Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthis Edge Toward a Wider War

Yemen is slipping back into large-scale war as the Houthis and Saudi Arabia trade attacks across their shared frontier.

Over recent days, Iranian-backed Houthi fighters have advanced against government forces along the Red Sea coast while launching missiles and drones at oil facilities in southern Saudi Arabia. Riyadh has responded with airstrikes inside Yemen. Pakistan, which recently signed a defense pact with Saudi Arabia, could also become involved.

“This campaign is going to be just bloody,” said Helen Lackner, the author of “Yemen in Crisis: Road to War.”

Lackner says the fighting now resembles a resumption of Yemen’s full-scale civil war, with Saudi Arabia more firmly aligned with the internationally recognized government. “This is the beginning of a very long and nasty war,” she said.

The renewed fighting has ended a period of relative calm that followed a 2022 truce among rival factions in Yemen’s civil war. The Houthis control much of the country’s north and west, including the capital, Sanaa. The internationally recognized government holds much of the south and east, including the strategically important port city of Aden.

The image, taken from video, shows smoke rising after a strike during clashes between Houthi and Saudi-backed forces in Yemen’s Al Jawf governorate on Sept. 9, 2026.

The escalation comes amid heightened tensions across the Middle East, where the conflict between Tehran and Washington has already damaged the global economy. Since 2023, the Houthis have periodically targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, presenting their actions as support for Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli strikes in Yemen in 2025 killed senior Houthi leaders but failed to limit the group’s regional influence. The Houthis have intensified their attacks over the summer.

“The Iranians have been saying for months we can close Bab el-Mandeb,” Lackner said, referring to the narrow strait that connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and carries a substantial share of global trade. “They are not going to close the Bab el-Mandeb. The Houthis will.”

On Thursday, the Houthis reportedly seized Mocha, a strategic port city on Yemen’s western coast just north of the Bab el-Mandeb. Houthi forces pushed government troops southward toward Dhubab. The development could give the group greater ability to target vessels traveling through the waterway and further disrupt international trade.

The Houthis began as an insurgent movement in Yemen’s northern mountains before evolving into a central part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against the United States and Israel. In 2014, the group seized Sanaa and expanded its control over additional territory, tax revenue, and ports. It has also amassed conventional weapons and military infrastructure, including Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles brought into Yemen during the Cold War.

“The Houthis became the threat they are today because of two main factors: Iran consistently invested in building their capabilities, and the United States and the international community consistently underestimated what they were becoming,” Nadwa Al-Dawsari of the Middle East Institute told members of Congress on Capitol Hill this month.

Analysts say years of support from Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon have strengthened the Houthis’ missile, drone, and maritime capabilities. The group has also developed a domestic drone industry by sourcing components and advanced parts through illicit commercial networks.

“They are well stocked,” said Abdughani Al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies based in Cairo. “The smuggling of weapons [into Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen] has increased dramatically,” he said. “They can operate without anything coming from Iran.”

Lackner says the Houthis chose this moment to go on the offensive because they are nearing the peak of their relative power. By framing the confrontation as resistance to Saudi Arabia, the group gains more domestic political support than it would from appearing to act on Iran’s behalf. Militarily, the Houthis are stronger than Yemen’s national government, which has been rearming and restructuring with Saudi backing.

“The internationally recognized government is getting stronger and more efficient, although it is not unified,” she said. “If [the Houthis] wait much longer, it would be much worse for them.”

The timing of the offensive is also linked to worsening economic and humanitarian conditions in Houthi-controlled areas. The World Food Programme suspended general food distribution in northern Yemen in December 2023, and the United States subsequently designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization. Most of Yemen’s roughly 40 million people live in areas controlled by the group.

Al-Iryani says the Houthis want to force Saudi Arabia toward a diplomatic compromise. In April 2023, Saudi officials traveled to Sanaa and signaled an openness to recognizing Houthi rule, but the two sides never reached a lasting agreement.

Those prospects are further complicated by the Houthis’ ideological goal of eventually “liberating” Mecca and Medina, two of Islam’s holiest cities, both located in Saudi Arabia. Experts say the group may have miscalculated by choosing war at this particular moment.

“The Houthis have not escalated to the maximum,” Al-Iryani said. “They are not waging this round of escalation to take territory, but to provoke or pressure the Saudis to go back to the negotiation table.”

Riyadh, however, has shown no sign of yielding. “The Saudis cannot make a deal with the Houthis now,” Lackner said. “It will look like they’re aligning with Iran.”

“The more they succeed [militarily], the deeper they are in that escalation trap,” Al-Iryani said. “The Houthis … are overextended. They have crossed the Saudi red lines.”

Neither analyst sees much hope that outside powers will push Yemen toward a political settlement. The United States is focused on its midterm elections, the United Nations lacks leverage, and European influence remains limited. Iran’s influence over Yemen rests partly on the military support it can provide or withhold from the Houthis, while Saudi economic clout is useful only in peacetime.

“The greatest obstacle to peace is not Houthi intransigence,” Al-Iryani argued. “It’s the lack of vision, both by the Yemeni government and the Saudis, of what kind of Yemen is likely to emerge out of this war that could be viable, nonthreatening. They don’t have the vision, and they haven’t even tried to develop one.”

Al-Iryani points to the United States and European Union as potential actors that could focus on the crisis. He says the consequences of failing to address it extend well beyond Yemen. Houthi actions in and around the Red Sea have set an “infectious” precedent, encouraging other militant groups, including Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Somalia’s Al Shabab, to attack commercial shipping.

“As these networks become more interconnected, they create an increasingly dangerous ecosystem of armed groups, terrorist organizations, smugglers, and criminal networks operating around some of the world’s most strategically important waterways,” Al-Dawsari told Congress.

Source link