Senior adviser to Iran’s Supreme Leader Major General Safavi says linking the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, including the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandab, could change the battlefield

The distinction that has historically mattered for crude is between rhetorical linkage of the two waterways and actual interference with shipping: the former has tended to add only a transient geopolitical premium to the front of the oil curve, while the latter transmits through tanker freight rates, war-risk insurance, and rerouting around the Cape, which is where duration enters pricing. Hormuz carries a far larger share of seaborne crude and LNG flows than Bab al-Mandab, so markets have generally treated threats to the Gulf side as the binding constraint and the Red Sea side as a freight and refined-products story. The speaker's position as a senior military adviser rather than a decision-maker at the Supreme National Security Council level places this in the category of signalling, consistent with past episodes where hardline figures tested rhetoric without follow-through. The tells worth noting are whether the language is repeated by officials closer to the centre of authority, any movement in naval deployments or tanker transits, and whether war-risk premiums and front-month spreads begin to price disruption rather than rhetoric.