War is once again descending on Yemen, a country once described as the world’s worst humanitarian disaster. The country is currently experiencing its most serious spell of fighting since 2022, when a United Nations-brokered truce halted eight years of a war that had killed tens of thousands of people. This week, Yemen’s internationally recognised government launched counterattacks against the Houthi rebels, with fighting intensifying on Monday in the provinces of Taiz, al-Bayda and al-Jawf, the latter seen as one of the main gateways to the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa. The Houthis, meanwhile, say they have repelled some of the government forces’ advances and attacked Saudi Arabia, which supports the Yemeni government.
A wider landscape of regional instability and conflict has created new conditions for Yemen’s unresolved war to flare up once again. Tensions escalated in July after government forces claimed an attack on the Houthi-controlled airport in Sanaa, preventing an aircraft from Iran from landing. More attacks followed, and it further escalated last week when the Houthis launched a major offensive, trying to advance through western Taiz and southern Hodeidah, towards the port city of al-Makha (Mocha) and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the Red Sea. In this new phase of war, the internationally recognised government has its sights set on retaking the capital from the Iran-backed Houthis.
Both, meanwhile, are vying for control of the area near Bab al-Mandeb – which has gained greater significance amid Iran’s effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global oil and gas supplies. The Houthis have conducted regular attacks on shipping in the Red Sea since 2023. Analysts say that government-aligned forces are better resourced than at any point in the conflict, but they also warn against a swift victory. “This is likely to be a protracted war rather than a rapid campaign,” Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni-American analyst and founder of Basha Report, a US-based risk advisory, told Al Jazeera. Analysts say that the Yemeni government’s objective is to retake the whole of the country, after years of civil war and fragmented leadership.
Emboldened by its ability to take back areas in non-Houthi-controlled southern Yemen from the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a UAE-backed separatist group, earlier this year, the government is now setting its sights on the Houthis. “The government was able to control more, and less militias [are] now on the ground … the only [other] player now [is the] Houthis in Sanaa,” Mahjoob Zweiri, a professor of Middle East politics at Qatar University, told Al Jazeera. Since the defeat of the STC, the Yemeni government has focused on presenting the country’s anti-Houthi forces as a united group with one military chain of command, after years of division. Still, the Houthis remain a “formidable military force”, said al-Basha. “[The Houthis] are going to fight tooth and nail rather than simply fold.” If the Iran-backed group is pushed back, it could dig into its northern tribal highlands around Saada, Hajjah, Sanaa and neighbouring governorates, said the analyst. “That would create a much more geographically defined confrontation between a Houthi-held northern heartland and territories controlled by the internationally recognised government and its allies,” said al-Basha. Against the backdrop of the ongoing US-Israel war on Iran – and attacks from Iran and its allies on the Gulf – the opportunity has been ripe for the Saudi-backed Yemeni government to take on the Houthis. “There is a wide perspective that non-state actors – militias – should be ended regionally,” said Zweiri, adding that there is growing aversion from regional states to such groups. “This also is influencing what’s happening in Yemen,” he explained. “The government … [has] a green light to basically end the current status quo in Yemen.” The US-Israel war on Iran is a particularly important catalyst, said Saudi political analyst Khaled Batarfi. “The confrontation involving the United States, Israel and Iran has changed the strategic value of Yemen,” he told Al Jazeera. “The Houthis are no longer operating only within the framework of Yemen’s civil war; they have demonstrated an ability and willingness to connect the Yemeni battlefield with Red Sea security, international shipping and regional energy infrastructure.” Recent Houthi attacks against Saudi territory – in which dozens of people have been wounded – are particularly significant, he added. “They risk transforming the conflict again from an internal Yemeni confrontation into a direct Saudi-Houthi security crisis,” said Batarfi.
However, even if the wider confrontation involving Iran is resolved or de-escalated, “it does not necessarily follow that the Saudi-Houthi conflict will end”, said al-Basha. “Yemen has its own unresolved war, its own territorial dynamics and its own political demands.” While Saudi Arabia and Iran appear to have an understanding aimed at preventing direct escalation, Iran-aligned armed groups – including the Houthis themselves – could work together to exert military and political pressure on Riyadh, said al-Basha. The Houthis could impose “significant” costs on Saudi Arabia through coordinated long-range missile and drone attacks, even as they face increasing pressure on the ground, he said. And while Saudi Arabia’s priority has been to prevent a return to an open-ended war in Yemen, “attacks on Saudi civilian and energy facilities inevitably change the calculation,” said Batarfi. “No state can indefinitely tolerate direct attacks on its territory,” he said. Iran, meanwhile, occupied with its war with the US, is limited by the additional support it can provide the Houthis, but will likely continue shipping missile and drone components, along with refined fuel and other commodities, said al-Basha.
Another key objective of the internationally recognised government has been to secure the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Iran is leveraging the Strait as a point of pressure through the Houthis, so one of the aims of the war is to ensure the waterway comes under the control of Yemen’s central government, Zweiri said. That also partly explains Saudi Arabia’s support for the offensive – the Houthis had declared a blockade against Saudi vessels transiting the waterway, which is a vital corridor for shipping between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. Bab al-Mandeb has even more significance for Saudi oil exports since Iran began restricting passage through the Strait of Hormuz at the outset of the US and Israel’s war on the country.
But the Houthis are also seeking an advance towards the vital Red Sea shipping route. The group has demonstrated it possesses the firepower to threaten commercial and military shipping across the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and parts of the Arabian Sea, said al-Basha. Eventually, they could also attempt to impose tolls in the waterway, mirroring Iran’s approach around the Strait of Hormuz, he added. “If both Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb become seriously disrupted at the same time, the consequences would extend far beyond Yemen or Saudi Arabia – it would become a major international energy and trade security problem,” said Batarfi. The analysts were in agreement that the trajectory of the conflict appears to be heading towards a larger-scale war in the coming days. “The government seems to be in a stronger position than at any time before, and it sees this round of fighting as an opportunity to consolidate its position and gain more territory from the Houthis,” Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst on Yemen at the International Crisis Group, told Al Jazeera.
It is also the first time the government is fighting on more than one front, activating multiple arenas against the Houthis – and moving from a defensive position to an offensive one, he said. Government forces additionally are better coordinated and have access to more sophisticated weaponry than previous rounds, said Nagi. It’s also likely a conflict that could drag on, said the analysts. “Some initially expected a Syrian-style scenario, with Houthi defences unravelling rapidly in the way Bashar al-Assad’s regime collapsed,” al-Basha said, referring to the December 2024 lightning offensive that brought down al-Assad. “If anything, what we may be looking at is closer to a Sudan-style scenario, with two relatively well-defined geographical blocs pitted against each other in a prolonged and costly conflict,” he warned.
