Riyadh and Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels are on the brink of renewed conflict. Could war-ravaged Yemen be drawn into a wider Middle East war?
https://p.dw.com/p/5I3okStrikes between the Iran-backed Houthi militia in Yemen and Saudi Arabia indicate that Yemen could be dragged into the wider Iran warImage: Khaled Ziad/AFPAdvertisementMilitary strikes between Yemen's ruling Houthi militia and Saudi Arabia have flared for the first time since the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and the Houthis agreed to a truce in 2022.
Tensions rose earlier in July when the Iran-backed Houthi group claimed that Saudi Arabia had struck the airport in Sanaa to prevent Houthi leaders from returning after the funeral of Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Saudi Arabia, for its part, has denied the attack and claimed that the Houthis were spreading false claims.
Since then, the Houthis have struck facilities owned by Saudi Arabia's national oil company, Aramco, forcing the Jazan production site to shut down. The blow hit Saudi Arabia particularly hard as Jazan has been serving as an export hub to circumvent Iran's ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis also announced that they would block Saudi-linked commercial vessels from passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden — prompting several ships to turn back this week. The narrow strait has become more significant for Saudi oil exports due to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis said they fired missiles at the oil tanker NCC Ghazal.
Riyadh, meanwhile, confirmed it had struck Houthi targets in response to the threats to Red Sea shipping. On Thursday, Saudi Arabia's Foreign Ministry announced that it was establishing a multinational defense maritime coalition to protect key shipping routes. According to the statement on X, 14 countries had already confirmed participation.
"The current escalation appears to be driven primarily by the Houthis," Elham Manea, a political scientist and adjunct professor at the University of Zurich specializing in Middle East and Gulf studies, told DW.
For her, it is increasingly obvious that the Houthis, who are part of Tehran's "Axis of Resistance" — Iran's paramilitary proxy groups including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Shiite militias in Iraq who all call for the elimination of the United States and Israel — have abandoned their strategy to refrain from joining the wider US-Iran war.
The conflict, which began with US-Israeli attacks on Iran in late February, has since engulfed much of the Middle East. This week, Saudi Arabia also joined US forces in striking infrastructure used by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq.
"The Houthis are now using the wider US–Iran confrontation to revive unresolved issues with Saudi Arabia," Manea said, noting that "the Houthi strategy is to raise costs for Riyadh and strengthen their own bargaining position."
She added that Houthi leader Abdulmalik al-Houthi's recent speeches are quite revealing in this respect. "While they express solidarity with Iran, they increasingly justify escalation through specifically Yemeni demands directed at Riyadh."
Above all, the Houthis want Saudi Arabia to end its air and sea blockades on Houthi-held territory which have not been fully lifted despite the truce in 2022.
Despite the current escalation, it is still too early to conclude that Saudi Arabia has abandoned its policy of restraint in Yemen, Manea cautioned. "Since the 2022 truce, Riyadh's priority has been to extricate itself from the Yemen war and create the regional stability needed for its broader economic transformation 'Vision 2030'," Manea said.
Sherwan Hindreen Ali, Middle East Research Manager at the conflict monitoring watchdog ACLED, also still sees some leverage before a return to a full-scale war. "The Houthis have left some room for de-escalation," he noted in a recent analysis. Two ships bound for China carrying Saudi crude passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait without incident on 23 July, suggesting that at least some ships are exempt from the Houthi blockade, he wrote.
Michael Stephens, senior Middle East security advisor at the London-based Royal United Services Institute, points to previous experiences between the factions. "If Saudi Arabia and the Houthis go back to war in Yemen, I suspect the ending will be the same: A lot of money spent, many lives lost, and eventually the realization that both sides will have to talk," he told DW. In his view, the Houthis are unlikely to be defeated without a costly invasion.
The war between the Houthis — which the United States redesignated as a foreign terrorist organization in March 2025 — and Saudi Arabia escalated in 2015 when Saudi Arabia joined the war in Yemen in support of Yemen's internationally recognized government.
Since the truce in 2022, the Houthis have largely consolidated their position as the de facto rulers of Yemen. However, the country remains divided: The Houthis control the capital Sanaa, most of northern Yemen and parts of the center. The UN-recognized government, now based primarily in Aden and exiled in Saudi Arabia, controls parts of the south and east, while the separatist Southern Transitional Council dominates much of the south. Tribal groups retain significant influence in parts of the east.
Human rights organizations point out that the population is yet to recover from those years of devastating war. According to the United Nations, Yemen is still suffering from one of the world's worst humanitarian crises.
"Since 2014, the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis have destroyed food and water infrastructure across Yemen and they have also blocked food, fuel, and humanitarian aid from reaching segments of the population," Niku Jafarnia, Yemen researcher at Human Rights Watch, told DW. "The impact on the population has been clear," she said.
The conflict has left more than half of the population without adequate access to basic food needs and many people are already on the brink of starvation, Jafarnia told DW. Her worry is that "as warring parties escalate the conflict again, there is a real risk that they will also again weaponize civilians' basic needs."
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