Gulf Shipping Grinds to a Halt Following Houthi Missile Claim

Vessel traffic at the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait crumbled on Wednesday from the previous day amid a Houthi claim they have hit a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea and hopes that Oman and Iran could reach a deal on jointly managing Hormuz. On Wednesday, only two vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz, down from 8 on Tuesday, according to ship-tracking data reviewed by Reuters. At Bab el-Mandeb, the chokepoint on the Red Sea into the Arabian Sea, only one commodity vessel, a Bahamas-flagged dry bulk carrier, transited on Wednesday,…