There’s No End in Sight to Yemen’s Destructive War

Since July 2026, the war in Yemen has resumed at a fiercer and more destructive tempo than its original outbreak in 2015. Fighting on the ground is costing hundreds of lives, mainly among the Huthi troops whose leaders are sending waves of young and inexperienced fighters, many of whom were forcibly recruited, to the front lines in pursuit of their offensive.

Fighting continues in the northern areas of Marib and Sa’ada bordering Saudi Arabia. In early September, Ansar Allah took control of the southern part of the Yemeni coast, including both the Bab al-Mandab Strait and Mokha. It achieved this rapid victory thanks to three main factors: its own command efficiency, continued division and lack of coordination among its opponents, and the use of advanced technology, including artificial intelligence misinformation systems.

The period since the 2022 truce allowed the Huthis to strengthen and improve their strategy and acquire even more sophisticated weaponry. Their intervention against Israel between late 2023 and 2025 gave them an international popularity boost. Links and support from Hezbollah and Iran contributed to their military skills, assisted by the purchase of advanced technological elements on the international market.

They have also benefited from AI advances, as was demonstrated recently by their of Anthropic’s Claude to develop a missile and then to identify the cause of its failure. The Huthis have long since demonstrated the absurdity of dismissing their movement as a bunch of wild, sandal-wearing tribesmen armed with handguns.attempted use

Partly as a consequence of the military battering suffered in 2025 from the fifty-two-day US bombing campaign and a number of well-targeted Israeli air strikes, Ansar Allah initially chose to stay on the sidelines of the US-Israeli war against Iran. It expressed support for Iran but only launched a few missiles against Israel in late March, thus maintaining the image of being anti-Israeli rather than pro-Iran.

It is only since the breakdown of the “Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding” in late June that the Huthis have taken an active role in the Red Sea. Instead of closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait altogether, following Iranian statements that this option was an additional weapon in the struggle to control the world hydrocarbon market, the Huthis limited their blockade to Saudi shipping. They made a mutual nonaggression deal with the , stating that they would not interfere with shipping from any other country.United States

One should note that this implies Israeli shipping is also welcome to use the Red Sea, contrary to the Huthi basic slogan “Death to America, Death to Israel!” and raising questions about their ideological commitments. Between March and July, the Saudis had transferred most of their oil exports through the East–West Pipeline to reach the sea, thus minimizing the disruption to their trade resulting from the Gulf blockades.

Attacks on Saudi shipping in August reduced the amount of oil exported from Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu port from five million barrels per day to fewer than two million. This was in addition to the considerable additional cost and time needed to reach the East Asian market, as oil has to be transported all the way around Africa. This has contributed to the world oil crisis.

The Huthis had a number of reasons to initiate the fighting at this time. The twenty million people under their rule are suffering worsening poverty due to the growing economic impact of the US designation of Ansar Allah as a “foreign terrorist organization.” This has been combined with the almost complete withdrawal of humanitarian aid to Huthi-ruled areas.

Although popular suffering is not a major motivation for Ansar Allah, poverty reduces potential sources of taxation, which is needed to finance military salaries and the purchase of weaponry. The closer relationship of Saudi Arabia with the IRG that followed the exclusion of Emirati-backed southern separatists in early 2026 was also an emerging threat. This was linked to efforts to overcome the remaining divisions within IRG-linked forces.

Internationally, the Huthis were concerned about Saudi Arabia’s nascent initiatives, such as the Mecca Defence Alliance with Pakistan and Turkey and the Multinational Maritime Defense Coalition. The latter is a defensive naval alliance formed in July 2026 to protect shipping, international trade, and energy supply lines from Huthi attacks.

The international situation will also have encouraged Huthi leaders, suggesting to them that neither the United States nor Israel was likely to focus on Yemen or Saudi Arabia while preoccupied with forthcoming elections and their ongoing, stalemated wars. Combined with a widespread sense of exhaustion over the “no war, no peace” situation, this will have motivated the Huthis to go on the attack while they were still clearly the stronger military entity.

In July, the Saudis bombed the runway of Sana’a airport to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing. Ansar Allah used this as a pretext to justify escalation. It demanded an end to all blockades on Yemen and described Saudi Arabia as its main enemy, reviving the decade-old discourse and barely mentioning its Yemeni opponents.

Starting in August, the offensive rapidly shifted from the better-defended Marib region, where the Huthis had failed to break through prior to the truce, to the southern Red Sea coast. Their rapid successes here made it possible to take Mokha and reach the Bab al-Mandab Strait and its islands by September 10.

