🚨 The IRGC is directing the Houthi offensive that seized Mocha, tightening the Islamic Republic’s grip on a second major global energy chokepoint. Reuters reports that the rapid Houthi advance down Yemen’s Red Sea coast came with direct IRGC guidance. Iranian sources also said the Islamic Republic told the Houthis last week to escalate attacks against Saudi Arabia while promising additional weapons, funding and senior commanders. Five Yemeni government military sources, citing intercepted communications and captured Houthi fighters, specifically pointed to Abdolreza Shahlaei, the senior IRGC Quds Force commander long associated with the Yemen file, as directing the Iranian effort. Iranian sources did not confirm his current role, so that specific claim remains unverified. But Mocha is not the ultimate prize. Bab al-Mandab is. The Houthis have pushed government forces south toward Dhubab, directly on the strait opposite Perim Island, while also expanding operations around the Hanish Islands. Mocha is the coastal hinge. Dhubab and Perim would put them in an enormously more powerful position around the actual chokepoint connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. This becomes even more dangerous because the Islamic Republic is already disrupting the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has increasingly depended on its Red Sea export route through Yanbu as an alternative. The Islamic Republic does not need to physically close both waterways. Creating enough danger around Hormuz while its most powerful remaining proxy threatens Bab al-Mandab simultaneously forces shipping, insurers and energy markets to price risk into two critical arteries at once. Saudi hesitation is also becoming impossible to ignore. Yemeni officials reportedly wanted substantially heavier Saudi air support as the Houthis advanced. Saudi Arabia instead remained cautious, fearing that deeper involvement would trigger even larger Houthi ballistic missile and drone attacks against Saudi territory. But that caution may now be encouraging exactly what Saudi Arabia is trying to prevent. The Houthis are already firing ballistic missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia while simultaneously taking strategic territory from Saudi-backed forces. If they conclude Saudi Arabia fears escalation more than they do, there is little reason to expect the next missile barrage to be smaller. None of this means the Islamic Republic has suddenly become strategically strong. Its economy and oil exports remain under enormous pressure. Instead, it demonstrates why the Houthis have become so valuable to the IRGC: they allow the Islamic Republic to create enormous geopolitical costs far beyond Iran while avoiding another direct front itself. For more than a decade, the IRGC invested weapons, training, technology and personnel into building the Houthis into this kind of force. Now that investment is being activated at precisely the moment the Islamic Republic needs it most. Mocha is the warning. Dhubab and Perim are what matter next. If the Houthis establish a much stronger position around Bab al-Mandab while the Islamic Republic continues disrupting Hormuz, the IRGC will have succeeded in applying simultaneous pressure to two of the world’s most important energy and shipping arteries.