What makes a great sea chokepoint

This was a Substack article written in July 2026 during the beginning of the Iran War. But before the Bab-Al-Mandeb was cut off. I'm posting it here, since there's a lot of debate about naval choke

Roughly one-eighth of everything shipped by sea passes through Bab al-Mandeb. The Houthis just cut it off. But why is the Bab-Al Mandeb risky, but Malacca is not? I talked about this in an previous article: https://t.co/cVkeUrKLwP