On: Houthi advance boosts Iran’s leverage over the US and Saudi Arabia - but may...

They have closed the gate. Bab el-Mandeb - the gate of tears, the sailors’ name for it, earned long before this week - is in the hands of armed men, and every tanker out of the Gulf, every grain ship bound for Ethiopia, every pilgrim bound for Jeddah must now ask their leave. The strait is narrow enough that an island sits in its middle like a customs house.

I walked Yemen once, from Zabid to Ta’izz to Aden, and I remember the harbor at Aden: ships from India, from Africa, from the Gulf, all riding at anchor together, because Aden made stopping worthwhile. The harbor master took his toll and the ships kept coming, because the toll was known and the water was safe. That is the whole secret of a gate. Hormuz understood it too - took its cut, and the dhows still came. Whoever holds Bab el-Mandeb today has learned the opposite lesson: that a closed gate frightens the powerful. It does, for a season. But the merchant is more patient than the prince, and the merchant reroutes.

The leverage is real; I grant it. He who holds the strait holds a hand at the throat of two seas, and the link between the merchant of Malacca and the merchant of Alexandria runs through one narrow water. But watch what it costs at home. A ruler is tested by how he treats the stranger who must pass through - the trader, the pilgrim, the shipwrecked sailor asking for water. Yemenis were generous hosts when I passed among them; food shared, quarrels settled by judges who listened. A faction that turns its country into a roadblock instead of a guesthouse trades a lasting welcome for a moment’s fear.

The ships will wait, or pay, or go the long way. The gate will open again. The tears in the name were never about the water.