Yemen’s Houthis said on Sunday they were on high alert and ready to respond to any potential attacks on the country, with a senior official saying the group was prepared to confront what he called aggression against the Yemeni people, reports The Tribune.
Major-General Mohammed al-Atifi, defence minister of the Houthi-led administration, said in a statement that the latest phase of the conflict involving what he described as the “Zionist and American enemy” had shown unity among allied fronts and demonstrated the effectiveness of military operations carried out by the so-called axis of resistance.
The statement was reported by Al Jazeera. The warning came as another senior Houthi official raised the prospect of action affecting one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.
Hussein al-Ezzi, deputy foreign minister in the internationally unrecognised Houthi administration, said in a post on X that the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait could be shut if US President Donald Trump and what he called the “complicit world” did not end “all practices and policies that obstruct peace”.
“If Sana’a decides to close the Bab al-Mandab, then all of mankind and jinn will be utterly powerless to open it,” al-Ezzi said.
He added that it would be better for Trump and the “complicit world” to immediately end policies and practices that obstruct peace and to show what he described as the required respect for the rights of the Yemeni people and nation.
According to Al Jazeera, Bab al-Mandeb links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and serves as a major shipping chokepoint funnelling sea traffic towards the Suez Canal. The strait is 29 km, or 18 miles, wide at its narrowest point, allowing traffic through two channels for inbound and outbound shipments.
It is one of the most important sea routes for global commodity trade, particularly for crude oil and other fuels moving from the Gulf to the Mediterranean, as well as cargoes heading to Asia, including Russian oil.
The Houthis formally entered the US-Israel war involving Iran in late March, launching multiple long-range ballistic missile and drone attacks at Israel and opening a new front in the conflict.
The group has said it will continue such attacks until the war ends, using its arsenal to strike what it describes as sensitive military sites, and has warned that operations could expand to maritime traffic in the Red Sea.
Earlier, on 28 March, a missile was launched from Yemen towards Israel, marking the first such attack by the Houthis since “Operation Roaring Lion” began a month earlier, according to the Israel Defence Forces.
The first missile launch came as Yemen’s armed forces declared readiness for direct military intervention if what they called “American Israeli aggression” against Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” continued to escalate, according to Iranian state media outlet Press TV.
