Houthis Announce BLOCKADE Of Red Sea! Saudi Oil CUT OFF!

[00:00:00]Every good soldier knows that you should always have a plan B, but sometimes plan B also gets blocked. What do you do then? Well, that's the problem facing the White House and Saudi Arabia as the Iran war is expanding and now the plan B to get Saudi oil out of the Gulf seems like it's gone up in smoke. But, don't worry, guys. El Presidente has a plan to take care of everything and it's going great. Let's take a look. So, the Houthis, now you might remember, Houthis are part of Iranian proxy groups and you can see this impressive-looking ragtag bunch. This is the Houthis and they are Iranian-equipped rebels that are in a civil war within Yemen. Yemen has been a civil war for a long time. The Houthis are the unrecognized government, whereas the recognized government is backed by Saudi Arabia and other major Middle Eastern powers.

[00:01:00]This is not really new by any stretch, but the Houthis have been on the sidelines of this entire conflict. But, if their name sounds familiar, it's because in 2025, shortly after taking power, the Houthis actually blocked the Red Sea and they did so for I think about 45 days. The United States in turn launched a significant strike campaign, the details of which were actually tweeted, or sorry, texted directly to a reporter at The Atlantic. Uh now, normally this would result in a Secretary of Defense uh be resigning given that he literally texted a reporter the details, but in this administration incompetence doesn't get you resigned, only uh disloyalty. So, the Houthis though uh have mysteriously not closed the Red Sea in part, I think, because the the Iranians wanted to have a trump card, right? You don't what you want to never do is run out of new ways to sort of new levers, new carrots and sticks, right?

[00:02:09]It's like any good carrot and stick system. If you if the donkey catches the carrot, they're not going to continue to walk towards it. And so, similarly, if you break the stick hitting the donkey, it no longer is effective. And so, that was kind of the Iranian strategy with the Houthis to say, "Listen, they're a stick and we haven't swung them yet." Well, now the Iranians are saying, "You had your chance. We're going to start swinging sticks." So, the Houthis have announced that they are going to be blocking the the uh a Saudi oil from leaving through the Red Sea. And obviously, based on kind of this thing here, I mean, there's a number of other countries that can pass through the Red Sea, but none of them really ship oil. Uh again, you might have some traffic going through the Suez Canal, but that's about it.

[00:02:59]And the Houthis, again, this isn't a game changer, but remember, the Suez Canal is very narrow. That's sort of definitional to how the Suez works. It's so narrow that, again, only a limited number of ships can pass through. A lot more traffic passes into the Indian Ocean and sails there.

[00:03:15]This is a huge problem then that the Houthis are like, "Listen, we are not going to permit Saudi oil to pass through." The Houthis said they would impose a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia, which is effectively opening a new front in the war against Iran, threatening global energy supplies beyond just the the Persian Gulf.

[00:03:35]The Houthis declared that the maritime embargo was, quote, "Based on the equation of an eye for an eye." Maybe it sounds slicker in Arabic. Uh the end quote, "The right of our great people to respond to the blockade with a blockade and to all escalation with escalation."

[00:03:48]That never ends badly.

[00:03:50]The Houthis expressed complete readiness for all options and warned that any foolish Saudi act would be met with comprehensive and decisive response.

[00:03:56]Now, I want to bear in mind that the Houthis, remember, I make fun of them as being a ragtag militia, but you only have to be good enough to do the job.

[00:04:04]That's sort of the the point here. And the Iranians do get transfer significant small arms, but heavier small arms including things like anti-ship weapons to the Houthis and train them to operate them. And so, the Houthis, while they look like kind of a ragtag bunch and they sort of are, they are operating a functional government that does control significant portions of Yemen. They are able to train operators in some of these anti-ship technologies, and they are able to block parts of the Red Sea.

[00:04:37]That's one of the reasons why the US felt they needed to strike the Houthis in a 45-day campaign uh last year.

[00:04:44]Now, it should have been we now realize it was probably a clue that this campaign didn't actually degrade the Houthis' ability to do anything, and that it's now even less likely because, frankly, the US air campaign is the only thing that can really put the hurt on the Houthis, that at least that's been willing to be deployed. The Saudi military really They're not They're not They're not sending their best here.

[00:05:10]They're not going to go into Yemen and really start to mop up the floor.

[00:05:14]So, how do you deal with the Houthis?

[00:05:16]Remains to be seen.

[00:05:18]There's not a lot of great options.

[00:05:21]But, what does this mean for the oil markets? Fun fact, nothing good. You can see Brent crude currently trading at almost $92 a or $92 per barrel. This is again, back up to the highs during the height of the Iran war, which is ongoing, right? But, again, you're seeing March, April, May. You're seeing these hundred-dollar-plus price points, and it's climbing right back up there, right? As people start to realize this isn't actually a joke. This is for real seas.

