What Is Shipped Through the Red Sea & the Bab al-Mandab Strait?

The Bab al-Mandab can hit a wider chunk of the global economy being positioned at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, which means it helps feed the Suez route. If trouble flares there, the hardship isn’t limited to crude cargoes. It can hit containers, retail inventory, industrial inputs, grains, fuels, and freight schedules across Europe, Asia, and parts of Africa.

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Where is Bab al-Mandab?

Bab al-Mandab sits between Yemen on one side and Djibouti and Eritrea on the other, linking the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea to the Red Sea. In plain terms, it is the front door to the Suez Canal from the south. Cargo moving between Asia and Europe through Suez has to get through Bab al-Mandab first. The strait is about 18 miles, or 29 km, wide at its narrowest point, which helps explain why disruptions there can spread fast through shipping markets.

What’s shipped through it?

Much more than oil. The energy side is easy to see first. EIA says the Suez Canal, SUMED pipeline, and Bab el-Mandeb together handled about 12% of seaborne-traded oil in the first half of 2023, plus about 8% of global LNG trade. That makes the corridor a major route for crude oil, condensate, refined fuels, and some LNG linked to Gulf exports moving toward Europe and North America, along with some southbound energy trade moving toward Asia.

The freight side is what makes Bab al-Mandab especially interesting relative to Hormuz. The World Bank says the Red Sea carries about 30% of world container traffic. So Bab al-Mandab is tied to containerized consumer goods, apparel, electronics, machinery, industrial parts, chemicals, and the kind of retail inventory that fills shelves far from the region itself. Consumer goods, clothing, and chemicals are among the sectors most exposed to Suez route disruption (Reuters, S&P Global).

There’s also bulk cargo. Reuters reports during the Red Sea shipping crisis that grain cargoes were being diverted away from the route in growing numbers, and traders said about 7 million metric tons of grain normally transit the Suez Canal into the Red Sea each month. This development touches food supply chains and raw-material flows.

Commodity	Normal Volume (pre-2023)	Share of Global Trade	2025 Status	Blockade Impact
Crude oil and petroleum products	~6–7 million barrels/day	~12% of seaborne oil	Down ~50% by mid-2024; averaging 4.2 mb/d in H1 2025	Removes 4+ mb/d from accessible markets with no short-term substitute
Liquefied natural gas (LNG)	~8% of worldwide LNG trade	8% of global LNG	Fell to zero by Feb 2024; carriers fully rerouted around Africa	No LNG flowing; Qatar (Europe’s 2nd-largest supplier) already halted all transits
Container shipping	~25% of global container trade	15% of all seaborne trade; 30% of container traffic	Down sharply; most major carriers rerouted	Severe disruption to Asia-Europe consumer goods corridor
Dry bulk (grain, coal, metals)	Hundreds of millions of tonnes annually	~19% of seaborne wheat; large shares of coal and corn	Coal and corn down significantly; wheat resilient and slightly up	Supply delays across food, steel, and energy raw material chains
Israel-bound trade	~30% of Israel’s total imports	N/A	Ongoing vulnerability; not yet explicitly targeted in 2026	Direct lever of economic warfare against Israel

Strait of Hormuz Vs Bab al-Mandab Strait

Aspect	Bab al-Mandab	Strait of Hormuz
Location	Between Yemen and the Horn of Africa	Between Iran/Oman and the Arabian Peninsula
Width at narrowest	29 km (18 miles)	54 km (33 miles)
Who controls the threat	Houthi rebels (non-state actor, Iran proxy)	Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
Oil chokepoint rank	3rd globally	1st globally
Oil volume (pre-disruption)	~6–7 million barrels/day	~20–21 million barrels/day
Share of global seaborne oil	~12%	~20–22%
LNG significance	~8% of global LNG trade	~20% of global LNG trade
Current status (March 2026)	Open but under active threat; Houthis now in the war	Partially closed; Iran using Larak Island as “toll booth”
Alternative bypass	Cape of Good Hope (+7,000–10,000 km)	Saudi East-West Pipeline + UAE pipeline (~2.6 mb/d capacity)
2026 bypass being used	Saudi Yanbu exports tripled to ~4 mb/d (now also at risk)	East-West Pipeline running near capacity
Historical blockade	Yes (1973 Yom Kippur War)	Yes (threatened repeatedly; never fully closed until 2026)

Ships leaving the Persian Gulf exit through Hormuz, cross the Arabian Sea, enter the Gulf of Aden, pass through the Bab al-Mandab into the Red Sea, and continue toward the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. Block both ends and the entire corridor ceases to function.

With Hormuz disrupted, Saudi Arabia redirected crude through its East-West Pipeline to Yanbu, with exports from that port tripling to a record high of around 4 million barrels per day, according to Rystad Energy. But Yanbu sits inside the Red Sea, and approximately 30 tankers near the port are estimated to be within Houthi strike range. That backup route would be directly exposed in a blockade.

The combined disruption would remove 30 percent or more of the world’s accessible seaborne oil supply from the market at once. The International Energy Agency has described the Hormuz closure as “the worst disruption in the history of the oil market.” Adding the Bab al-Mandab to that picture would push oil prices, logistics costs, and inflationary pressure to levels with no recent precedent.

Ibrahim Jalal, a senior researcher on Yemen and the Gulf, told Al Jazeera: “This is exactly the theatre that Iran has been preparing for from what we have seen in the past few years with the Houthis.”

Could They Do It?

At least partially, and enough to make an impact. The Bab al-Mandab has been weaponised before. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Egyptian ships coordinated with South Yemeni forces to blockade oil tankers en route to Israel. The episode was brief but it demonstrated a vulnerability that has preoccupied naval planners ever since.

What’s different in 2026 is the sophistication of the threat. Where 1973-era interdiction required naval vessels, the Houthis have shown they can threaten the world’s largest tankers with land-based drones and missiles costing a fraction of the ships they target. Area-denial warfare, once the preserve of nation-states with blue-water navies, has been mastered by an armed movement operating from the mountains of Yemen.

The Houthis control most of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, including the port of Hodeidah, giving them firing positions that dominate the strait’s approaches. Their arsenal includes anti-ship ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and armed drones, the same weapons that forced the world’s largest shipping companies to abandon the Red Sea corridor for 18 months. At just 29 kilometres across at its narrowest point, the Bab al-Mandab is an extremely confined space for a fully laden container ship to sail under fire.

The Soufan Center recently assessed a full maritime blockade as “possible,” noting the Houthis are “arguably the least damaged” member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance. Yemen expert Nadwa Al-Dawsari of the Middle East Institute told journalists: “I think the Houthis will intervene at some point.”

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