why alternatives matter so much. When Hormuz is disrupted but Red Sea routes remain usable, Saudi Arabia can move crude through its East-West Pipeline to Yanbu and ship it onward. But insecurity near Bab el-Mandeb can make some of those onward routes more expensive or less reliable. In July, three tankers carrying Saudi crude toward China and India reversed course in the Red Sea following Houthi warnings rather than continuing through Bab el-Mandeb. The episode demonstrated that a route need not be physically closed to lose commercial value.

Yet geography also limits the argument. Yanbu lies north of Bab el-Mandeb. Cargoes sailing north through the Red Sea toward Suez do not need to cross the southern strait, while ships can bypass Bab el-Mandeb on some voyages by rerouting around Africa. None of these options, however, releases oil trapped inside the Gulf when Hormuz is inaccessible. The two chokepoints are neither interchangeable nor universal substitutes. Their interaction matters most when pressure at one compromises a specific adaptation created in response to pressure at the other.

The East-West Pipeline episode adds another layer. The pipeline is valuable precisely because it reduces dependence on Hormuz, but its effectiveness depends on functioning pumping stations, terminals, storage facilities, and viable onward shipping. Following the September attack, operations resumed only at reduced rates, and Reuters reported that full restoration of the pipeline’s 7 million-barrel-per-day capacity could take six to eight weeks because three pumping stations had been damaged. An alternative route therefore creates resilience only if the system supporting that route remains usable.

Commercial behavior translates these vulnerabilities into strategic effects. Shipowners do not need to wait for a sustained blockade before changing routes. Insurers can raise premiums after selective attacks or credible threats. Tankers can delay voyages, switch routes, or avoid exposed waters altogether. Recent adaptations—including expanded ship-to-ship transfers near Oman—have kept some Gulf oil moving, but at sharply higher transport costs.

The relevant sequence is therefore not simply attack followed by closure. It is insecurity, commercial reassessment, rerouting or avoidance, higher costs and reduced reliability, followed by increased economic pressure on governments. Sustaining uncertainty can require considerably less military capability than enforcing a complete blockade.

But disruption is not the same as successful coercion. Economic costs may increase incentives to negotiate, yet they do not demonstrate that targeted governments have changed policy because of Iranian pressure. Regional officials and analysts have described growing pressure on Gulf governments to explore accommodation with Tehran as the costs of disrupted trade and energy exports rise. That establishes a potential coercive mechanism, not proof of its success.

Iranian leverage also contains an internal weakness. Converging pressure establishes strategic opportunity more clearly than centralized control. The Houthis have their own territorial interests, security calculations, and bargaining relationship with Saudi Arabia. Their actions may overlap with Iranian objectives without being reducible to instructions from Tehran.

That creates a control–credibility problem. Houthi autonomy can increase the disruption from which Tehran benefits while simultaneously reducing Iran’s ability to guarantee relief. Why should another government make concessions to Tehran if Tehran cannot reliably ensure subsequent Houthi restraint? A coercive threat becomes a more dependable bargaining instrument when the actor benefiting from it can credibly deliver both pressure and its removal. Decentralized initiative can strengthen the former while weakening the latter.

The strategy can also generate countereffects. Continued insecurity may alienate Asian and European energy importers, damage Iranian economic interests, accelerate investment in alternative infrastructure, and encourage greater maritime or security cooperation among affected states. Economic pain may produce accommodation, but governments may instead conclude that concessions would reward a form of pressure likely to recur. Which effect predominates cannot be inferred from disruption alone.

For governments seeking to preserve room for political choice, the analysis points to three corresponding policy options. One is to protect not only shipping lanes but the infrastructure supporting alternative routes: pipelines, pumping stations, terminals, repair capabilities, and logistical networks. A second is to increase resilience against specific route failures through emergency stocks, rapid repair capacity, alternative delivery arrangements, and measures that reduce acute pressure on vulnerable importing states. A third is to maintain distinct but coordinated diplomatic channels with Tehran and the Houthis, recognizing both Iranian influence and the limits of Iranian control. Any reciprocal arrangements would be more credible if linked to observable restraint and sustained maritime access rather than assurances alone.

These approaches share one underlying purpose. Maritime protection is strategically significant not simply because vessels must keep moving, but because functioning alternatives prevent commercial disruption from becoming political compulsion.

Iran’s leverage grows when threatened trade routes make accommodation appear unavoidable. The strategic task is therefore to keep commercial alternatives functioning so that diplomatic choices remain genuinely open.

Protecting freedom of navigation ultimately means preserving freedom of decision.