The Second Chokepoint: The Houthis Close on Bab al-Mandab as $100 Oil Fails to Fund Tehran

Iran’s economy is under managed compression, and that condition now shapes the war. The free-market dollar closed Thursday at 235,975 tomans, roughly 32 percent weaker than three months ago, and the state is paying to hold the line with protected gasoline quotas, extra fuel for app-based drivers, and a suspended freight charge on foreign tankers. Iran is helping push Brent above $100 while Kpler counted seven Hormuz transits on September 10 against a pre-war norm near 125, so the benchmark it is creating does not pay its bills. That revenue gap is the strategic driver of the day, and it is pulling a second chokepoint into the war. Ansar Allah took Mokha on Thursday, attacked the Hanish islands, and pushed government forces south to Dhubab, opposite Perim island at the mouth of Bab al-Mandab. Iran’s state channel Al-Alam went further than the Houthis themselves and declared the strait under control. Reuters reports that Pakistan relayed a Saudi warning to Tehran on Tuesday, that a senior Iranian official replied that Iran does not control the Houthis, and that two Iranian sources say Tehran told the Houthis last week to strike Saudi Arabia while IRGC commanders traveled to Yemen. Israel demolished the Ali al-Taher tunnel complex on Thursday evening with more than 1,100 tons of explosives, and by Friday morning Tehran had issued no official response. Washington set a presumption of denial for most Iran licenses and promised a large-bank designation on Monday. We assess with moderate confidence that the last 24 hours moved the balance modestly toward Tehran’s theory of the war. This post summarizes our daily intelligence report for September 11.

Managed Compression and the Revenue Gap

Iran’s economy is not collapsing, and the distinction between compression and collapse now organizes the war. TGJU’s last reading before the Friday shutdown placed the free-market dollar at 235,975 tomans, with a session high of 236,020. The rate is roughly 32 percent weaker than three months ago and about 134 percent weaker year on year. The government has protected the first two gasoline quotas, granted app-based drivers up to 300 extra liters a month, and suspended the 10 percent freight charge on foreign vessels carrying oil, gas, and liquid petroleum products pending a cabinet list of covered goods. Each measure keeps fuel, trade, and aviation moving while shifting cost onto the budget and onto households. A government gives up a fiscal charge only when the external cost of shipping has become prohibitive.

The central constraint is no longer production. Kpler’s preliminary data showed seven transits through Hormuz on September 10, five inbound and two outbound, against a ten-day average of 15 and a pre-war norm of roughly 125 large commercial vessels a day. Brent traded near $105.62 and WTI near $101.10 early Friday after Brent touched $109.97 on Thursday, and both benchmarks are about 13 percent higher on the week. Kayhan’s economic pages treat the return of Brent above $100 as proof that the war is paying, and the framing is factually grounded and analytically incomplete. Tanker losses, insurance, payment channels, and physical access cap what Iran can capture. Reuters describes an oil-for-goods mechanism with Chinese counterparties worth roughly $2 to $2.5 billion that keeps medicine, vehicles, and communications equipment flowing. It does not fund a state budget. The economic dailies and the domestic politics of scarcity are covered in the day’s Economic Press Review.

The consequence follows directly. A price lever that does not pay Tehran’s bills pushes Tehran toward levers that raise the bill for everyone else. If Saudi Arabia can load seven million barrels a day at Yanbu while Iranian exports sit at the quay, the Hormuz lever weakens with every week. Pressure on the Red Sea route restores the symmetry, and that logic is what is pulling Bab al-Mandab into the war.

The Houthis Move on the Strait

Reuters reports that Houthi forces seized Mokha early Thursday after government forces withdrew, launched attacks on the Hanish islands, and pushed government forces and their allies south to Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait opposite Perim island. Yemeni military sources told Reuters that control of Dhubab and Perim is the key to holding the strait. An AFP military source said the Houthis had taken at least Zuqar after firing missiles at the island and landing fighters by boat. Tariq Saleh, commander of the National Resistance forces, ordered his west-coast units to set up an alternate command center, which is a sign of retreat. Reuters sources say Iranian arms, funding, and military advice helped the Houthis take Mokha, and Tehran denies directing the operation.

The geography explains the stakes. Mokha improves coastal surveillance, logistics, and missile and drone reach over the approaches to the strait. The Hanish islands sit between Hodeidah and Mokha and give whoever holds them a view of approaching shipping. Perim splits the 29-kilometer strait into its two channels. Dhubab, Perim, and the Hanish group together would close the geometry.

