The Yemeni island of Perim is at the heart of an intense geopolitical conflict and fears of closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait

Arriving on the Yemeni island of Perim is like going back in time. Its barren landscape, made up of sand and rocks, looks like a land forgotten by time. But its location puts it at the heart of a very modern conflict.

Perim Island (also known as Mion Island) is located in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a geopolitical chokepoint that has gained extraordinary importance since US President Donald Trump's war with Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz.

To help keep global energy supplies flowing and prices down, Saudi Arabia shifted its oil exports from the Strait of Hormuz to the Red Sea.

But now, Yemen's Houthi rebels, Iran's most powerful proxies in the region, have begun an offensive that could enable them to seize control of Perim, giving them the ability to prevent ships from passing through this narrow gate of the Red Sea.

On a recent day, an honor guard of Yemeni forces stood patiently enduring the scorching heat of the sun, watching as a weathered officer extended his hand to help those arriving to the island off a rickety warboat. Among them was a CNN crew, who was given exclusive permission to visit this remote and dusty outpost.

It is likely that a scene like this, which evokes a bygone era, has been repeated here for centuries. The island's location, at the narrowest point in a strait with only 12 miles separating the Horn of Africa from the Arabian Peninsula, has made it a valuable target for empires and regional powers for generations.

Perim was once a coaling station for ships of the British Empire as they sailed to India, and its imperial past is still visible in its crumbling ruins.

Driving up a bumpy, rocky road to the highest point on the island, the officer, with one hand on the steering wheel of his rickety military truck, points to Eritrea and Djibouti across the water, on the African side of the strait. As a veteran of a brigade loyal to Yemen's internationally recognized government, he realizes that his mission, defending Perim Island, now carries far greater stakes and risks than it did before.

“It's become geopolitical now.”

For more than a decade, the civil war in Yemen seemed like just a distant regional conflict. But as fighting escalated and Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, launched attacks towards the Red Sea coast, this distinction began to fade.

Yemen, with Perim Island at its heart, is turning into another potential front in the confrontation between Washington and Tehran, and an indication that the repercussions of the war there are no longer limited to the country’s borders.

The Houthis already control the Yemeni capital, large parts of the northwest of the country, and most of the Red Sea coast north of the island.

If the lessons of history are any indication, Bab al-Mandab, the smaller twin of the Strait of Hormuz and now a vital alternative to it, may be the place where Iran, through its Houthi proxy, will intensify economic and political pressure on Trump in the next phase, which could lead to higher oil prices and harm the Republicans’ chances in the US midterm elections in November.

In an exclusive interview with CNN, Tariq Saleh, Vice President of the internationally recognized Yemeni government, said: “We told the world that this was an Iranian project, but no one listened to the Yemenis at the time... Now the matter has become geopolitical.”

Saleh, the nephew of ousted Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and a former ally of the Houthis, represents a rare case among the Yemeni political elite. He is the only leader and military commander still inside the country, while many others have fled.

He says that he survived several assassination attempts, and that Iran wants to kill him. His meetings are arranged in random places, in a short time, and end quickly.

Speaking to CNN from a tent on a remote Yemeni beach in late August, Saleh said he was not receiving any help from the United States, “just talk.”

He warned that if the Houthis took control of Perim Island and began to control the Bab al-Mandab Strait, “a massive international force (and naval fleets) would be needed” to expel them.

Even reaching Perim Island is a lesson in the dangers of this war, which in many aspects is characterized by the superiority of technology on Earth.

As the CNN team prepared to cross two miles from the mainland, warnings of an imminent Houthi drone attack forced the gunboat carrying the team to turn back.

In preparation for a possible attack, the gunner fired a shell from his rusty, heavy-caliber weapon.

"In one trench"

Yemen's civil war began in 2014, when Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and forced the internationally recognized government out of the country.

The following year, Saudi Arabia led a military campaign to expel the rebels. Iran has provided the Houthis with weapons and training, and exercises a degree of influence over the rebel group's decisions.

This led to the division of the country, with the Houthis controlling the capital and the northwest of the country, while the government and its allied factions control large parts of the south and east.

Some 22 million people, nearly half the population, still require humanitarian assistance today.

After the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza, the Houthis joined the conflict. They launched attacks on Israel in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, and targeted shipping traffic in the Red Sea.

The United States and Israel launched air strikes on the group, destroying key assets. The Trump administration designated the Houthis as a terrorist group in 2025.

The most recent Houthi attack on the Yemeni government began in July, leading to the collapse of a four-year tacit truce between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and drawing the Yemeni conflict into the broader war involving Iran.

In a rare exception to the restrictions it has imposed on Yemeni airspace since its intervention in 2015, Saudi Arabia allowed an Iranian passenger plane to land in Sanaa.

The plane, the first direct flight between Tehran and Sanaa in nearly a decade, then transported a Houthi delegation to participate in the funeral of Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader of Iran, who was killed along with several members of his family in the first US-Israeli strikes on February 28.

But when the plane returned 10 days later, Saudi Arabia refused to allow it to land in Sanaa, amid fears that it was also carrying members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and military equipment.

Saudi planes bombed the airport runway, forcing the plane to divert to the Yemeni coastal city of Hodeidah, which is under the control of the Houthis.

This incident became a turning point that led to the collapse of diplomatic efforts that had largely maintained the informal truce and stopped Houthi attacks on Saudi territory.

Against the backdrop of the collapse of the ceasefire between the United States and Iran, the Houthis responded by declaring a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia and threatening ships transporting Saudi exports through Bab al-Mandab.

