The Bab el-Mandeb Strait has emerged as a critical geopolitical flashpoint, with Houthi and Iranian activities threatening global trade, energy, and digital infrastructure. As the "Gate of Grief" handles 10% of global seaborne oil and nearly 20% of internet traffic, disruptions force costly rerouting around Africa. For India, whose trade is 95% sea-based, this instability poses a severe macroeconomic risk. The India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) offers a vital strategic hedge. By integrating multimodal land-and-sea routes, IMEC provides a resilient alternative that bypasses vulnerable maritime chokepoints.
Amid the shifting geopolitical landscape, escalating tensions in West Asia, and disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz, Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf's remarks on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have added to the cauldron of escalating tensions in the region.
As per the X handle of Ghalibaf, he would ask: “What share of global oil, LNG, wheat, rice, and fertilizer shipments transits the Bab el- Mandeb Strait? Which countries and companies account for the highest transit volumes through the strait?”. According to strategic analysts, Ghalibaf’s queries may not be as innocent as one would expect.
As developments in the region suggest, if a situation like the Strait of Hormuz were to emerge at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it would lead to severe economic disruptions and strain supply chains and energy flows.
This shift in attention towards another critical strait in the region comes after the Houthis, backed by Iran in Yemen, launched ballistic missiles at Israel. Since the US-Israeli war on Iran began on February 28, Iran has now targeted the USA’s Gulf Arab allies, weaponising the Strait of Hormuz and sending the world into an energy shock. Meanwhile, in southern Lebanon, Israel is in a fight with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group.
Analysts see the official entry of Houthis in the ongoing war as a potential risk to the vital maritime chokepoint—Bab el-Mandeb—connecting Asia, Africa, and Europe.
Geography, Strategy, and Economic Pulse of Bab El Mandeb
About 32 kilometers (20 miles) wide and with an average depth of 150 meters, the Mandeb Strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, between Yemen and Djibouti. It is the only entry point to the Red Sea from the Indian Ocean, connecting it to the Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal. In Arabic, it translates to ‘Gate of grief’ or ‘Gate of tears' and is the critical artery that carries millions of barrels of oil, liquefied natural gas
(LNG), and container cargo each day. It is also one of the world’s most crucial energy choke points.
It gains its strategic importance from being the only maritime link between Europe and Asia, passing through the Suez Canal. It is cited as the third-busiest oil chokepoint in the world, after the Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca, managing around one-tenth of global seaborne oil trade. If it were to witness the same fate as the Strait of Hormuz during the ongoing crisis, tankers from the Persian Gulf would be forced to divert around the Cape of Good Hope, adding 10 to 14 days to delivery schedules, raising shipping costs and insurance premiums.
The immediate concern that the world is grappling with is the economic dimension of this strait. Perhaps most vital in the digital age is the 'invisible' economy: the seabed of the Bab el-Mandeb hosts a dense network of subsea fiber-optic cables that transmit an estimated 17% to 20% of the world’s internet traffic, making a physical disruption in these waters a direct threat to global digital connectivity and financial markets.
Analysts suggest that during the 2021 Ever Given Suez blockage, the cost was billions of dollars per day, highlighting how closing the Bab el-Mandeb would have macroeconomic ripple effects. In terms of maritime security and regional stability, the strait has become surrounded by conflict-affected states like Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea, and its proximity to the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden exposes it to Houthi-led attacks, piracy, and regional power competition among Iran, Gulf states, China, the US, and India.
India’s Exposure amid Escalating Bab el-Mandeb and Hormuz Crises
Amid the escalating tension, the speculations find a ground in the fact that Houthis, earlier during Israel's war on Gaza, blocked the Bab el-Mandeb, turning it into a high-risk zone, forcing many ships to avoid the Red Sea Suez route. This led insurers to refuse or raise premiums for voyages through the area, significantly reducing traffic.
A disruption of this maritime chokepoint in the western Indian Ocean region will affect India on multiple fronts, like trade, energy, and macroeconomic stability. It is because around 95% of India’s trade by volume moves by sea, and a large share of exports to Europe and North Africa passes through the Suez Canal and Bab el Mandeb route.
During the 36th extraordinary session of the IMO council in London on 18-19 March 2026, India’s ambassador to the UK highlighted New Delhi's commitment to maritime security, freedom of navigation, and the safety of all seafarers.
He added, “At present, 24 Indian-flagged vessels are operating in the Persian Gulf region, including 22 vessels west of the Strait of Hormuz with 611 Indian seafarers on board and two vessels east of the Strait of Hormuz, with 47 seafarers on board.”
IMEC as a Strategic Hedge
The impact of the blockade by the Houthis in the wake of the Gaza war, India managed the trade and energy flows through a mix of rerouting, cost absorption, naval signalling and contingency planning. India adopted a calibrated approach by not explicitly joining the US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian, but the Indian Navy substantially enhanced surveillance and force presence in the Gulf of Aden and the northern Arabian Sea.
After this maritime disturbance in the region, possible alternatives are being explored to strengthen regional security coordination, improve insurance risk-sharing, and diversify routes, including the India-Middle East corridor, as a medium-term response to chokepoint vulnerability.
India must therefore move beyond temporary workarounds and actively advocate for, and invest in, the strategically relevant India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). It is a multimodal infrastructure project announced at the G20 summit in New Delhi in September 2023. It aims to link the Gulf countries, the UAE and Saudi Arabia, with Europe via Jordan, Israel, and the EU through an integrated network of railways, ports, roads, energy links, and digital infrastructure.
It is primarily designed to create a faster, more secure land-and-short-sea trade route between Asia, the Gulf, and Europe, running north of the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, thereby bypassing key maritime choke points and reducing India’s exposure to sudden maritime blockades and coercion.
The Gulf-Arab states themselves have already demonstrated the critical importance of this logic. Saudi Arabia and the UAE, for example, have ramped up pipeline-based oil exports (such as the East–West pipeline and the Habshan–Fujairah pipeline) to bypass the Strait of Hormuz when tensions mount, ensuring that oil can still flow out from the Gulf without passing through the narrowing maritime gate. These overland and subsea-pipeline routes are exactly the kind of alternative infrastructure envisioned in projects like IMEC.
For India, the recent disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb–Red Sea corridor highlight a broader pattern: reliance on stop-gap measures, but they are unlikely to insulate the country from the recurrent risks posed by contested maritime chokepoints.
In this context, India is well-placed to treat the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) not merely as a commercial-connectivity initiative but as a potential national-security-cum-economic hedge, using the current phase of instability as a political window to encourage partner governments to accelerate implementation of critical rail-link agreements, deepen customs-and-standards harmonisation, and codify shared norms for energy-and-digital-corridor governance.
If pursued with sustained political will and adequate financing, IMEC could evolve into a functionally meaningful alternative architecture for India–Europe trade and energy flows, capable of absorbing not only the present round of global shocks but also future disruptions.
Ms Anubhuti Jain is pursuing her Masters in International Relations and Peace Studies at Nalanda University, Rajgir, Nalanda, Bihar. This publication has been taken up under the Young Scholars’ Programme at CPS. The views expressed are those of the author.
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