Iran’s state channel Al-Alam claimed that the Houthis had captured Dhubab and Zuqar and reported that the strait was under the control of the forces after the complete capture of Dhubab. That is ahead of what Reuters and AFP sources confirmed, and the gap is the point. Tehran is advertising control of the second chokepoint before the Houthis have it, because the market effect follows the perception. The formal scope of the lever remains narrower than the framing. Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam said that navigation and international trade in the Red Sea and the strait remain safe, and the Houthi-run coordination center repeated that shipping is safe for all companies except Saudi vessels, which remain under the previously declared ban. Yahya Saree’s channel shows a high tempo, with four Saudi reconnaissance and armed drones claimed downed within 24 hours and a warning that Saudi airstrikes and blockade enforcement will be answered.

One report requires particular caution. Al-Masirah and Press TV are circulating monitoring claims of smoke along roughly 80 kilometers of the East-West pipeline. There is no Saudi confirmation and no independently verified satellite product tying the smoke to a Houthi strike, and it remains an unverified, high-priority essential element of information. Riyadh is already pricing the risk itself. Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan announced cabinet approval of a Saudi war-risk insurance pool for goods and ships, which signals an expectation of sustained disruption on both routes. Shipping companies and insurers respond to credible risk, so the premium on Yanbu loadings can rise before the technical evidence arrives.

Deniability and the Doctrine Trail

Tehran is separating itself from command responsibility while embracing the political cause. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei rejected Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s description of the Houthis as an Iranian proxy, described Ansar Allah as an independent Yemeni actor that takes orders from no one, and blamed U.S. intervention for regional instability. Reuters adds the operational layer. Saudi, Pakistani, and Iranian sources say Pakistan conveyed a Saudi warning to Tehran on September 8 asking Iran to restrain the Houthis. A senior Iranian official confirmed the message and said the answer was that Iran does not control the Houthis. Two Iranian sources said Tehran had told the Houthis the previous week to carry out attacks on Saudi Arabia, promised additional funding and weapons, and sent several IRGC commanders to Yemen to help coordinate. This is sourced reporting. Documentary proof is absent and Tehran denies it, and it is consistent with everything else in the file.

The diplomatic channel is running in parallel with the pressure, by design. On Thursday night Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke by telephone with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan. The Iranian readout says both sides pointed to intensifying tensions and stressed continued cooperation to prevent them from spreading. Shafaqna reports a separate Araqchi call with Pakistan’s army chief the same evening. The calls came two days after Islamabad relayed Riyadh’s warning, hours after Mokha fell, and while Al-Alam was declaring the strait under control. Araqchi also spoke with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Hormuz. Seoul is weighing contributions to international maritime security, and Iran has warned that foreign deployments supporting U.S. pressure in the strait would be treated as alignment with aggression.

The second-chokepoint idea has a paper trail inside Iran that predates the battlefield. When the U.S. naval blockade began in mid-April, Kayhan’s managing editor Hossein Shariatmadari wrote that closing Bab al-Mandab to hostile-owned ships and to cargoes bound for hostile states was the answer to the blockade of Iran, and that delay carried its own risk. Majlis Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf told Al-Alam on April 27 that the United States had run out of cards while Iran still held several, among them the strait. IranWire summarized the underlying logic in July, which holds that regional energy exports are either for everyone or for no one. What was then a list of options is now a map. The report judges with moderate to high confidence that the lever is being activated incrementally, coastline first, islands second, and declared scope last. Formal closure of the strait to all hostile shipping within the coming week is unlikely. The trigger for widening the Houthi ban beyond Saudi shipping would be a U.S. or Israeli strike that Tehran wants to answer without a direct attack, or a collapse of the memorandum track.

Ali al-Taher and the Limits of Iranian Response

The IDF demolished the underground complex beneath the Ali al-Taher ridge on Thursday evening using more than 1,100 tons of explosives. The blast registered as a magnitude 4.1 event and was felt in Sidon and Tyre. The IDF says the complex comprised eight fortified routes totaling 5.4 kilometers across the Ali al-Taher and Beaufort area, held the command center of Hezbollah’s Badr unit for the sector north of the Litani, and was built over two decades with Iranian funding and planning. Netanyahu wrote on X that Israel had destroyed “the largest Iranian outpost outside Iran.” Maariv reports that Israel passed messages to Hezbollah and Iran warning that any military response would be met with a wide-scale attack, and that the air force raised its alert level. That report is single-source and unconfirmed. We set out the ridge’s place in Iran’s deterrent calculus in an earlier edition.

