SANAA – The Houthi-run Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center said Friday that its transit service for vessels at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait was “voluntary and free of charge,” formally denying reports that Yemen’s Iran-aligned movement was designing a toll structure for one of the world’s most critical shipping passages.
The denial came eight days after Reuters reported that the Houthis were developing a fee structure for ships moving through the strait. That proposal was described by Reuters’ sources as having been discussed during a Houthi delegation visit to Tehran, where Iranian advisers helped outline a regulatory framework. The HOCC statement on Friday said anyone “demanding payment for passage did not represent Yemen” and urged shipping companies not to pay unauthorized parties.
The contradiction between the report and the denial runs through the statements of Houthi officials themselves. Yemen’s foreign minister-designate Afrah al-Zouba had publicly described the initiative as an attempt to “copy the Iranian model,” a reference to Tehran’s approach in the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has used the threat of vessel seizure to enforce transit rules and extract both economic revenue and political concessions. A foreign minister-designate endorsing a plan publicly, and the group’s coordination center denying the plan exists, leaves ship operators with no reliable framework for what the Houthis actually intend.
Saudi Arabia announced a 14-nation maritime coalition this week to protect freedom of navigation through the Bab al-Mandeb, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden. The coalition’s formation was reported before the Houthi denial, suggesting Riyadh viewed the Reuters report as credible enough to mobilize a multilateral response before the Houthis publicly walked back the scheme.
The Bab al-Mandeb connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and measures roughly 30 kilometers across at its narrowest point. Any vessel moving between Asia and Europe via the Suez Canal must transit the strait, making it a chokepoint with no convenient alternative short of the weeks-long detour around southern Africa. According to Al Jazeera, the Saudi coalition’s mandate covers navigation through the strait, the broader Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden.
The Houthis began targeting commercial shipping in late 2023, linking their campaign to the conflict in Gaza. The Gaza connection has been the group’s stated justification for every missile and drone strike against commercial vessels since then, positioning the Houthis as the Red Sea enforcement arm of a pro-Palestinian axis. The fee proposal, had it materialized, would have separated that political justification from a straightforward economic logic, transforming the group’s Red Sea presence from resistance to rent-collection.
A ceasefire in October paused some of the group’s Red Sea operations. The HOCC was created in part to manage which vessels could transit the strait with reduced risk of attack. Friday’s statement positioned that coordination role as a free service rather than the foundation for a toll regime.
Iran’s model in the Hormuz, which the foreign minister-designate held up as a blueprint, was not built overnight. Tehran expanded its leverage in the strait incrementally, using seizures and the threat of closure to generate both revenue and bargaining chips in diplomatic negotiations. The IRGC’s attack on oil tankers under US air escort in the Strait of Hormuz this week reinforced how far Tehran has developed that playbook, and how directly the Houthis would have been following it had the toll scheme materialized.
The question the HOCC statement leaves unresolved is who was making the unauthorized payment demands the body warned against. A denial that implicitly acknowledges others are collecting fees in Yemen’s name at Bab al-Mandeb suggests the Houthi administrative structure is either more fragmented than their public communications imply, or the denial is strategic cover while the underlying operation continues under different authorization.
Shipping insurers have treated Red Sea transit as elevated risk since the Houthi campaign began. War-risk premiums for voyages through the strait remained elevated even after the ceasefire, and rose again when Reuters reported the toll proposal the week before. Whether the HOCC denial is sufficient to bring those premiums down is a question insurers will price themselves, based on vessel tracking data and operational patterns rather than statements from Sanaa.
The 14-nation Saudi coalition has not yet stated what enforcement mechanisms it intends to deploy. A coalition designed to protect free passage is a different instrument from one designed to challenge an explicit toll system, and the Houthi denial has formally removed the latter as a stated target before the coalition’s rules of engagement are public.
The original Houthi fee proposal, as reported by Reuters, envisioned a system modeled on Iranian toll structures that could convert the group’s military presence at Bab al-Mandeb into a permanent financial institution. Whether that system has been abandoned, delayed, or simply moved into a phase that requires less public visibility is what remains unanswered, and what ship operators and their insurers cannot yet price.
