Quick geography background: a lot of middle eastern oil moves through two waterways; the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz on Arabia’s east cost and the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait on Arabia’s west coast. I assume everybody is aware there have been problems in the Strait of Hormuz.
But now there’s a new development. The Houthi movement in Yemen, which is allied with Iran, has succeeded in occupying the territory along the Bab al-Mandab Strait, including island in the strait. And they have announced they are closing the strait to all Saudi traffic.
This will sharply decrease the world’s oil traffic and we’ll be seeing a further rise in oil prices.
Indeed. I wonder how much of this is Iranian-conceived (and armed-funded). I suspect that Saudi and other Gulf powers (and the US/Europe) will be intensely interested in the response and might even provide ‘support’ to Saudi to take back the territory. What that support may be is still to be seen.
I suspect the price of oil on the various exchanges will take another ‘spike’ today or tomorrow. Other than that, predicting what will occur next is folly, IMHO–not that it will stop folks on newprograms (or this thread) from speculating the hell out of it.
The Houthis also appear to have damaged Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline which has been increasingly used during the Iran War to transport Saudi oil to the Red Sea which according to Wikipedia resiulted in a 21% increase in oil traffic shipped through the Bab al Mandeb.
Saudi Arabia and the US have been trying to combat the Houthis on and off since they deposed the Saudi-backed dictator of Yemen 15 years ago. The entire time the US and Saudi have been ineffective at achieving any goals by air (and some sea) power without boots on the ground. The force most willing to actually send people to fight the Houthis has been Ansar al-Sharia (also known as Al Qaeda) but it was such a bad look to ally with them that the US and Saudi stopped allying with them and have had a similar mindset to the US in Iran right now and simply resisted committing to peace in spite of not actually having the will to really nake war on them. The only temporary progress that has ever been achieved is in some limited cease fire agreements in exchange for Houthis refraining from attacking ships in the Red Sea or the Bab al Mandeb.
Saudi resumed open fighting against the Houthis after the Houthis resumed attacking shopping in the Bab al Mandeb. Perfectly reasonable except for the fact that they haven’t (at least to this point) shown any willingness to escalate to the point where they actually have a path at winning, and the Houthis have just used this as an opportunity to make further advances against the extremely weak official government of Yemen.
Should be a lesson for people in any conflict who advocate wagging war like this with no boots on the ground
I read somewhere today that ‘both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea are shut down by insurgents’ was the “worst-case scenario” in many US military wargames.
Looks as though Donald and his guy Pete have managed to bring about the WCS in a mere six months.
I would guess there’s an actual Distractions List. Maybe not kept by Donald—he’s not that systematic a thinker (or a thinker at all). But maybe one kept by Susie Wiles, his WH Chief of Staff.
Greenland; Cuba; Canada; “billions in Venezuelan oil;” “trillions from tariffs;” Dumocrats; left-wing lunatics; Immigrant Crime; even Jimmy Kimmel and Rosie O’Donnell----each has their (revolving) moment in the sun.
Huthi success in the Red Sea is just one more failing grade among many for American global security. The American leaders being completely inept, what else could you expect?
I spell it Huthi because there’s no o in Arabic. The vowel is just a plain u, not a diphthong of o and u. Fully aware I’m whispering into the void here. Carry on.
I haven’t read too much about this because I suspected it could be the mother of all possible situations. I tend to get overly frustrated and angry envisioning what this means for so many people.
On the other hand, there’s no U in Arabic, either. Nor a H, a T, or an I. All of the letters are different, and so must be approximated in various ways in any transliteration to a different alphabet. How is the first vowel in the name of the group usually transcribed?
On the bright side, just maybe we’ll finally see the world start to wean itself off of oil.