Six people were killed Tuesday when Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired missiles at a vessel in the Bab el-Mandeb strait, Yemeni authorities said. The dead included four crew members and two members of the government-allied National Resistance Forces, according to Yemen’s coast guard. The Transportation Ministry of Yemen’s internationally recognized government said the Houthis fired three ballistic missiles at the Yemeni commercial vessel. Another day, another corridor turned into a kill zone by armed authorities with flags, ministries, and spokespeople.
The State Monopoly on the Water
The attack was the first known deadly Houthi strike on shipping off Yemen in the latest bout of fighting in the Arab country. The Houthis have also been attacking the government-held port city of Mokha on the Red Sea and other areas of Yemen, and the Yemeni military said dozens of government troops and civilians have been killed in attacks since last week. The strikes are part of an escalation by the Houthis against government forces in Yemen and oil facilities in neighboring Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government, and against the kingdom’s shipping in the Red Sea. Civilian bodies keep showing up in the accounting, while the armed institutions keep issuing statements as if that’s just the price of doing business.
With the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down by Iran, attention has shifted to the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait at Yemen’s southern tip, an alternate route for Saudi Arabia to ship its oil. The waterway matters because states need it, and states close it when they want leverage. Ordinary people get the bill.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the Houthis’ chief negotiator and spokesperson, accused Saudi Arabia in a social media post of exploiting the ceasefire to tighten an air and sea blockade it imposed in 2015. He said the Houthis are open for negotiations but any settlement must include lifting the blockade. That’s the language of armed administration: blockade, ceasefire, settlement, negotiation. The people trapped under it don’t get much of a say.
Washington, Tehran, and the Oil Chokehold
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told reporters that the country had “astonished the whole world” in the war against the United States and Israel, proving “that it is a tough and invincible power.” Iran has refused to back down on demands that the U.S. end its blockade of Iranian ports, lift sanctions on the Islamic Republic and fulfill other conditions before Tehran will consider reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Iran effectively closed the strait after Israel and the U.S. attacked the country on Feb. 28. Attacks on the key waterway — through which roughly one-fifth of the world’s traded oil supplies passed before the war — and uncertainty around its future have kept energy prices a major focus of U.S. politics ahead of November’s midterm elections.
U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday in an Oval Office exchange with reporters that the U.S. Navy’s blockade is preventing Iran from selling its oil on the international market, effectively choking the Iranian economy. “Yeah, they can make trouble,” Trump said, “but they’re broke.” The line is blunt, and so is the policy: blockade, sanctions, military pressure, then a shrug about the damage.
Diplomats, Courts, and the Same Old Machinery
Pakistani Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi traveled Tuesday to Tehran for talks aimed at encouraging Iran to resume negotiations with the United States under an interim peace deal brokered by Pakistan in June, two officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media and they provided no further details. Pakistan’s government had not publicly announced Naqvi’s visit. It is his sixth trip to Iran as part of Pakistan’s diplomatic efforts to ease tensions between Iran and the U.S. The peace process, such as it is, moves through secret visits, unnamed officials, and brokered deals while the blockade stays in place.
In Syria, a court sentenced former President Bashar Assad along with his younger brother to death for crimes against humanity and war crimes during Syria’s 14-year conflict that left about half a million people dead. Assad and his brother Maher, who fled to Russia after insurgents marched into Damascus in December 2024, were sentenced in absentia at the Fourth Criminal Court in the Syrian capital. The court’s judgment arrives after the war’s wreckage is already measured in half a million dead, another reminder that state violence doesn’t need a courtroom to exist, only one to tidy up the paperwork.