By 11:00 on Friday there was no statement from the Foreign Ministry, the IRGC, or the Leader’s office. Mehr reported the Israeli account via Al Jazeera and labeled its contents claims, including the attribution of the complex to Iranian funding. Hamshahri carried the seismic reading, and Shafaqna quoted Lebanese reporting on the tonnage, again as Israeli claims. The template was set earlier in the week, when Baghaei dismissed Arab media reporting on the ridge as psychological warfare and Mehr’s political desk argued that operational control does not mean occupation. Expect the same three moves after the demolition. Iranian outlets will deny the scale, credit Hezbollah with a five-month defense, and attribute the timing to Netanyahu’s electoral needs.

The domestic dimension is sharper than the external one. Khabar Fouri reported on September 6 that the ridge had reopened the argument that began in June over the Islamabad memorandum, when hardliners attacked the negotiators with the “Hezbollah deal” label. Tasnim, which is close to the Speaker, ran commentary playing down the strategic weapons and personnel on the ridge, and an assistant to the Speaker argued that the memorandum had held Israel back from taking Ali al-Taher earlier. The demolition removes that argument’s premise. Former diplomat Mohammad Irani told Fararu that Netanyahu needs escalation to survive politically and is waiting for an Iranian reaction, and that Iran should not supply one. Iranian outlets also carried an Anadolu report that Iran and the United States have agreed to extend the 60-day deadline of the memorandum. Neither government had confirmed it by Friday morning. If accurate, it would strengthen the Speaker’s position at the moment the demolition weakens it.

We assess that a direct Iranian military response is unlikely in the near term. Israel has signaled the price, Tehran has already spent its warning to Washington on this file, and the negotiating camp has an interest in containing the episode. The response will come through the fronts Iran can deny, which are Yemen, Hormuz enforcement incidents, and nuclear signaling. Hezbollah’s own media are under pressure to restore deterrence after the destruction and after the Lebanese leadership’s negotiation line became explicit. Al-Manar described the campaign around Nabatieh as the consolidation of an imposed security zone, attacked President Joseph Aoun’s negotiating line, and presented Mokha as a gateway for breaking the blockade, which is the clearest Axis media statement of the two-chokepoint logic. There is still no authoritative Hezbollah statement and no new Naim Qassem speech setting a timetable for wider entry into the energy war, and rhetoric must not be converted into an operational claim.

Two further Iranian items bear on the attrition contest. Mohsen Rezaei warned that political use of the IAEA could push states toward leaving the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and Iran has taken no withdrawal decision. The Wall Street Journal reported, citing U.S. and Middle Eastern officials, that Iran has resumed assembly of liquid- and solid-fuel ballistic missiles from components stockpiled before the war at underground sites including Khojir, at a rate still below pre-war levels. A U.S. official put capacity from existing parts at several hundred missiles. Even partial replacement of expended inventory extends the period over which Iran can sustain pressure against U.S. interceptor stocks.

Washington Tightens the Ring

Treasury’s September 10 action under Operation Economic Outcast targeted networks enabling Kataib Hezbollah and Lebanese Hezbollah across Iraq, Lebanon, the UAE, and Türkiye, and it set a presumption of denial for most Iran-specific license requests, with narrow exceptions for risks to life, limb, or environmental safety. The licensing change is the consequential item. It raises the compliance cost of any commercial contact with Iran and pushes foreign firms toward blanket avoidance. Secretary Scott Bessent said a large, unnamed bank will be designated on Monday. If the target sits inside one of Iran’s remaining settlement channels, the effect could exceed the whole September package. Aviation shows the same pattern. Kayhan International reports Imam Khomeini airport operating normally and new routes under discussion, while the Wall Street Journal documents how heavily Mahan Air’s resilience depends on third-country intermediaries and aging airframes.

Basing damage is Iran’s most durable military gain. Acting Navy Secretary Hung Cao said Iranian attacks caused severe damage at Naval Support Activity Bahrain and that a task force is evaluating the base’s future. Navy Times independently reported that Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Daryl Caudle told sailors the service would not return to the base anytime soon, with heavy damage to Fifth Fleet headquarters, barracks, and warehouses, and logistics shifting toward Diego Garcia, more than 2,000 miles away. We assess with high confidence that Bahrain is one of Iran’s most consequential strategic successes of the war. Tehran did not eliminate Fifth Fleet. It imposed a persistent logistics penalty that survives long after the salvo. At Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan roughly eight F-15s sustained light damage and returned to service, while an A-10 was more seriously damaged, with no U.S. fatalities. The tactical effect was limited. What Tehran is selling is the demonstration that a few leakers through layered defenses can damage high-value aircraft and force heavy interceptor expenditure. The fresh Arabic sweep produced no well-corroborated new Iraqi militia attack claim, which shows that Axis escalation is uneven and that Iraq remains a reservoir Washington’s next strikes could activate.

