Iran-backed Houthi rebels seized full control of the Red Sea port city of Mokha on Thursday after government-aligned forces withdrew, a battlefield gain that the United Nations says has pushed Yemen closer to all-out war than at any point since a truce took hold four years ago.
The takeover, confirmed separately by Houthi officials and Yemen's internationally recognized government, marks the rebels' largest territorial advance since the 2022 UN-brokered truce froze the front lines of a civil war that has killed well over 150,000 people since 2014. Government-aligned units, including the National Resistance forces of Tareq Saleh, vice chairman of Yemen's Presidential Leadership Council, said their troops had taken casualties over several days of Houthi assaults before pulling back; Saleh's forces disputed that the withdrawal was permanent, saying they were regrouping to retake the city.
A chokepoint for global trade
Mokha sits roughly 50 miles from the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden through which about 12 percent of global shipping traffic normally passes. Traffic through the strait has already fallen by an estimated 60 percent since the Houthis began firing on commercial vessels in late 2023 in what they cast as solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, driving many carriers to divert around the southern tip of Africa at significant cost and delay.
Control of Mokha's port and coastline gives the Houthis a new forward position from which to threaten that traffic directly, according to analysts tracking the conflict. It also hands Iran, which arms and trains the Houthi movement, additional leverage as it wages a separate, monthslong war with the United States — a conflict President Trump said this week he expects to end "immediately after" the November 3 midterm elections.
UN warns of a "more dangerous phase"
Hans Grundberg, the UN special envoy for Yemen, told the Security Council on Thursday that the country "faces a more serious risk of return to large-scale conflict than at any point since" the 2022 truce, which had cut war-related deaths by roughly 90 percent in its first six months and held, in patchwork form, ever since.
I am deeply concerned by the recent attacks by Ansar Allah on Mokha, which reportedly resulted in civilian and military casualties and caused damage to infrastructure, including at the port.
Hans Grundberg, UN Special Envoy for Yemen
Grundberg called on "all parties" to exercise "maximum restraint" and to work with his office on de-escalation measures, warning that further erosion of the truce's gains could unravel four years of relative calm. Yemeni Prime Minister Shaya Al-Zindani had separately condemned earlier Houthi strikes on ports and civilian infrastructure in government-held territory as attacks spread beyond the immediate front line in recent weeks.
The city carries symbolic as well as strategic weight: Mokha's harbor gave its name to "mocha" coffee, which was exported from the port to Europe for centuries before Yemen's coffee trade declined and, more recently, before more than a decade of war left the country facing what aid agencies have long called one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. Its fall to the Houthis, even if contested, underscores how thoroughly the front lines that once looked frozen under the 2022 truce have begun to move again this year.
What happens next
Government-aligned commanders have signaled they intend to try to retake Mokha, raising the prospect of further clashes in the city and along the coastal approach to the strait. Shipping insurers and Red Sea carriers are watching closely for any sign the Houthis will use their new position to resume or expand attacks on commercial vessels, which could deepen the rerouting already reshaping global freight costs. The Security Council session produced no formal resolution, and diplomats said Grundberg's office was seeking urgent contact with both sides to prevent the localized fighting from hardening into a broader collapse of the truce.
