Iran-backed Houthi rebels captured Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait Sept. 11, opening a new front at a vital global shipping chokepoint as a former Pentagon official warned Sunday the militants had entered a "kill box." The island's capture came after a month-long offensive along Yemen’s western coast that killed more than 1,500 soldiers and forced Yemen’s government to acknowledge a "painful" defeat, according to The . "With Perim, they have gained what we could call the cork in the Red Sea bottle," Morgan Murphy, a former Pentagon press secretary and retired Navy captain, told Fox News Digital. "But they've put themselves into a kill box.
They're nowhere near the capability of the United States and if the president so chooses, he can wipe them off the face of that rock pretty easily," Murphy warned. SAUDI ARABIA TELLS TRUMP NOW IS THE TIME FOR MILITARY ACTION AS IRAN-BACKED HOUTHIS ADVANCE Despite Perim sitting in the middle of the narrow maritime passage, Murphy detailed how the Houthis had effectively placed themselves in an area that is vulnerable to concentrated fire. "Perim cuts that chokepoint right in half, and it's only 18 miles wide there," Murphy said.
He said the island has served as a pivotal maritime vantage point for hundreds of years, previously targeted for control by French forces and held by the British Empire for over a century. Perim — a desolate volcanic island also known as Mayun — also sits roughly 20 miles off the Horn of Africa, placing it in proximity to Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, home to one of the largest U.S. military installations on the continent. "We have incredible firepower in that region, and that's a little rock in the middle of that strait.
It doesn't have any water. It's uninhabitable," Murphy warned. "There's no vegetation to speak of.
And the Houthis have just massed their troops on that rock. So what that is, what we would call that in the Navy, is a kill box." Satellite imagery of the island shows a 1.85-kilometer (6,070-foot) runway alongside three military hangars, which regional intelligence reports attribute to past construction by the United Arab Emirates. "There's a 6,000-foot airstrip on that island.
I think that Emiratis built it," Murphy said. We don't know how they could possibly use that runway, and they certainly don't have the sophisticated air power that the United States and its allies have to project power from that runway." He added that the U.S. military holds overwhelming force options if commanders elect to target the island. "We could wipe that rock into glass, just blast it into a smooth glass surface, put skates back on our feet, and skate all over it," Murphy said.
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