MARITIME CHOKEPOINT
Bab al-Mandab Strait · Held by 🇾🇪 Yemen · Measured across 4,320 simulated wars
Suez is a canal, and nothing reaches it from the south except through Bab al-Mandab. Model the canal without the strait and a closed approach reads as an open route — which is why this one was added. It turns out to matter more than the row it completes: the state that can close it is inside an alliance that gets pulled into wars constantly, so it reaches a real blockade as often as Suez does from seven times the base rate. The state it hurts most is the one that never touches it. With Hormuz shut, Saudi crude goes overland to Yanbu and out through the Red Sea, so closing this strait takes away the bypass.
The engine sets a level per strait per round, and it is the lower of two terms: how badly the holder wants the strait shut, and whether it still has the ships, mines and coastal missiles to keep it shut. Willingness only ratchets up — a state that has been hit has less reason to reopen, not more. Capability is the only term that can fall, which is why a closure here is not permanent.
Share of all simulated wars in which this state is cut off by a partial blockade or worse.
Opening moves that most often end with this strait shut. Click one to run it.