Fighting in Yemen has entered a new and more dangerous phase. Yemen’s internationally recognised government, backed by Saudi Arabia, says it has retaken ground from the Iran-backed Houthi movement near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the narrow waterway linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis say Saudi aircraft carried out about 60 airstrikes overnight, including on the capital, Sanaa, and that they answered with missiles and drones fired at the kingdom, including an attack aimed at Riyadh’s main airport. None of these claims has been independently verified, and both sides have an interest in presenting events favourably. What is clear is that a regional conflict that spent months at the margins of the wider war involving Iran is now moving toward its centre.
According to Yemen’s state news agency Saba, government forces took control of the Red Sea city of Mokha on Monday after battles with the Houthis. They also say they have taken other areas near the strait, such as Dhubab. The Saudi-led coalition, which announced a large operation on Sunday to recapture Houthi-held territory, says it destroyed a ballistic-missile launcher in Sanaa and conducted a naval operation that hit military targets, including weapons depots, in Hodeida. That port, north of the strait, has been in Houthi hands for more than a decade.
The offensive follows weeks of escalation. The Houthis had largely stayed out of the US-Israel war on Iran until around July, when they announced a blockade of Saudi ports, saying the kingdom was besieging parts of Yemen. In early September fighting intensified: the Houthis began firing on Saudi Arabia almost daily, regularly targeting its cities and energy sites, and pushed south from their north-western heartland toward the strait.
The strait is one of the world’s key arteries for energy tankers and container ships. The Houthis were already disrupting some traffic, and the reported capture of Mokha, before the counteroffensive, had tightened their grip on the chokepoint. For now they say they will target only Saudi vessels. Even so, the threat has been enough to persuade many non-Saudi shipping firms to avoid the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden on either side of the strait.
That reaction is the central economic point. A blockade does not need to be total to be costly. When insurers, charterers and shippers treat a route as too risky, the effect is felt through longer voyages, higher freight and insurance costs and tighter supply of fuel and goods. With energy markets already unsettled by the wider Iran conflict, a second pressure point on the Red Sea route compounds the strain on the global economy. Any Houthi strike on Saudi energy infrastructure would add to that pressure directly.
Analysts are cautious about what the offensive can achieve. Even if the coalition holds the ground it has gained in the past 48 hours, it is unlikely to reach its stated goal of “eliminating” the Houthis. The group captured Sanaa in 2014, which set off Yemen’s civil war, and today controls territory that holds roughly 70% of the country’s population. It has withstood bombing campaigns by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, Britain and Israel.
History is therefore a sobering guide. Air power has repeatedly failed to dislodge the movement, and territorial gains on the coast do not touch its core base in the north-west. The movement’s ability to strike at a distance also does not depend on holding any particular town: regardless of territorial changes, it can still hit targets ranging from energy infrastructure to airports and civilian facilities in Saudi Arabia.
Within the coalition, the main concern is the quality of the ground forces. Analysts describe the Yemeni units as “rife with infighting,” which hampers decision-making, and say they have not proven very competent militarily. A counteroffensive that depends on such forces carries a high risk of stalling, or of ceding back ground once the initial momentum fades. This is why Saudi Arabia’s offensive is described as a gamble, and as a sign of the tough position the kingdom is in: it faces regular attacks on its own territory, yet the means of responding on the ground are limited.
The air campaign adds its own risks. Strikes on Sanaa and Hodeida can damage infrastructure and harm civilians in a country already suffering from years of war, and they give the Houthis grounds to justify further attacks on Saudi targets. The cycle of strike and counter-strike raises the chance of a mistake or a hit on a high-casualty target, which could widen the war.
Late on Monday, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan said they had agreed to the immediate “implementation of the collective defense commitments” of their recently signed Mecca Pact, at an emergency meeting of the alliance in Riyadh. The three countries pledged to provide “military forces and capabilities” and to ensure their “rapid deployment in the Kingdom.”
The announcement is politically significant: it is the first visible test of a new defensive alliance, and it signals that Riyadh wants to show it is not alone. Its practical effect on the Yemen offensive may be limited, however. Analysts expect the forces involved to be committed mainly to the defence of Saudi Arabia itself, and to offer little help in the offensive on the ground. In that sense the pact reinforces Saudi air defences and deterrence, but does not solve the problem of how to beat the Houthis in Yemen.
Several indicators will show where this is heading. The first is whether the coalition can actually hold Mokha and the surrounding coast, or whether the Houthis counterattack. The second is the scale of Houthi strikes on Saudi territory, especially on airports and energy sites, and on shipping, in particular any extension of their threats beyond Saudi-linked vessels. The third is the response of Iran, the Houthis’ principal backer, and of the other powers that have bombed the group in the past. The fourth is the shipping industry’s reaction: if more companies avoid the Red Sea, the economic effects will spread well beyond the Gulf.
The broader lesson is that the Yemen front is no longer a side show. It sits at the intersection of the Iran war, the security of Gulf energy supplies and the safety of one of the world’s busiest sea lanes. A military victory over the Houthis looks out of reach on the available evidence, so the more realistic question is whether the offensive strengthens Saudi Arabia’s hand for eventual negotiations or simply raises the costs for everyone involved. Until the claims of both sides can be verified and the next round of strikes is seen, the safest assumption is that the risk to shipping, energy markets and civilians is rising, not falling.
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