Although fighting persists in Marib and Saada, the main focus is now Taiz governorate and its capital, which is under siege and suffering both military and humanitarian emergencies. While conditions in Taiz are extreme, the city reflects a wider pattern of IRG fragmentation and offers the best site from which to examine Yemen’s political divisions.

Taiz has been the focus of fighting between the Huthis and their opponents throughout the decade, with parts of the city and governorate under the control of either side. Long considered the country’s intellectual capital, it is home to the strongest elements of all political forces, from Salafis at one extreme to the Yemeni Socialist Party at the other, as well as a multiplicity of armed groups.

As well as resisting the Huthis for the past decade, these forces have also fought against each other. At different times, military groups connected with al-Qaeda, the Islah party, Tareq Saleh’s National Resistance forces, and other elements have fought for control of the city and its sources of income. Today, in the face of a possible complete takeover by the Huthis, their opponents face an urgent need to overcome these differences.

The rapid failure of Saudi-backed IRG forces in September came as a shock. Lack of coordination into a single effective command and rivalries between units demonstrated that the process of military restructuring that had been implemented since February was far from complete.

As elsewhere in Yemen, patience was running thin with the “no war, no peace” situation, and the IRG was getting ready for the resumption of fighting. In response to the Huthi offensive, it launched the “Dawn of Yemen” counteroffensive in early October. This move successfully recovered some territory in the vicinity of the strait, but it has stalled without being able to break the siege of Taiz, despite some gains in the far north.

There is no doubt that the IRG seriously underestimated Huthi technological capacities, and it may also have failed to develop its own skills in that sector. The absence of ground-based cadres certainly contributes to strategic failures, such as the one that resulted in the massacre of seventy-three new recruits and the wounding of more than two hundred in Shabwa on October 19.

The “Dawn of Yemen” offensive aims to defeat the Huthis. To achieve that task, it would require unity, a sophisticated overall perspective, and preparations for a long-term struggle. Yemenis throughout the country desperately long for an end to the war with a reasonable agreement that would allow them to focus on recovery and development.

The IRG is not the Saudi mercenary force that the Huthis speak of in their propaganda. But it cannot win the war on its own for both financial and political reasons, so it needs Saudi backing. Unfortunately, Saudi political influence remains a fundamental feature of the scene in Yemen that we cannot ignore.

Ansar Allah has also been launching missile attacks on Saudi Arabia that are regular and often lethal. This has had a considerable impact on the Saudi economy. The latest highly publicized international event to have been postponed to better days was the annual “Davos in the Desert” investment conference. This followed a series of less prominent cancellations, all of which have affected the regime’s reputation and its ability to attract investment.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman must bitterly regret his initial decision to go to war against the Huthis in 2015 and has been trying to extricate his country from the Yemen quagmire since 2020. Negotiators were close to reaching a deal in late 2023, but the Gaza genocide and the US-Israeli war against Iran put paid to those efforts. While Iran is unlikely to be directly responsible for Huthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, the contribution of those attacks to pressure on world hydrocarbon supplies helps Tehran in its stand-off with the United States.

In the long run, Saudi vulnerability also weakens its potential for regional domination. The kingdom’s malaise has revealed the failure of the massive bribes it has dispensed over the course of decades to buy support in its hour of need. In spite of the recent international agreements, the rulers of Egypt and Pakistan are only offering limited assistance.

British and French contributions will not change the course of the war, and the billions Riyadh has promised to Trump have not persuaded Washington to throw its weight on the scales. Having spent billions more on high-tech weaponry, mostly from the United States, the Saudi military finds itself unable to stop Huthi missiles, due to a lack of interceptors and the vastness of their country. Saudi Arabia now stands alone, facing the Huthis directly within its borders.

Saudi Arabia’s experience since 2015 has confirmed that air strikes alone do not win a war. This has certainly contributed to the regime’s hesitation about deploying its military in Yemen once again — a military that already has a reputation as a “parade” force. But the IRG ground forces will need aerial support if they are going to reverse the Huthi gains of recent months.

Huthi calls for major financial and political concessions from the Saudi regime become more and more unrealistic as they continue their strikes on Saudi infrastructure, raising the issue of Ansar Allah’s objectives. The dilemma for the Saudi regime worsens by the day: if it wants to reach a deal with the Huthis, that will require unacceptable and unfeasible concessions, but if it continues launching air strikes against their forces in Yemen, there will be more retaliation against targets within the kingdom.

It is difficult to see Iran’s offer to mediate with the Huthis as anything other than an attempt to persuade the Saudis to make major concessions. Quiet mediation by Oman is also unlikely to achieve much while the Huthis believe they are on a winning streak. Meanwhile, millions of Yemenis are now in a state of deepening crisis, with hunger and the lack of medical supplies compounded by the risk of bombing, and without any end or hope in sight.