Yemen Is Back in the Headlines

Following over four years of ‘no war, no peace’, full-scale fighting has resumed in Yemen. In early September, the Houthis seized the port town of Mokha and Perim Island in a blitzkrieg advance on the country’s Red Sea coast. They have gained control of the Bab al Mandab or ‘Gate of Tears’, a maritime chokepoint at the south-western tip of the Arabian Peninsula (pictured). Houthi forces can now get close enough to Saudi oil tankers to attack them with unsophisticated weaponry, saving their advanced weapons for more distant targets.

The Houthi threat to Saudi shipping has further pushed up world oil prices and piled pressure on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who must bitterly regret his rash decision to launch his war in Yemen in 2015. MBS had hoped to project strength and dynamism against what he believed to be a rag-tag bunch of mountain tribesmen. A civil war between Yemeni government forces and the Houthi rebel movement (officially Ansar Allah) had started the previous year. By 2022, a Saudi-led coalition supported by the US and UK had blockaded Yemen while launching more than 25,000 airstrikes on the country, killing 9,000 civilians, without achieving victory.  

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In recent years MBS has been trying to extricate his country from the quagmire he created. This was almost achieved in 2023 when direct negotiations between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis drew close to finalisation. The looked-for agreement would have stabilised Saudi’s southern border and encouraged international investment in MBS’s grandiose infrastructure projects. For the Houthis, it would have ended the Saudi air and sea blockade, provided recognition for the movement as an equal in negotiations with the internationally recognised government (IRG), ensured significant financial reparations and covered Houthi government staff salaries for at least a year.

The process was thrown off course by Israel’s genocide in Gaza from October 2023. The Trump Administration retaliated for Houthi missile and drone strikes in support of the Palestinians with an eight-week air and naval assault dubbed Operation Rough Rider which killed at least 224 civilians. On 28 August 2025 an Israeli strike on the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, killed the Houthi Prime Minister and most of his government.

Attempts to revive negotiations then foundered because of the US-Israeli assault on Iran. Contrary to widespread expectations, the Houthis initially restricted themselves to statements of support for Tehran and a handful of drone or missile strikes against Israel. On 13 July, however, the IRG/Saudis bombed the runway of Sana’a airport to prevent the landing of a return Iranian flight carrying a Houthi delegation and Iranian advisors. The Houthis responded by announcing an embargo on Saudi maritime movements in the Red Sea, or ‘a blockade for a blockade’.

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Houthi strategic choices in these weeks are interesting. They had fundamental reasons for launching a new offensive at this time, in anticipation of a shift in the balance of power. Politically, closer relations between the IRG and the Saudi regime threaten an existing Saudi-Houthi accommodation, which has included significant payments from Riyadh to forestall Houthi attacks. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah has informed the US that it has no intention of attacking US shipping or, indeed, any non-Saudi-related vessels. This may reflect Houthi anxiety to avoid provoking further US and Israeli air strikes.

By early August, the Houthis had attacked eight Saudi tankers and caused at least thirty others to divert. This had a notable impact on world oil supplies, as Saudi Arabia had earlier largely rerouted its oil exports away from the Strait of Hormuz in the east to the Red Sea port of Yanbu in the west. Saudi had been exporting between 4 and 5 mb/d through that route, or about 5 per cent of world daily consumption. The Houthis have also launched missiles on oil storage facilities and the Saudi capital, Riyadh. For the Saudis, this is a major budgetary problem, not least given its expensive investment and vanity projects. Although some of these have been postponed more or less indefinitely, others have to be implemented, such as preparations for the 2030 Expo and 2034 football World Cup.

The Saudi response to the latest Houthi advance has so far been muted, but this may be the calm before another storm while it conducts negotiations with various international sponsors. The US on this occasion has so far refused air support, offering only advisors in the operations rooms. By contrast, France’s President Macron is sending ground troops, radars and other materiel to protect Yanbu port, and Andy Burnham’s Labour government has offered an RAF plane for in-flight refuelling of Saudi aircraft to assist in air strikes. As Reuters noted, the UK is one of the kingdom’s largest arms suppliers. History has shown the bankruptcy of any strategy reliant on wreaking destruction from the air, ever since the colonial British were bombing Yemen in the 1960s.

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The escalation of the current war in Yemen will only worsen living conditions for Yemenis. Over 22 million of them were already in need of humanitarian support, more than half suffering acute food insecurity. The Houthis have controlled about 30 percent of the country’s territory and 70 per cent of its population for the past decade. A year after the World Food Programme completely ceased any support, hunger is reaching famine levels in many areas. Following the move of most banks out of Sana’a to Aden as a result of the Trump Administration’s designation of Ansar Allah as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organisation’ in March 2025, financial transactions have become even more difficult and prevent most world financial institutions and businesses from dealing with Sana’a-based colleagues. This not only affects the remaining enterprises of all sizes but also reduces remittances, which are a lifeline for thousands of citizens with friends and relatives abroad. Mokha and the population in the newly conquered areas are a new source of taxation income but the people in these areas are largely anti-Houthi. There is local resistance and 150,000 people have been displaced; they may well be followed by more.

The rest of Yemen remains nominally under IRG control. But its leadership is divided and has been unable to act as a coherent political or military force. In 2022, President Hadi handed over power to an eight-man Presidential Leadership Council composed primarily of military leaders who, at best, were simply rivals for power. IRG forces withdrew in some disarray in the face of the recent Houthi advance and are now attempting to regain territory in the mountains controlling the coastal plains.

Yemen’s agony will continue until all sides recognise that this conflict cannot be solved militarily.

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Helen Lackner worked in Yemen for fifteen years. Her books include Yemen in Crisis with Verso and Saqi Books, Yemen: Poverty and Conflict and Why Yemen Matters: A Society in Transition.

Photo credit:  Bab al-Mandab Strait, with Perim Island. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE, Wikimedia.

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