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

The strait has a name that tells you everything before the analysts say a word: Gate of Tears. Thirty kilometres of water, and its whole meaning is practical - it is worth precisely what passes through it, and nothing else. I sat with the map open tonight and thought: a rebel army now holds the tollbooth, and two capitals must pay the toll.

But notice the second clause of the dispatch, the one the strategists will skip. The same seizure may cost the men who made it their standing at home. Here is a deed with two ledgers. In Tehran it buys leverage - a lever lifts what you could not lift by standing where you stood. In Washington it buys attention; in Riyadh, alarm. But in Yemen it must be spent in the local currency: bread, safety, an end to the shooting. If it purchases none of these, was it a victory? There is no single answer, because a victory is not a fact in the abstract. It is a fact in use, and the use differs by market.

Ask the fisherman at Hodeidah what the strait is worth. Not who holds it - whether the holding stops the war or restarts it. If the civil war reignites, the leverage gained in the Gulf is paid for in his coin, and he will not call that transaction a gain.

Legitimacy, after all, is a credit other people extend you. The Houthis are wagering that their countrymen will read this deed as heroism. That wager can lose, and no analysis settles it in advance; you act, and are surprised or vindicated.

And for the negotiators, the test is plain: the map has changed hands. Whatever a ship cost you to insure yesterday, expect to pay more today. That difference - the price, the fear, the seat at the table - is the entire meaning of the word “leverage.” If it meant nothing you could do or feel, it would be noise.