The Strategic Poetry of the Strait

The Houthis have taken the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands in the Red Sea. Bare rocks with little more on them than beacons and military posts, but located exactly where the sea route between Asia and Europe squeezes through the Bab al-Mandab. The United Arab Emirates had only dismantled their facilities there earlier this year. Nobody likes tidying up only to find someone else moving in.

Almost at the same time, planned talks in Oman between Iran and several Gulf states were postponed, at Saudi Arabia's request and explicitly "for now". They were supposed to negotiate a corridor through the Strait of Hormuz, largely closed since late February. The region now has two blocked straits and not a single round of talks that actually takes place.

Gulf diplomacy works like a ferry service in a storm: there is a timetable, but nobody seriously expects it to apply.

What is revealing is where the world is looking. In two weeks of fighting, more than 80,000 people were displaced in Yemen. But the headlines count tankers, oil prices and insurance premiums. In geopolitics, compassion is apparently a commodity like any other: its price rises with the price of a barrel.