They also launched missiles and drones at oil facilities, airports, and other civilian sites in the Kingdom.

The timing of the new Houthi attack may benefit Iran by increasing pressure on Trump.

Muhammad Al-Basha, a former media official in the Yemeni government and a political analyst based in Washington, D.C., described the relationship between Tehran and the Houthis as “not a relationship of dependency, but rather a close alliance and a complete partnership.”

However, observers caution against portraying the Houthis' recent intervention as merely implementing Iran's regional agenda.

“The Houthis needed a war to distract from internal problems,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, a researcher at the Chatham House think tank. “They wanted to prove they could engage in a fight that would force Saudi Arabia to come back to negotiate with them. Of course, if that would help an old ally like Iran, which at one point was their only ally, why wouldn’t they do that?”

He added that the Houthi attacks on Israel, and the weakening of Iran's other allies in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, along with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, raised the status of the Yemeni faction within the so-called axis of resistance, and the Houthis wanted to take advantage of their new position.

Sanaa officials did not respond to CNN's request for comment. Houthi leaders had confirmed in previous statements that their current attack inside and outside Yemen comes in response to "Saudi aggression and siege."

Strikes on the port and fishermen

Oil flows passing off the Perm have already declined sharply amid this offshore risk.

Three years ago, about 10% of global seaborne oil trade passed through Bab al-Mandab. Kpler data indicate that this volume has since been reduced by half, while an ongoing Houthi campaign may further choke this route.

Yemeni fishermen have also become victims of Houthi drone attacks.

Dozens of fishermen were evacuated from an island located north of Perim after a drone attack that killed and injured several people, according to Yemeni government officials.

As fishermen unloaded their catch from fragile fiberglass boats near a makeshift market on the beach recently, several of them stopped to speak to CNN reporters, expressing their dismay that the war was destroying their businesses.

One trader said that on normal days, “there are many ships at sea,” but “because of the Houthi attacks, there are no ships currently.”

Meanwhile, the children were having fun in the warm waters of the Red Sea. They seemed indifferent to their families' concerns, as they clamored to be photographed by visiting journalists.

But the picture that emerges here is of a country already war-weary, fragile and impoverished, being pushed further and further towards the breaking point.

A few miles up the coast, evidence of this is mounting.

The port of Mocha, the most prominent government-controlled port in the far north of the Red Sea coast, is suffering severe blows.

A few weeks ago, more than 25 Houthi missiles fell on the port, which extends over a wide area, while commercial ships were unloading their cargo, according to the port director, Abdul Malik Al-Sharabi.

In the water, partially sunken ships lie in unusually tilted positions, while on the concrete piers there are gaps deep enough to conceal a large dog. Piles of charred motorcycle bodies are stacked next to other piles of engines, parts of which have melted due to the heat.

The port director told CNN that 16 people were killed and 22 others injured that day, while six commercial ships sank and 14,000 motorcycles were lost.

He said that the Houthis want to destroy the economy.

Al-Sharabi added: “The port had a major role in development and trade. This attack aims to harm this development and stop services.”

Over the past year, the Houthis have repeatedly launched attacks on targets more than a thousand miles away, all the way to Israel.

They claim to possess hypersonic missiles, as well as an arsenal that includes long-range, low-flying anti-ship missiles designed to evade radars.

They also possess surface-to-air missiles capable of shooting down American drones flying at high altitudes and threatening manned aircraft.

"High price in the future"

The intensity of fighting between government forces and the Houthis is escalating on the battle fronts in Yemen. Government forces are using new quadcopter drones that operate with a first-person view (FPV) system to attack camouflaged Houthi fortifications and hideouts.

Saleh told CNN: “Our forces have developed thanks to training and new resources such as drones.”

But officials say that for every step the government takes, Iran tries to keep the Houthis one step ahead.

A trip, in a vehicle with tinted windows, to a high-security warehouse in a secret location provided a glimpse into this challenge, and into what the government describes as evidence of the scale of Iranian support for the Houthis, including providing them with weapons capable of threatening the movement of oil tankers in the Red Sea.

Abdel Nasser Al-Mamlouh, director of military media for Tariq Saleh’s so-called “National Resistance,” accompanied the CNN team to review what he described as a shipment of Iranian-made weapons that had been confiscated before smugglers could deliver them to the Houthis.

The shipment included massive 18-foot missiles, complex long-range radar systems, drone engines, optical equipment, and even bullets hidden inside a truck battery.

Al-Mamlouh said everything was camouflaged as commercial equipment to avoid detection.

He acknowledged that what they seized was only a small part of the quantities believed to have reached the Houthis.

He said that the smugglers "admitted that before this shipment, they smuggled 11 shipments similar in size and content," with a total of 750 tons.

He warned that if the Houthis captured Perim and established a foothold in Bab al-Mandab, they would no longer need long-range weapons to threaten shipping traffic.

He said: "They will plant mines in the strait, just as (Iran) did in Hormuz."

Along the part of the Red Sea coast controlled by the Yemeni government, officials have little doubt that their civil war has become part of something much larger.

“(We) are fighting this war on behalf of the Arab world and the international community,” Al-Mamlouh said.

Before he rushed away from his tent on the beach, Tariq Saleh was asked what would happen if American support never arrived.

He replied: “We will pay a heavy price in the future” for removing the Houthis, warning that “the American army, the international community, and the global trade movement” will pay the same price.