Bab el-Mandeb Strait
The 29 kilometer gate between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden that every Suez transit must pass.
Overview
Perim Island splits the strait into usable channels a few kilometers wide between Yemen, Djibouti and Eritrea. Millions of barrels of oil and a large share of Asia-Europe container traffic pass daily. Attacks on shipping from the Yemeni coast from late 2023 drove many carriers to divert around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly two weeks and materially raising freight rates, while multinational naval missions deployed escorts. Djibouti's tiny economy grew around the strait, hosting the ports and foreign bases that cluster to guard the lane. Geography gives it leverage no navy can erase.
Related Topics
Panama Canal
The French attempt of 1881 to 1889 collapsed under disease and design errors. The American project succeeded after 1904 because sa...
Strait of Malacca
More than 90,000 vessels transit each year, several hundred a day, making this the busiest shipping chokepoint and the shortest ro...
Strait of Hormuz
Between Iran and Oman, the usable deep-water lanes are only a few kilometers wide in each direction. Around 17 to 21 million barre...
Bosphorus and Dardanelles
The Bosphorus, at points under 700 meters wide, and the Dardanelles form the only sea exit from the Black Sea, governed since 1936...