One of the most strategic navigation corridors in the world: Bab el

The threat of a “new front” and rising oil prices. This Thursday, March 26th, President Donald Trump urged Iran to “get serious before it’s too late” while diplomatic initiatives have been unfolding since the beginning of the week to prevent a war whose global economic consequences are being felt more each day. Tehran, however, intends to choose the conditions for the end of hostilities.

On Wednesday, an Iranian military source quoted by the Tasnim agency issued a new threat that quickly led to an increase in oil prices: targeting the strategic Bab el-Mandeb strait, located on the route through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

In the event of a US land invasion, Iran will open a “new front” in this crucial strait for world maritime traffic connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, with Djibouti and Eritrea on the African coast and Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula.

A strategic “gateway of sorrows”

A necessary passage to the Suez Canal, “the Bab el-Mandeb Strait (“gateway of sorrows” in Arabic) is among the most strategic straits in the world, and Iran possesses both the will and the ability to generate a perfectly credible threat against it,” warned the military source.

“If the enemy attempts a land action on Iranian soil or anywhere else on our territory, or seeks to impose costs on Iran through naval maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, we will open other fronts as a ‘surprise’,” added the military official.

Reference to Yemen’s Houthis, allies of Tehran

The threat concerning this strait was seen as a reference to its allies, the Houthi rebels who control the Red Sea from their mountainous positions. They have already significantly disrupted traffic with drones and missiles in support of Palestinians during the Gaza war and targeted oil infrastructure in 2019 and 2022, when Saudi Arabia unleashed a devastating war against them.

They could now easily target the tankers that fill their huge holds in the Saudi port of Yanbu, the main bypass route for barrels of oil stalled due to almost total paralysis of the Strait of Hormuz.