Rachel Chason, Suzan Haidamous, Mohamad El Chamaa
Since their deadly attack on the airport in Saudi Arabia’s capital last Saturday, Houthi militants have struck Aramco, the state-owned oil company, and the presidential palace of the Saudi-backed government in Yemen, raising the stakes in a war in which there is no clear exit.
Amid the Houthi strikes, Saudi Arabia has mounted a military campaign in Yemen to reclaim territory seized by the Iranian-backed militia group. The Saudi leadership, according to two officials who are part of Yemen’s Saudi-backed government, sees a battlefield victory as its only option.
The fighting in recent weeks is the latest chapter in a bitter civil war that has raged on-and-off for more than a decade.
“It is clear that in the years when there was supposed peace, the Houthis and their allies in Iran were preparing for war,” said one of the Yemeni officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss security issues. “And this is not a war that will affect just Saudi Arabia and Yemen, but the entire world.”
The spiraling conflict is now the most volatile front in the sprawling regional conflagration that was unleashed when the United States and Israel attacked Iran in February, drawing retaliatory strikes by Tehran on Persian Gulf nations and by Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group, on Israel.
With weeks to go until the U.S. midterm elections, high fuel costs have turned voters against President Donald Trump’s Republican Party, and the White House is trying every lever to bring down costs, including lifting sanctions on Russian diesel exports - so far without success or any change in the polls.
Trump, who is close with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has been reluctant to get involved militarily in the war against the Houthis. A U.S. bombing campaign against the militants last year caused high casualties but ultimately did not stop the conflict.
After the attack on the Riyadh airport, Trump told reporters that he was weighing whether to join Saudi strikes on the Houthis. But his comments have been erratic.
On Friday, Trump told reporters that Saudi Arabia would probably accept assistance from Israel and suggested, once again and without much evidence, that Saudi Arabia might join the Abraham Accords, the peace framework in which several Arab nations agreed to recognize Israel.
Saudi Arabia’s media office did not respond to requests for comment.
With U.S. intervention unlikely, Saudi Arabia’s war with the Houthis has become a “zero-sum game,” regional officials and analysts say, in which each side is ramping up attacks but negotiation, for now, is off the table.
“Negotiation is not an option right now - no one is talking about it,” the Yemeni official said.
The two Yemeni officials and Rayed Krimly, a senior Saudi diplomat, said they think the escalation by the Houthis is being driven partly by Iran as it seeks leverage in its continuing war with the U.S.
Krimly, who is Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister for public diplomacy, told journalists during a rare briefing on Thursday that Riyadh believes Iran is unwilling to make concessions in its war with the U.S. and “encouraged” the Houthis to escalate.
As the Houthis made stunning battlefield advances - seizing territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast and claiming control over the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait - the international community failed to meet the moment, and may now pay a steep price, the two Yemeni officials said.
About 20 percent of international goods flow through Bab al-Mandab, either to or from the Suez Canal, which ultimately connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean. The disruptions, the Yemeni officials, said will be felt far beyond the Middle East.
One of the officials asserted that gains by the Houthis, who also receive support from Russia and China, “are gains for the enemies of the United States and Europe.”
“The elites of the United States have failed to understand the importance of this land,” the official said, adding that it is an open question how control over Bab al-Mandab by the Houthis and their Iranian sponsors will impact Europe’s energy needs heading into winter.
From 2015 until 2022, when a fragile truce was reached, the civil war between the Houthi rebels and Saudi-backed government forces left hundreds of thousands dead in Yemen, an impoverished nation of about 35 million people at the southwestern tip of the Arabian Peninsula.
The fight reignited in July, when the Houthis began firing at Saudi oil facilities and blockading Saudi ships passing through the Red Sea.
In recent days, the Saudi-backed coalition in Yemen has expanded from predominantly hitting military targets to also hitting Houthi-controlled oil infrastructure.
The Houthis have responded in kind - putting into practice a doctrine they summarize as “port for port, airport for airport, blockade for blockade,” said Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen at the International Crisis Group, a Brussels-based policy institute.
Barrages of airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition are damaging the Houthis more than they let on, Nagi said, but the coalition has also been far weaker on the ground than expected.
“This is a fateful, defining war,” Nagi said. “It will decide the future of Yemen and of Gulf security. And I think both sides know what the stakes are. … It has become a zero-sum game.”
Ali Shihabi, a Saudi author and commentator, said that there was “a certain amount of frustration” in Riyadh that the U.S. is not providing help via American military aircraft.
“But there is also appreciation,” he said, “for the help that the Americans are providing in terms of intelligence and people on the ground.”
Saudi Arabia, long a world leader in oil production, prioritized protecting its oil infrastructure, Shihabi said, and did not expect the Houthis to “attack an airport of civilians.”
After that attack, which killed 13, he said, Saudi Arabia is reprioritizing its air defenses and focusing on hitting the Houthis hard.
“Saudi Arabia is going to inflict pain on the Houthis to make them be more reasonable,” he said.
Even before the fighting resumed, Yemen faced a dire humanitarian situation, with 18 million people facing severe hunger, according to the World Food Program. Since September, more than 200,000 people have been displaced, deepening instability.
So long as the Houthis besiege the government-held city of Taiz - preventing food and supplies from reaching its nearly 1 million residents - the government “won’t back off from fighting,” the other Yemeni official added. “Unfortunately it’s a deadlock situation.”
Yemen’s health minister, Qasem Buhaibeh, warned last Saturday of a “health and humanitarian catastrophe,” saying Taiz’s hospitals were running low on fuel and medical supplies.
As the Houthis “ride their highest high in recent years,” Saudi Arabia is facing a virtually impossible calculation with military escalation the most viable option, said Adam Baron, a fellow at New America, a Washington-based think tank.
If they do not accept the emergent status quo, Baron said, the Saudis would have to “accept that the Houthis are going to be a dominant regional power with weapon-making capacity and an arsenal that is already more significant than some states.”
The Houthis are so extreme, there is no way neighboring Saudi Arabia could accept them, said Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni American risk adviser, noting that the rebels want control of airports and ports, compensation from the Saudis for the years-long war and for its members to be paid government salaries.
There appears little room for negotiation and a lot of room for escalation, al-Basha said, as the Houthis cross “every red line imaginable” with attacks on civilians, including Muslim pilgrims who were hit in the airport attack.
“There is still a lot of room for more intense fighting,” he said, “for more bad things to happen.”
- Mohamad El Chamaa is a Beirut-based researcher and reporter for The Washington Post, covering Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, and the Persian Gulf. An urban planner by training, he previously worked on housing in post-disaster events and was a features reporter for L’Orient Today.