[00:05:52]And it's a significant problem because remember the US has been expanding part of its strategic petroleum reserve.

[00:06:00]Other countries have been drawing down their petroleum reserves including China. So the globe's ability to weather these kind of shocks is diminished, right? And it is ground down and continues to grind down.

[00:06:13]And so the idea that again, you're talking about a massive like something like a 25% increase in oil in the span of about 17 days.

[00:06:23]That's a that's a that's bad news, guys.

[00:06:26]That is very bad news.

[00:06:28]Um but El Presidente, he's got a plan, guys.

[00:06:32]Uh not the plan that he abandoned where he was going to charge fees. Not the plan to eliminate Iran's air defenses and missile and drone capabilities, which was supposed to have already happened that the president said had happened repeatedly actually.

[00:06:45]But no, no, no, not those plans. The new plan is a great one. Okay? The new plan is that he's going to maybe he said quote, "We'll take care of it." Refer referencing last year's 46-day strike campaign saying that well, you know, we tried it last year and it didn't defeat the Houthis, but maybe this year we'll take them out. So that's good. Insanity is the definition of doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And why don't we try bombing them? Seems to be the the only thing we're relying on. But don't worry, there's another part to the plan. Part B is that the IDF is going to withdraw from what they call pilot zones in southern Lebanon, which will be handed over to the Lebanese army.

[00:07:25]Uh And Trump claims that they get along very well. I think he means the Lebanese army and the IDF. And Lebanese forces have moved into one pilot zone, but actually reported that the IDF shot at them. So it's not a it's not a great start. Let's take a look here at the map. We'll try to show you guys where these pilot zones are taking place. So, these pilot zones are taking place only at kind of this like apex of the region. You can still see that law basically there's still this very large deep looks like about a 10 km buffer where the IDF is occupying Hezbollah or are occupying sorry, excuse me, or occupying southern Lebanon in order to drive out Hezbollah.

[00:08:07]Again, historically when the Israeli military occupied somewhere, it almost never gives it back and what almost always happens is that Israeli settlers move in and then the Israeli settlers say, "Man, you why are we so close to this hostile country?" And the IDF goes, "Man, we should protect these settlers from these hostile hostile natives." And then they invade even more of the country. So, right now these pilot zones though are not going great, right? One is right here. You notice that this is actually a region that is north of the river. This was previously designated as kind of a not the first no-go zone. The first no-go zone was this was this trend in in in yellow, I think. But the second no-go zone for the southern Lebanese population.

[00:08:50]Um No, I'm sorry. I have it wrong. This is the first no-go line. I can't even keep track of these things, man. And so Um it always it changes every year. So, sorry, every week.

[00:09:03]Now, the Lebanese army says they begin to enter Zawtar al-Gharbiya in southern Lebanon and that it sounds like there were some explosions, but the um uh the the Lebanese army says that it's actually part of exploding detonating unexploded ordinance that was dropped by the IDF. And again, this raised a bunch of its own questions like does the IDF not like why are they occupying an area with uh like why are they occupying an with a bunch of um and not exploding unexploded ordinance?

[00:09:42]It's confusing. But you can see that the fighting is still significant along basically the rest of occupied Lebanon and there's no indication that this is slowing down and calling these pilot zones is itself like being pretty generous.

[00:09:58]Some of these areas actually are not in Israeli occupied territory.

[00:10:03]So so there's no withdrawal from southern Lebanon. This is areas that the Israeli military hasn't even gone into.

[00:10:10]This plan doesn't make any sense. This plan is again as we talked about it just transparently not going to happen.

[00:10:16]Again, the the Israelis are very clear that they really have very little faith in the Lebanese army and its ability to stop Hezbollah. It doesn't really exert control here in this in this region. So we're not seeing a a a There's not really a route to a real victory and a real resolution to any of this.

[00:10:39]So what does this mean for you guys?

[00:10:41]What does it mean for us?

[00:10:43]Gas is going to get worse.

[00:10:45]Right? And a lot of the optimists are going to be absolutely in tears, absolutely coping.

[00:10:52]Anyway, guys we appreciate you. Become a member at Combat Vet News if you want access to exclusive videos including some of the missile strikes that have hit the base in Jordan. We took a look at those and had some comments about the state of US force protection as well as Ukraine videos and more stuff YouTube would never let me show you. Plus it's the best way to support the channel, support me and the team, keep us doing this every single day 7 days a week for you guys.

[00:11:16]A huge thank you to everybody and we'll see you over there. Become a member, the link is in the description. Thanks to Chris, Charles, Kevin, Brent, Andreas, Jim, John, CBC, Leones, Gabriel, Brennan, Alfred, Peter and all the tentative folks. We'll see you guys.

[00:11:26]Cheers.