Bab el-Mandeb Strait

What it is

Bab el-Mandeb, Arabic for "Gate of Tears," is a strait at the southern end of the Red Sea, separating Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula from Djibouti and Eritrea on the Horn of Africa. At its narrowest point it measures roughly 29 kilometres across. The island of Perim divides the passage into two navigable channels: the eastern Bab Iskender (5.4 km wide, 29 m deep) and the western Dact-el-Mayun (20 km wide, 310 m deep), which handles larger vessels and tankers. The strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean beyond.

In 2018, 6.2 million barrels per day of crude oil, condensate, and refined petroleum products transited the strait, representing roughly 9% of global seaborne petroleum. Approximately 12% of world maritime trade by value passes through the corridor, making it the third-busiest oil chokepoint globally after the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Hormuz.

History

Britain administered Aden, the port city at the strait's northern mouth in Yemen, from 1839 until November 1967, when it withdrew after a nationalist insurgency. Throughout the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union maintained naval presences in the broader Red Sea and Indian Ocean to contest access. After the September 2001 attacks, the United States established Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, now the largest permanent US military facility in Africa, positioned at the strait's western shore. France and Japan followed with their own bases in subsequent years. China opened its first overseas military support base in Djibouti in 2017, completing a cluster of rival powers all dependent on the same narrow waterway staying open. As of 2026, Djibouti receives approximately US$65 million per year from the United States, US$30 million from France, and US$20 million from China for base access rights.

Current state

Between late 2023 and early 2025, Yemen's Houthi movement launched more than 520 attacks against at least 176 ships transiting the Red Sea and the approaches to Bab el-Mandeb, in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The campaign drove most major container lines to reroute around Africa's Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly 10 to 14 days to Asia-Europe voyages and sharply raising freight insurance premiums. Egypt's Suez Canal tonnage was still roughly 70% below 2023 levels as of May 2025. Oil shipments through the strait averaged 4.2 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025, against a pre-crisis peak near 9 million barrels per day. After the Iran-US ceasefire of April 2026, the Houthis suspended attacks on commercial vessels; the group has explicitly threatened to close the strait if Gulf states join a US-Israeli campaign against Iran. The current Houthi posture is documented in 후티, 홍해 선박 공격 중단 유지하면서도 전쟁 재개 시 바브엘만데브 봉쇄 위협.

Relationships

Bab el-Mandeb's strategic weight is inseparable from Yemen's civil war and Iran's regional posture. The Houthis demonstrated between 2023 and 2025 that a non-state actor controlling Yemen's western coastline can impose severe costs on global shipping without a conventional navy, a significant revision of maritime security assumptions. The waterway is also the upstream determinant of Egypt's Suez Canal revenues, directly linking Egypt's fiscal position to security conditions in Yemen. If the strait is effectively blocked, roughly 40,000 additional kilometres of sea travel separates a vessel sailing from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam, Netherlands.

What to watch

Whether the Iran-US ceasefire holds is the primary variable. A breakdown would likely restart Houthi attacks, re-imposing Cape-of-Good-Hope diversion costs on Asia-Europe shipping and repricing oil freight almost immediately. Djibouti's base lease negotiations are a secondary indicator: any shift in US or Chinese basing terms signals movement in great-power competition for the strait's western flank. Suez Canal traffic volume is the most direct measure of how much confidence commercial shippers place in the current pause.