Yemeni forces aligned with the Saudi-backed government said on Sunday, November 15, that they are pulling out of Dhubab and the area overlooking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow southern entrance to the Red Sea. Reuters reported that the move leaves the Iran-aligned Houthis in control of the area. The pullback comes about a month after government troops said they had retaken the area.
“The Southern Armed Forces announce the implementation of a redeployment operation for its forces from Dhubab Airport and the Bab el-Mandeb area, west of Taiz Governorate,” the forces said in a statement quoted by Reuters and The National. “This step is taken based on the priority of securing the capital, Aden, and the neighbouring governorates, as well as strengthening the front lines and addressing existing threats.”
What is confirmed, and what is not
Confirmed: the government-aligned Southern Armed Forces announced the redeployment toward Aden, the seat of the internationally recognized government. The National, an Abu Dhabi-based paper, reported that the statement also said the move would support efforts to break the Houthi siege of Taiz city and would be carried out with the backing of the Saudi-led coalition.
Not independently confirmed: the exact positions Houthi fighters now hold. We found no Houthi statement claiming Dhubab airport, and no current reporting on who controls Perim (also called Mayyun), the small island in the middle of the strait. Some headlines, including the Jerusalem Post’s “Houthis take control of Bab el-Mandeb Strait,” go further than the statement itself, which speaks of withdrawing from an area on land. The strait is an international shipping lane; holding the coast next to it gives a force the ability to threaten ships, not legal or physical “control” of the water.
How the coast changed hands
The current fight for Yemen’s Red Sea coast began in September. According to Reuters, the Houthis pushed south that month in a bid to take the entire coastline, a lightning offensive that brought them within reach of Bab el-Mandeb. The government launched a counteroffensive in October. On October 5, The National reported that government forces claimed to have recaptured Dhubab and the port city of Mokha.
How the September collapse happened is still argued over. Analyst Ibrahim Jalal, writing in his newsletter The Horizon Brief, gave an account drawing on testimony from local journalists and field observers: Houthi intelligence allegedly penetrated government radio, text and WhatsApp channels and issued a fake withdrawal order, including with an AI-cloned commander’s voice, and the forces led by Tareq Saleh broke within about 24 hours. Jalal also wrote that more than 400 personnel linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are supporting Houthi operations on the ground. These are one analyst’s claims and have not been independently verified; Jalal himself noted that one local journalist he relied on rejects the betrayal narrative in favor of structural causes.
Why the strait matters
Bab el-Mandeb is one of the world’s busiest sea lanes for goods moving from Asia to Europe through Egypt’s Suez Canal. Reuters noted the withdrawal hands the Houthis “greater leverage” over that chokepoint while Iran continues to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, a two-strait squeeze that would further cut Gulf oil producers off from their main shipping routes.
The timing is pointed. The US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28 and is now nearly nine months old, according to Reuters. Over the weekend, Bahrain said it intercepted several Iranian aerial attacks, its first such interceptions since September, after two warnings urging residents to take shelter, and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had launched six drones at a US radar at a Bahraini helicopter base. There was no immediate US or Bahraini confirmation of that claim. Reuters reported on Saturday that President Trump said he might hold off on striking Iran if neither Tehran nor the Houthis provoke the United States again, while keeping the US naval blockade in place.
The Saudi front
The Houthis are also hitting Saudi Arabia directly. On Sunday the Saudi-led coalition said it intercepted two Houthi ballistic missiles fired at Riyadh and three drones over the kingdom’s oil-rich Eastern Province. Reuters reported that a Houthi strike last week damaged an administrative building of state oil company Saudi Aramco in Riyadh’s financial district, and that Aramco’s headquarters in the Eastern Province suffered extensive damage in an October attack. Houthi strikes have also hit Saudi ports, airports and Yanbu, the kingdom’s Red Sea oil export hub. Saudi Arabia has answered with airstrikes in Yemen.
The renewed fighting broke a truce brokered by the United Nations in 2022. Around Taiz, the human cost is rising: Reuters reported that the city hosts about half of the roughly 300,000 people displaced by the latest fighting and remains besieged, with aid unable to enter and civilians unable to leave.
What to watch
Three things will show how serious this is. First, whether Houthi forces move weapons, radar or boats onto the Dhubab coast and Perim island, which would turn ground into a standing threat to shipping. Second, whether the Saudi-led coalition follows through on the stated plan to break the Taiz siege, the reason the southern forces gave for leaving. Third, whether shipping lines and insurers change their Red Sea routing in response. None of those has been reported yet.
Sources
- Reuters, “Yemen government forces withdraw from area near Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Houthis in control” (Nov. 15, 2026), verbatim wire copy read via Internazionale and NBC News
- The National, “Yemen government forces pullback hands Houthis greater leverage over Bab Al Mandeb” (Nov. 15, 2026)
- Reuters, “Saudi-led coalition intercepts missiles towards Riyadh, drones in Eastern Province” (Nov. 15, 2026), via Internazionale
- Reuters, “Bahrain’s interior ministry issues alerts of potential threats” (Nov. 15, 2026), via Internazionale
- Ibrahim Jalal, The Horizon Brief, “Command Failure, Not Combat Defeat: How Bab al-Mandab Fell to the Houthis, and Iran Gained a Second Strait” (analysis)
- The Jerusalem Post, “Houthis take control of Bab el-Mandeb Strait as Yemen’s forces withdraw” (Nov. 15, 2026)
Featured image: map of Yemen and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, from the Right Side News image library.
How this article was made: Right Side News researched and drafted this article with the help of AI tools. Sources are linked so readers can check them. Spot an error? Tell us in the comments and we will correct it.
