Houthi forces have captured Mayyun Island, the small landmass that splits the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into its two navigable channels, giving the group what a Yemeni government official called complete control of the waterway.
“Boats carrying armed Houthi fighters reached Mayyun Island after government forces withdrew from it,” the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The UAE has spent years quietly building a military airstrip there, with satellite imagery first revealing the construction in 2021, despite no government ever officially claiming ownership of the base. One open-source intelligence analyst who has tracked the construction called it “a longer-term strategic aim to establish a relatively permanent presence.”
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A more recent report has flagged the runway as potentially Israeli-capable, though that specific claim remains far less confirmed than the base’s existence itself — what’s certain now is that the Houthis have captured a foreign military installation, not just open coastline.
The island’s capture capped a rapid, single-day push that cleared the last remaining government-held ground along the coast, leaving Houthi fighters in control of the shoreline from end to end. Houthi units also pushed into the Hanish Islands, further out in the Red Sea, and were still fighting for control of Zuqar Island as of this writing.
Mayyun sits directly in the middle of Bab el-Mandeb, a chokepoint that carries a substantial share of the world’s maritime trade between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
One maritime security expert offered a striking comparison to Middle East Eye — that Houthi control over this strait could prove more durable than Iran’s grip on Hormuz, precisely because Washington has little military presence in the immediate area.
Hundreds of people are believed to have died in the offensive, and Yemen’s UN envoy, Abdullah al-Saadi, called an emergency Security Council session Thursday, warning that the Houthi militia is attempting to establish new facts on the ground in the Red Sea.
