Posted on 09/10/2026 11:42:10 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis seized control of the historic port city of Mocha on Thursday, four Yemeni government military sources said, gaining further leverage over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the world’s most important shipping routes.
The Houthis were launching attacks on the strategic Red Sea islands of Hanish, the government sources told Reuters. Government forces and their allies were relocating south to Dhubab, which sits directly on the strait, across from the island of Perim.
Control of Dhubab and the island is key to gaining hold of the strait, they said.
There has been an escalation in fighting in recent days between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni allies in the internationally backed government, creating a second theater of war in the Iran conflict that threatens global energy supplies.
In 2014, the Houthis seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa, driving the internationally recognized government south towards Aden.
Fearful of growing Iranian influence in Yemen and chaos on its borders, Saudi Arabia led a military intervention against the Houthis in 2015, to dislodge the group and restore the government.
The resulting civil war triggered one of the world’s biggest humanitarian crises and led to years of bitter fighting and devastating airstrikes by Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, including the United Arab Emirates.
A UN-brokered truce in Yemen in 2022 largely halted years of war but has not led to a lasting settlement, with the latest fighting threatening a return to full-scale conflict.
(Excerpt) Read more at timesofisrael.com ...
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
I don’t understand why we just don’t eliminate the Houthis. Or at least have Bibi do it.
So tired of this part of the world nuke it😎
Not good.
Just temporary. I don’t know what sources of revenue they have, but it’s no longer the IRGC.
Livin’ La Vida Loca!
Are you over Mocha Grande?
“Houthis...chokehold on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”
All that would mean is that almost all Saudi Red Sea port oil would have to be sold to Europe.
Oil prices in Europe would fall.
Greta would be even more unhappy.
“I don’t understand why we just don’t eliminate the Houthis. Or at least have Bibi do it.”
I think it’s a separate the chaff from the wheat issue. The Houthis are interwoven amongst lots of people who are either not Houthis or who are Houthis but not even remotely involved with their movement. So, eliminating the threat would involve killing lots and lots of other people...meaning genocide. That might cause a lot of blowback from much of the world and result in all kinds of legal issues that it’s a better not to have on you resume.
Another issue is that similar to Iran, their launch sites and storage is either under such good cover it’s hard to find and hit. Or the sites are too small and numerous to justify the effort required to neutralize them. They are probably also interwoven with schools, nurseries and learing centers.
There is no simple, easy solution or someone would have tried it already. On the other hand, if the two straits are cut off for the foreseeable future, rest assured, the world will come up with ways to eliminate the need to use them. It will take time and money, but the type of pressure being applied has a definite lifespan that will eventually run out.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4394923/posts
"In one of the most underreported happenings in the Persian Gulf conflict, Yemen’s internationally recognized government and allied militias have inflicted a series of ground setbacks on Iran-backed Houthi forces over the past month. These defeats are reversing parts of a late-summer Houthi push toward the Red Sea undertaken as part of the Iranian strategy of widening its conflict with the U.S. The Yemeni government is sufficiently confident in the new fronts that they now describe this as the start of a campaign to take the Houthi capital of Sanaa."
Amusing. The 9/11 Saudis despite their enormous wealth and the huge accumulation of the latest American made military equipment cannot control the Houthis in adjacent Yemen. When they sent their high performance aircraft to bomb the Houthis, their pilots released their bombs at an altitude of 15,000 feet. Safe for them but wildly inaccurate and ineffective. Of course the Saudis bestowed decorations and awards on these heroic pilots.
What western Christians and Jews still deli to understand is that the terrorists and their regimes, gangs, enablers, and financiers need to be eliminated. Not just “taught a lesson” or appeased or negotiated with.
Don’t we still have stockpiles of napalm and chemical weapons? If they are on the coastline, there’s our target. Give the bombs to the Saudis and let them unleash hell on Earth.
I also saw the conflicting report, so could this be a case of the Yemini’s taking the critical high ground, forcing the weakened Houthis to the sea ?....and then to the bottom of the sea.
I don’t know streiff’s sources vs. this Times of Israel, which, iirc, is liberal with suspect motivations
enlist Saudi Arabia and Israel to take care of this pronto.
Who do they think they are, Iran?
“...the terrorists and their regimes, gangs, enablers, and financiers need to be eliminated...”
Only the US has the capacity to wage the ground war that would be necessary to accomplish that, and we signaled early on that we haven’t the stomach to do so.
HELLO NATO…….
Mokha doesn’t even show up on Apple Maps and appears to be a nothing burger
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.