Houthis Capture Hanish Islands, Shutting Down Key Saudi Oil Pipeline and Jamming Red Sea Trade

On a hot September morning in Cairo, two unnamed regional officials broke the news that a 1,200‑kilometre Saudi oil pipeline – the backbone of the kingdom’s east‑west crude flow – had been knocked out by what Riyadh blames on Iranian‑backed drones. The line, which can move up to seven million barrels a day, is expected to stay largely offline for three to five weeks while engineers wrestle with damage at a major pumping station.

For Saudi Arabia, the outage is more than a hiccup. It means that oil harvested on the Persian Gulf has to travel a longer, more vulnerable route to the Red Sea, where it can finally be loaded onto tankers bound for Asia. The kingdom has been trying to sidestep the Strait of Hormuz – a notorious bottleneck that Iran has threatened to close – and now the Red Sea itself is feeling the pressure.

Adding insult to injury, the Houthi rebels of Yemen announced on Monday that they had taken control of the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands, a small archipelago perched about 160 km north of the Bab el‑Mandeb Strait. The strait is the other major gateway between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, a passage that handles roughly a third of the world’s seaborne oil. By holding the islands, the Houthis now sit just 20 miles from the U.S. base in Djibouti and can threaten shipping that snakes through the choke point.

The capture didn’t happen in a vacuum. Just a week earlier the Houthis seized the mainland port city of Mokha and the tiny island of Mayun, both of which lie inside the Bab el‑Mandeb. Their forces rolled in after Saudi‑backed Yemeni troops withdrew, leaving the islands effectively abandoned. In the case of Hanish, the United Arab Emirates – which had been the de‑facto custodian of the islands after a fallout with Saudi Arabia – had already stripped out its military gear earlier this year, making the takeover almost effortless.

What does this mean for the global oil market? In the short term, Saudi crude that would normally slide through the East‑West pipeline into Red Sea ports now faces bottlenecks, potentially nudging prices upward. Analysts say the combined effect of the pipeline hit and the Hanish islands’ capture could tighten supplies enough to keep oil prices hovering near recent highs, at least until repairs are completed.

Beyond the economics, the human cost is climbing. The United Nations estimates that more than 80,000 Yemenis have been displaced in the past two weeks alone, with over 2,000 fleeing by boat to Djibouti. Since the fighting flared up on September 3, roughly 150 civilians have been killed – including a pregnant woman in Taiz province – and more than 200 injured, according to Yemen’s Human Rights Ministry.

Charities on the ground, like Islamic Relief, are sounding the alarm. “Families have fled with whatever they could carry, often without food or clean water,” says Khanzad Shah, acting head of the organisation. Entire villages in Taiz have reportedly emptied, a grim reminder that the conflict is pushing Yemen back toward the brink of famine.

Saudi cities near the Yemeni border have also felt the heat. Sirens wailed on Sunday in Abha and the Khamis Mushait province, urging residents to take shelter as Houthi missiles and drones reportedly slammed the King Khalid Air Base, targeting hangars, radar installations and ammunition depots. While Saudi officials have been tight‑lipped about the exact damage, civil‑defence reports confirmed a projectile landing near the Red Sea border, injuring two people and damaging a mosque.

Meanwhile, the Yemeni government’s armed forces claim they have launched airstrikes on Houthi positions in Mokha, Dhubab and Taiz, but the rebels continue to consolidate their new footholds. The fighting in the north, especially in the long‑simmering province of Taiz, shows no sign of abating, and the risk of the country slipping back into full‑blown civil war is growing.

All of this adds up to a volatile mix: a key Saudi oil artery out of commission, strategic islands now under rebel control, and a civilian population bearing the brunt of the conflict. As the world watches oil markets wobble, the real story is the accelerating humanitarian disaster in a country already devastated by a decade of war.