The nuclear file is being folded into the same contest. The IAEA Board referred Iran to the Security Council by 23 votes to 3, the first referral in two decades. On Thursday the Council took up the report of the 1737 sanctions committee over Russian and Chinese objections. Russia lost a procedural vote 11 to 2, and Moscow and Beijing maintain that Resolution 2231 expired in October 2025 and that snapback lacks legal basis. Britain said inspectors have had no access beyond Bushehr since June 2025, and France cited the 440.9-kilogram stock of 60 percent uranium as the Agency’s last estimate before the June 2025 strikes. Rafael Grossi told Bloomberg that the Agency has observed activity around the Pickaxe Mountain site near Natanz without knowing what is being done there, after CSIS satellite analysis found activity higher than at any point in six years. Trump warned Iran not to get cute and has said the United States may strike the site. We assess with moderate confidence that the near-term danger is a feedback loop in which reduced access produces suspicion, suspicion produces coercion, and coercion produces less transparency.

Hormuz, Markets, and the Net Assessment

The analytical distinction at Hormuz is between passage and control. Washington can point to ships that move. Tehran can point to the fact that operators must weigh attack risk, escort availability, insurance, political affiliation, and possible detention. A waterway can remain physically open while remaining strategically coercive. QatarEnergy-linked LNG tankers, including Al Marrouna, Al Ghashamiya, and Al Daayen, have begun limited activity, which shows partial functionality and is well short of normalization. The Financial Times reports that Gulf-Iran diplomacy on managed Hormuz shipping continued overnight, so coercive leverage is being paired with negotiation over controlled passage. Selective reopening is itself part of the bargaining strategy, and the same template is now being applied at the southern end of the Red Sea. Iranian outlets on Thursday carried an IRGC claim to have destroyed a U.S. vessel in the strait. Neither U.S. nor shipping sources corroborated it, and it belongs to the information campaign around the restricted-zone doctrine we described in yesterday’s edition.

Markets are pricing a two-chokepoint war. Analysts describe a stalemate in which oil grinds higher because there is no credible normalization of Hormuz and Red Sea risk is rising at the same time. Brent rose about 4 percent on Thursday on the Mokha and Hanish news alone. The shock is spilling into U.S. diesel above $6 a gallon and into bonds, with the 10-year Treasury yield approaching 5 percent. That is the mechanism through which the war becomes a domestic political problem for Washington. If the East-West pipeline or Yanbu suffer confirmed, sustained damage, the market effect could be non-linear, because the principal bypass would itself be impaired.

The cross-theater pattern is coordinated at the level of strategic logic more clearly than at the level of tactical command. Iran is contesting Hormuz and threatening Gulf energy exposure. The Houthis are pressuring the Saudi bypass and moving onto the islands that command Bab al-Mandab. Hezbollah media describe the Lebanese front as part of a broader U.S.-Israeli project and have not joined the energy campaign operationally. Iraqi militias are comparatively quiet. Current evidence supports strategic convergence with Iranian guidance more strongly than a single integrated command plan, and the Reuters reporting on IRGC commanders in Yemen moves the needle toward guidance. We set out the threshold for a directed regional campaign in a separate assessment on September 8.

Neither side has yet converted pain into concession. Washington is inflicting greater direct material damage on Iran. Tehran is becoming more successful at exporting secondary costs. We assess with moderate confidence that the balance of the last 24 hours moved modestly toward Tehran’s theory of the war, because the war’s external costs are becoming harder for Washington and its partners to compartmentalize, and because Iran has found in Bab al-Mandab a lever that costs it nothing in revenue it is not already losing. The Iranian public and productive sector are carrying that strategy, and their tolerance, more than the Treasury’s, is the variable to watch.

