Saudi Arabia may now be bearing the brunt of Houthi attacks that have sought to murder civilians at its airports, cripple its critical energy infrastructure, and demolish its military installations. But make no mistake, Saudi Arabia is only the Houthis’ most immediate grievance. They have the potential — and arguably the inclination — to do much worse. Their slogan, “God is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, Cursed are the Jews, Victory to Islam,” should not be read as a rhetorical flourish. The Houthis, who have a long history of belligerence toward the US and the West generally, are literally telling us what they plan to do.
The Houthis began as a regional insurgency in northern Yemen in the early 2000s, but by 2014, they occupied swaths of Yemeni territory, swept into the capital Sanaa, and took control of many government institutions. Shortly afterward, Saudi Arabia began a military campaign to remove them from power and destroy their leadership. Under pressure from the US, the Saudis eventually sought to de-escalate the conflict and pursue diplomacy.
In late 2023, however, ostensibly in response to Israel’s war on Gaza and in solidarity with Hamas after its Oct. 7 assault on Israel, the Houthis began attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea and targeting US naval vessels. There were credible reports that they were conniving with Russia, which was giving them intelligence — payback for US support for Ukraine, we assumed — and China, which was shipping the Houthis parts for their home-made drones and ballistic missiles. Although the Houthis cast their attacks as retribution for the Gaza war, I was in Riyadh in that period serving as US ambassador, and we had little expectation that it would all blow over whenever the Gaza war ended.
The Houthis are widely regarded as a proxy of Iran, but ending the current war with Iran — like ending the Gaza conflict — will not stop the Houthis. Yes, they welcome Iranian military and financial support. But they do not regard themselves as Iran’s agents. Rather, they actually see their movement on par with Iran, essentially their own Islamic Republic, except with such an exaggerated belief in their own religious legitimacy that they set their sights on controlling not just Yemeni territory, but the holy — Saudi — cities of Makkah and Madinah. That political distance between Iran and the Houthis is dangerous because it means that an eventual deal with Iran is not necessarily binding on the Houthis.
The US should start planning with its partners now with the express goal of eventually eliminating the Houthis’ ability to wreak terror in Yemen and beyond
Michael Ratney
There is a view, certainly plausible, that the Houthis are not like other insurgencies or terrorist organizations. Unlike Hamas or Hezbollah, which have systems for regenerating leadership, the Houthis are more like a cult, beholden to their leader, Abdulmalek Al-Houthi, who has few potential replacements. In 2024, the Biden administration embarked on a concerted effort to degrade the Houthis’ capacity to threaten their neighbors. I believe it could have been successful, especially if we had brought additional partners into the fight. The Trump administration continued that effort until May 2025, but suspended it after reportedly striking a ceasefire deal which only required that the Houthis stop targeting US ships — in other words with no commitment to stop targeting others. The agreement was apparently struck without consulting either Saudi Arabia or Israel, then the two countries most directly threatened by Houthi drones and ballistic missiles.
We should be clear about ceasefires with the Houthis: Their leaders are ideologues, not pragmatists, and they will constantly look for pretexts to escalate. That happened in July 2026 when Houthi missiles — then mostly intercepted — began targeting Saudi Arabia after the Kingdom refused to allow the Houthis to establish an uninspected air corridor between Sanaa and Tehran that would have violated UN Security Council sanctions. The Houthis then announced a blockade of ships carrying Saudi crude oil through the Bab Al-Mandab, and began attacking Saudi energy infrastructure, military targets, and airports. Fighting then escalated between Saudi-backed forces in Yemen and the Houthis. On Oct. 10, a Houthi projectile targeting the Riyadh airport hit a terminal, killing more than a dozen people and injuring over 300, including pilgrims of multiple nationalities on their way to Makkah.
The current explosion of violence came as the Yemeni armed forces, with support from Saudi Arabia, sought to push back recent Houthi gains around the Bab Al-Mandab, the strategic waterway at the mouth of the Red Sea. About 25 percent of global container traffic normally passes through that waterway — another reminder that the Houthis are not just a Saudi problem.
Sooner or later, the US and others in the international community are going to have to get involved beyond the non-kinetic support now reportedly being offered. This might not be today, at a time when the US military arsenal may be depleted, and the calamitous conflict with Iran may not yet be over. But looking ahead it will simply be untenable to leave in place the Houthis, an organization that brazenly threatens our allies, conspires with our adversaries, targets our navy, inflates global shipping costs, terrorizes mariners, depresses the region’s economy, pollutes the Red Sea, kidnaps the Yemeni employees of our former embassy in Sanaa as well as UN employees, and aims to cement its violent control over one of the world’s most impoverished populations — and over one of the world’s most strategic waterways.
The US should start planning with its partners now with the express goal of eventually eliminating the Houthis’ ability to wreak terror in Yemen and beyond.
Michael Ratney is the former US ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.