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Houthi forces have reportedly seized the entirety of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, further solidifying the group’s control over its key waterway and sending oil prices soaring to even further heights since the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, seized control of the key port town of Mocha this week, reports say. They have since rapidly advanced to controlling the entire Red Sea coast, and, on Friday, reached the strategic island of Perim, which sits in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.

This gives the Iran-backed rebel group even further control over Bab al-Mandeb, which is one of the world’s most critical shipping routes, with about 12 percent of global seaborne-traded oil typically passing through the strait.

This is the latest escalation in its decade-long fight against the Saudi Arabia-backed Yemeni forces, which has flared up in recent months amid the war on Iran. Over a thousand people have been killed or wounded in the past two weeks of fighting in southwest Yemen, aid agencies have reported, while tens of thousands have been displaced.

Satellite images on Thursday also showed a large amount of black smoke rising from an area of Saudi Arabia’s crucial East-West oil pipeline, which has been........

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