Key Points

1. [HIGH] Iran’s economy is in managed compression, not collapse. Strategic capacity is preserved while household welfare, market efficiency, and policy flexibility erode. The dollar at 235,975 tomans, the protected gasoline quotas, the freight-charge suspension, and the barter channels with China all point the same way, and every workaround costs more than the last.
2. [HIGH] Iran cannot monetize the oil price it is helping to create. Brent above $100 with seven Hormuz transits on September 10 means benchmark leverage is real and realized revenue is not. Suspending the freight charge is revenue surrendered to keep tonnage moving.
3. [MODERATE] Because the price lever does not pay Tehran’s bills, Iranian incentives shift toward levers that raise costs for others. The Saudi bypass through the East-West pipeline and Yanbu is the main escape valve from Hormuz, and threatening it converts Iran’s self-inflicted export loss into a shared regional loss.
4. [MODERATE-HIGH] The Bab al-Mandab lever is within operational reach and is being activated incrementally. Mokha is taken, Hanish has been attacked, government forces have been pushed to Dhubab opposite Perim, and an AFP source reports Zuqar seized. The Houthi ban still applies formally to Saudi ships only, and formal closure to all hostile shipping within a week is unlikely.
5. [MODERATE] Tehran’s denial of control over the Houthis is deliberate deniability paired with active enablement. Reuters reports the relayed Saudi warning, the Iranian denial, and two Iranian sources describing tasking, funding, and IRGC commanders in Yemen. The doctrine trail runs from Shariatmadari in April to Qalibaf’s list of unplayed cards.
6. [MODERATE] Tehran is keeping the Saudi and Pakistani channels open while the Houthis advance. The Araqchi calls on Thursday night follow the Hormuz pattern of coercion plus negotiation over controlled passage.
7. [HIGH] U.S. pressure is shifting from names to infrastructure. The presumption of denial for most Iran licenses, the Operation Economic Outcast designations, and the bank designation promised for Monday target payment plumbing, which remains Iran’s weakest link.
8. [MODERATE] Ali al-Taher will draw a rhetorical and proxy-front response from Iran in the near term, and a direct Iranian strike is unlikely. There was no official Tehran statement by Friday morning, Israel has signaled the price of a response, and the ridge has reopened the domestic fight between supporters of the memorandum and hardliners.
9. [MODERATE] Domestic fuel and price stress is the political trigger to watch, and it is not yet a protest wave. Third-tier gasoline at 10,000 tomans and visible police and Basij deployments in several cities are credible, while the Isfahan-wide IRGC claim is unverified and no source shows a nationwide movement.

What to Watch

• Confirmation or denial from Riyadh, or independent satellite imagery, on the reported East-West pipeline fire, and any change in Yanbu loading rates or Saudi crude output.
• Whether Ansar Allah consolidates Zuqar and Greater Hanish, moves on Dhubab and Perim, and whether the Houthi shipping ban is widened beyond Saudi vessels.
• Any Iranian official statement from the Foreign Ministry, the IRGC, or the Leader’s office on the Ali al-Taher demolition, and any language linking the ridge to a specific Iranian obligation or response.
• Hardline attacks on Qalibaf or the negotiating track that use Ali al-Taher as the argument, any Tasnim or Majlis rebuttal, and confirmation or denial of the reported 60-day extension of the memorandum.
• Any Hezbollah statement by Naim Qassem, Mohammad Raad, or Hassan Fadlallah defining retaliation, and any shift in Al-Manar or Al-Ahed language from condemnation to target categories or timing.
• The identity of the bank designated on Monday, whether it sits inside a settlement channel Iran still uses, and any Iranian countermeasure on currency allocation.
• A formal Iranian restricted-zone map, transit-ban legislation, or a detention or enforcement incident in Hormuz, and any corroboration of the IRGC claim to have destroyed a U.S. vessel.
• Movement in Iran from Non-Proliferation Treaty warning rhetoric to legislative or executive steps, and any U.S. or Israeli action at Pickaxe Mountain.
• Pentagon or Navy decisions on Bahrain reconstruction, relocation, Fifth Fleet command arrangements, or carrier logistics.
• Brent holding above $105, new LNG delays or a fresh jump in war-risk premiums, and the free-market dollar on the first trading day after the weekend.
• Any shift in domestic gasoline stress from queues and security presence to sustained protest, strikes, or road blockages, and any verified reporting on the Isfahan deployment.

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This post summarizes our daily intelligence report on the U.S.-Israel-Iran war, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Axis of Resistance for September 11, 2026, compiled from open-source material and current through 11:00 on the day of publication. No Iranian newspapers were published on Friday, so the economic baseline draws on the September 10 print cycle together with overnight Persian reporting, and toman conversions use the last free-market close of 235,975 tomans per dollar. Claims by parties to the conflict are labeled as claims unless independently confirmed, and single-source Israeli or Iranian press reports are labeled as such. The reported East-West pipeline fire, the Israeli warning relayed through Maariv, the IRGC claim to have destroyed a U.S. vessel, the Isfahan deployment claim, and the reported extension of the memorandum all remain unverified at the time of writing. For analysis and early warning only.