The prime minister of the Houthi-controlled administration in Yemen says Sana’a will not allow the Red Sea to become an “Israeli lake”, IRGC affiliated Fars news reported. 

The premier of the so-called Yemen’s National Salvation Government, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour, said in capital Sana'a on Monday that Yemen has the final say in the Bab al-Mandab strait and will “preserve the Arab identity of the Red Sea in the face of the US conspiracy to turn it into a Zionist lake."

"Bab al-Mandab is an international waterway, but it is part of Yemeni territory," he emphasized. 

The Bab-el-Mandeb strait – located between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, and Djibouti and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa -- connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and acts as a strategic link between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

Echoing Iran’s position regarding US President Joe Biden’s tour of the Middle East and the summit of regional Arab countries in Jeddah, he said that during the visit Washington and Riyadh tried to cover up the reality of the Saudi-led “brutal aggression, the massacres, crimes and violations” they committed against Yemen, by portraying the crisis as just an internal conflict. 

The Houthis receives military and political support from Iran in their conflict with other Yemenis backed who are backed by a Saudi-led coalition since 2014. Iran has been sharing its missile and drone technology with Yemen’s Houthis and has also supplied other proxy forces, such as the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias.