Saudi Arabia faces high-stakes choices as war with Houthis escalates 

Yemen’s Houthi rebel fighters have broken free from the front lines that have remained broadly frozen in the country since 2022, surging forward to take key positions close to the vital Bab al-Mandeb Strait and opening a new front line in the war that has roiled the region since the US and Israel’s attack on the Houthis’ allies in Iran in February.

In the last few days, Iran-backed Houthi fighters have seized control of the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands and the Red Sea port city of Mocha, tightening the group’s grip on one of the world’s key energy routes in the face of resistance from Yemen’s government-aligned forces.

The Bab al-Mandeb strait’s importance has only grown since Iran, responding to the US and Israeli attacks, proved itself able to significantly restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with some analysts warning this latest advance stands to add further upward pressure on fuel prices globally.

For Saudi Arabia, the threat is no longer about hypotheticals. A drone strike on its East-West Pipeline, the roughly 1,200km (750-mile) conduit that carries around 4 percent of global oil supplies from the Gulf coast to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, forced a shutdown with future passage unknown.

With that pipeline down and the Houthis tightening their hold on the Red Sea coast and islands near Bab al-Mandeb, Saudi Arabia’s two main alternative export routes around Hormuz risk being squeezed at once.

Through its alliance with the Houthis, Iran is threatening almost a third of the global oil economy, said Baraa Shiban, a researcher and political analyst on Yemen and the Gulf at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI).

“Iran knew it couldn’t win a traditional battlefront war, so it is inflicting economic warfare on the world,” he said of the US’s inability to sustain a prolonged and expanded conflict in the Gulf. “The last thing Trump can do is go back to the American public and say they need to get engaged on yet another front inside Yemen.”

Friends in need

As the conflict draws closer to Riyadh’s economic lifelines, the relevance of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement, inked between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan in August, grows more immediate. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said the Mecca pact would be activated in the event of an unprovoked attack on Saudi Arabia or if fighting from Yemen were to spill over into the kingdom. “There should be no doubt in this,” Asif said.

However, what shape that intervention might take remains to be seen.

“Saudi Arabia will unfortunately have to find a military option against the Houthis, whether that is limited or long-term,” Shiban said. “In doing so, they will have to test their new agreements,” including both the Mecca pact and its decades-old alliance with Washington.

“They have a long-established relationship with the United States, and I honestly don’t think the US can just watch from a distance,” Shiban continued. “Eventually, the US will have to provide at least logistical, intelligence, and tactical support for Saudi Arabia.”

Friends in deed?

However, while that might be the case, for now at least, Washington is showing little appetite for taking the fight to the Houthis.

According to reports on the US news site Axios on Friday, Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) phoned US President Donald Trump twice the previous day, calling for US military action against the Houthis. On both occasions, the website reported, Trump refused.

Days later, speaking while on a trip to Dublin, Trump told reporters that the Houthis themselves had been in contact, assuring his administration they had no wish to fight US forces. A day later, US Vice President JD Vance confirmed that Washington was in direct talks with the Houthi rebels, as well as its allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

“It’s probably unhelpful for the US to be speaking directly to the Houthis, and even more unhelpful for the US President to be talking about this on the global stage,” said Elisabeth Kendall, president of Girton College, Cambridge and an authority on Yemeni affairs.

“The Houthis crave political recognition and the international spotlight. Well, now they have it. These kinds of direct talks confer legitimacy. They also throw a spanner in the works of any potential multilateral approach,” she said, referring to previous talks with the Houthis where Oman served as mediator between the US and the rebels.

However, Saudi Arabia is also capable of confronting the Houthi forces directly, analysts point out. The kingdom still fields one of the region’s best-funded air forces and air-defence networks, has backed Yemeni government troops already fighting the Houthis in Taiz, and led a coalition against the group for years before the 2022 truce.

“It is misguided to believe that Saudi Arabia doesn’t have an option for deterrence and retaliation without US support,” Cinzia Bianco of the European Council on Foreign Relations said, adding that this could include calling upon its allies in the Mecca pact, but also acting unilaterally.

“In fact, Riyadh already experienced that US deterrence does not work as well as it did, so they would be looking for creative, asymmetric and hybrid ways to signal deterrence both at the military and political level.”