The Bab al-Mandab is the strait where the Horn of Africa almost meets the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula, about nine miles of water across from Djibouti — a crossing John Kiriakou made on his last trip to Yemen in 2011.[1]
Why it matters
Ships that would otherwise transit the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandab must, if the strait closes, go all the way around Africa — thirty days added to the trip and billions of gallons of fuel. Kiriakou’s assessment of the consequence is unqualified: “we’re talking about the entire planet going into a recession and having to fight what’s going to be out of control inflation.”[2][3]
The American interest
When the United States maintained that it had no national interests in Yemen, Kiriakou argued the opposite in a 2010 debate on Capitol Hill against Senator Susan Collins: the interests were counterterrorism, counter-piracy, and open trade through the Bab al-Mandab.[4][5] Collins disagreed. The next day John Kerry, then his boss on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, asked whether he had debated her; Kiriakou said he had, and “if I may say so, I kicked her ass.” Kerry did not think that was funny and told him never to do it again.[5][6]
2026
The Houthi blockade declaration of July 2026 made the chokepoint the second front of the Iran war, alongside the Strait of Hormuz, and raised the prospect of Israeli F-35 strikes flown from Somaliland.[7][8]