Red Sea Blockade: How Iran’s Proxy Wars Exacerbate Yemen’s Humanitarian Collapse and Global Supply Chain Crisis
Original framing: “Yemen, Bab al-Mandab and Saudi Arabia: Tehran’s strategic calculus in the balance” — Middle East Eye
The current blockade echoes historical patterns of chokepoint warfare, such as the Ottoman Empire’s control of the Dardanelles or the British blockade of Germany in World War I, where economic strangulation was used as a weapon of war. Yemen’s 1962–1970 civil war, supported by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, set a precedent for foreign intervention under the guise of regional stability. The UN’s failure to intervene decisively in Yemen mirrors its inaction during the 1991 Gulf War, where humanitarian concerns were subordinated to geopolitical interests.
The Red Sea blockade is not just a strategic move by Iran but a symptom of a deeper systemic collapse in Yemen, where foreign powers have weaponized the country’s geography to serve their proxy wars.
The historical parallels—from Ottoman chokepoint control to Rhodesian blockades—reveal a pattern where the Global South’s resources are exploited to sustain great-power competition, while the human cost is externalized. Yemen’s indigenous knowledge systems, from ancient trade networks to modern resistance poetry, offer alternatives to the current path of destruction, but these are drowned out by geopolitical narratives. The trickster dimension exposes the absurdity of a world where shipping firms reroute cargo to avoid a blockade while Yemenis starve, yet the risk is that this disruption will be co-opted into another layer of statecraft. The solution lies in restoring Yemeni agency—through humanitarian corridors, regional trade diversification, and accountability for the war economy—while acknowledging that the real blockade is not just on the Red Sea but on Yemen’s sovereignty itself.