In full seriousness, beyond posturing and making an ideological statement, how will the Houthi Movement enforce this blockade in any way? They have no navy, no modern anti-ship missiles, no naval Air Force, or any meaningful way to affect shipping in the Red Sea without getting wiped off the face of the Earth by UN anti-piracy naval and air forces in stationed in Djibouti.
they have helicopters, drones, small ships, antiship missiles… They will be fine.
You’re being very liberal with your definition of “helicopters and small ships”, those are small civilian craft. Not Mi24’s and corvettes.
Yet it was enough to capture Galaxy Leader
Watch this Yemeni celebrating the capture of Galaxy Leader: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C0NQr46M4H8/
Note: Galaxy is pronounced Jalaxy in Arabic
They launched an anti ship missile a few hours ago so clearly they’ve got something
I think the a major component of the blockade is that one they begin to capture or burn ships, the insurance rate goes way up. Once the ships become even slightly more costly the margins go down. Once it is even possibly unprofitable to use the straight, they will have effectively created a blockade.
Plus, investors are fickle as anything. The slightest whiff of this isn’t safe and it’s off. They might take a risk on something with a massive potential profit. But many (most?) ships aren’t carrying that kind of thing. That’s not the kind of risk that investors don’t mind gambling with.
Bab el Mandab is a very narrow strait and the Houthis have the ability to strike anywhere in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea
With what? They have no naval military craft at all, zero. The most they have is drones, though they have been noted to be useful only with harassment engagements.
Also they absolutely do not have free reign over the Arabian and Red seas. That is one of the most high defended areas in the world, with anti piracy operations from UN nations constantly patrolling, destroying, and capturing pirates and smugglers. The Chinese, Americans, Russians, French, and British all have their own naval base and airfield in Djibouti for the express purpose of supporting those operations. Plus air and naval assets from dozens of UN countries.
Bab el Mandab??? You’re kidding right? I’m sure trying to capture or destroy a ship 25 meters away from the combined naval and air assets of nearly 45 countries is going to go well.
I just checked the bases on Google Maps. Wild how they aren’t blurred lol. I could even count US airplanes there from my lazy couch.
As Harun Al-Rashid once said to Niqpur: the answer is what you will see not hear.
Just sit down and watch. Not the first time the Yemenis defeated an empire
They’ve already been using drones to harass Israeli affiliated ships and even seized one. They don’t have to be able to completely stop shipping, just to make it riskier and more expensive to do. That puts direct economic pressure on Israel. There’s a good article talking about this in more detail here https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/14235
But how do they differentiate shipping as to what is Israeli affiliated or not?
There are publicly available databases on ships with pretty detailed information, including their travels. For a fee there are services that provide cargo information as well.
