To lose one Middle East sea lane vital for the global economy may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. As every armchair strategist knows, Donald Trump has lost free passage through one strait: Hormuz. Last week he let another slip from his grasp, Bab al-Mandeb, taken by Tehran’s allies, the Houthis. More than a quarter of the global oil supply could now fall under Iranian control – and Trump’s war is more doomed than ever. 

For those confused about Middle Eastern waterways, a look at the map… The Strait of Hormuz, conduit for a fifth of the world’s oil, is east of Saudi Arabia and south of Iran. All the way over on the other side of Saudi Arabia, on its western coast, is the Red Sea leading down to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. This shipping lane is overlooked by Yemen, home to Ansar Allah, the helpers of God, also known as the Houthis. It has assumed increasing importance ever since President Trump got into such expensive trouble in Hormuz.

Last week, hordes of Houthi fighters, wearing flip-flops and carrying Kalashnikovs, streamed down from the mountains onto the plains of the Yemeni coast. They took the town of Mocha (from where the coffee gets its name). The upshot is that a single militiaman armed with a rocket-propelled grenade can sit in a deckchair and threaten tankers carrying up to a tenth of the world’s oil. As CNN reported, quoting a ‘regional source’, this was ‘a Saudi-American fuck-up of epic proportions’. 

The Saudi ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, called Trump twice to beg for American airstrikes. Trump refused, perhaps remembering the last time he waged an air campaign against the Houthis, to very little effect. (The US reportedly spent more than a billion dollars........

© The Spectator