Have the Houthis blocked the Red Sea to marine traffic? | Explained

The story so far: Marine traffic transiting the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea has fallen after Houthis struck Saudi oil ‌installations along the Red Sea coast on Sunday (July 26, 2026). Reports said only 11 vessels passed through the strait.

On Sunday (July 26, 2026), the Houthis attacked the Aramco refinery in Jizan and export facilities at Yanbu, both considered vital installations. Houthi military spokesperson Brigadier General Yahya Saree said that “a number of sensitive targets and points related to the supply and transport of crude oil from eastern Saudi Arabia to Yanbu were targeted by several drones in response to the Saudi enemy’s drone incursions into Yemeni airspace”.

Traffic brought to trickle

The attack follows the announcement of a blockade by the Houthis on Saudi Arabia from April 20. This has choked the flow of oil from the region, with the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz coming to a trickle and pushing up the price of crude oil. Crude prices fell on Monday (July 27, 2026) after U.S. President Donald Trump’s said the U.S. and Iran would talk again.

Reuters reported that seven oil tankers transited the Bab el-Mandeb, with three of them entering the ​Red Sea. “Two of them are very large crude carriers heading to the port of Yanbu to load Saudi crude while the third is a Russian-linked ship,” the report said. Of the four ships that exited the Red Sea on Sunday (July 26, 2026) were three oil tankers ​carrying crude oil to China and one tanker with Saudi crude bound for Pakistan.

According to data provided by marine intelligence firm Lloyd’s List to The Hindu, the traffic in the Red Sea fell around July 13-14, 2026, when the Houthis launched missiles on Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of attacking an airport under its control. The attack broke a four-year truce. From around 350 transits in the strait per week, it fell below 125 by July 20. The Suez Canal transits came down from 250-plus to around 100.

China takes a back step

According to Lloyd’s, China’s largest state-owned tanker operators are “withdrawing their very large crude carriers from Red Sea trade, prioritising safety over what many had expected would be privileged access to the waterway.”

It said “outbound vessels carrying Saudi crude oil” have transited the Bab-el-Mandeb strait.

However, the “pullback reflects a broader risk calculus at major state-owned enterprises, wher eexecutives are acutely aware that the downside of an incident far exceeds any upside from commercial gains, and ensuring nothing goes wrong has become the overriding priority”, the firm said. It said that “the Red Sea is probably off the table” and the “next few days are also likely to be the peak of Houthi pressure.”

A no-go zone

Marine traffic in the Red Sea has fallen ever since the Houthis turned the Bab el-Mandeb chokepoint into an anti-access/area-denial zone (a strategy that prevents an adversary from projecting power in a contested zone) after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. They hijacked the car carrier Galaxy Leader on November 19, 2023. The attack on commercial shipping in the Red Sea led to the formation of Operation Prosperity Guardian, a U.S.-led military coalition to safeguard shipping lines in the Red Sea, in December 2023, and it continued till Mr. Trump called it off saying that the Houthis “just don’t want to fight, and we will honour that and we will stop the bombings, and they have capitulated.”

But despite that, shipping in the Red Sea never went back to pre-October 2023 levels. Data shared by Lloyd’s shows that from 500-plus transits through Bab el-Mandeb per week in October 2023, these gradually fell to around 250. Compared to around 621 containership transits in a week in June 2023, there were 229 transits in June 2026, a 63% fall. The total traffic in the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb fell 42.9% during this period, from 4,246 transits in June 2023 to 2,425 in June 2026.

The tensions had affected U.S.-India voyages too, with ships taking the Cape of Good Hope route, completing a longer voyage. In an earlier interaction with The Hindu on U.S.-India energy trade, Kpler had said: “U.S.-India voyages via Suez Canal have been absent since Jan 2024, dropping in the aftermath of the increase in Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in Red Sea waterway since end of 2023… The Suez route to India would require vessels to pass through the Red Sea Strait, so the preference for the Cape of Good Hope route is more likely driven by risk management – avoiding any elevated risk insurance premiums and the potential for renewed security threats in the Red Sea / Bab-el-Mandeb area, where commercial shipping has previously faced disruptions.”