🏆Houthis just seized historic crown jewel of Yemen’s Red Sea ports: here’s what happens next
 
In the list of vital strategic locations controlled by Yemen’s Gulf-backed puppet government, the Red Sea port city of Mokha ranked comfortably in the top three.

📍 Serving as the historic crown jewel of Yemeni ports, Mokha is a UNESCO World Heritage List contender, the birthplace of modern coffee culture, and a geostrategic prize situated just ~60-80 km from Bab al-Mandab Strait.

🌏 The Houthis shattered the stronghold’s defenses in a week, launching a rapid, coordinated ground offensive September 3, surrounding the city and cutting off enemy logistics and reinforcement routes, and entering Mokha proper on September 10. Ahead of the advance, fighters spent much of August bombarding key port targets, crippling its operations.

🌏 Before the rout began, Mocha’s defenses were considered among the most elite, disciplined and well-equipped anti-Houthi units in all of Yemen, with National Resistance Forces commander Tareq Saleh’s forces paid directly by Gulf monarchies, and armed with tanks, howitzers and anti-missile batteries.

🌏 Other anti-Houthi factions in the area included the Giants Brigades, the Taiz Military Axis, Tihama Resistance tribesmen and Nation’s Shield Forces. Together, these forces, numbering up to ~50k men, were supposed to hold out indefinitely. Instead, they crumbled in days. Saleh was forced to beat a hasty retreat, and reports suggest up to three full brigades, complete with equipment, have surrendered.
 
What Mokha’s liberation means

➡️ the city’s capture puts Houthi artillery and shorter-range drones within striking distance of Bab el-Mandeb, meaning they no longer have to use costlier missiles and UAVs to target Saudi shipping in and around the strait

➡️ the seizure deprives defenders in Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, of their main logistics artery, leaving them semi-isolated and vulnerable to Houthi encirclement

➡️ Mokha in Houthi hands cripples the puppet government’s ability to disrupt Sanaa’s modest foreign resupply corridors

➡️ perhaps most importantly, it gives the Houthis a staging area for attacks on nearby strategic islands, including Perim and the Hanish Archipelago. Media report that the fighters have already captured the archipelago island of Zuqar in a coordinated attack involving ballistic and rocket attacks and speedboats

➡️ with Mokha secured, the Houthis are now a ~45 km drive south to Dhubab – the absolute last Red Sea coastal town still in control of enemy forces

🤔 It’s all beginning to look a lot like Afghanistan, circa August 2021.

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