Red Sea blitz: What Houthi gains mean for Yemen and the Iran war

In a highly consequential development for Yemen and the region, the Houthis captured the strategic port city of Mocha from the internationally recognised Yemeni government, along with a strategic Red Sea island.

The lightning advance over the past week puts them in a prime position to close the Bab al-Mandab Strait more easily than ever before.

The loss of Mocha on 10 September cuts the government’s direct access to the Red Sea, while the capture of the strategic island of Mayun, also known as Perim, a day later enables them to effectively close the Bab al-Mandab in tandem with Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

The offensive, which displaced almost 50,000 people, represents one of the biggest strategic setbacks for the Saudi-backed Yemeni government in several years.

The Houthis captured Yemen’s capital Sanaa and the major port city of Hodeidah in 2014. The Zaydi Shia group fought the government, which relocated to the southern port city of Aden, and its Saudi backers in a devastating war that from 2015 until 2022.

Approximately 150,000 Yemenis have perished, and the country endured a severe humanitarian crisis that pushed it to the brink of famine.

A 2022 Saudi-Houthi ceasefire largely held until July, when fighting resumed after Riyadh attempted to block a direct Mahan Air flight from Tehran to Sanaa, the first since 2015.

The official purpose of that Iranian flight was to pick up and return a Houthi delegation attending the funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Riyadh and the Yemeni government feared an unopposed air bridge would enable Tehran to conveniently fly military equipment directly to its Houthi allies.

The emboldened Houthis have since resumed striking Saudi infrastructure and energy sites with drones and missiles. The kingdom now faces Iran-backed militia attacks from Yemen to its south and Iraq to its north. The latest advance inside Yemen marks the most significant escalation with Aden and its Saudi backer in years.

Serious territorial gains

“The Houthi advance into Mocha is a strong indicator that Iran is seeking to undermine the US-led coalition in its strategic rear, which is the Bab al-Mandab,” Nicholas Heras, Interim Executive Director at the Middle East Policy Council and Senior Director at the New Lines Institute, told The New Arab.

According to reports, Iran told the Houthis to escalate their attacks on Saudi Arabia, promising them more funding and weapons, and Tehran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) paramilitary directly guided the group’s coastal offensive.

“Saudi Arabia is a wavering member of the American coalition against Iran and the resumption of the war in Yemen with rapid Houthi gains is an embarrassing predicament for Saudi Arabia,” Heras said.

Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, pointed out that Mocha “certainly matters” to the Houthis since it expands the “buffer zone” for Hodeidah.

Additionally, it opens up a route for any subsequent attempts to encircle the southwestern city of Taiz, entrenches their influence over the Red Sea, and provides “new launch positions” for striking shipping passing through that vital but narrow Bab al-Mandab.

“I think the Houthis will continue to advance so long as there is military opportunism,” Bohl told The New Arab. “They can always trade away territory for a final settlement since there is the suggestion that they may only be interested in controlling those Zaydi portions of Yemen,” he noted.

“The most likely block on further advances will be the almost certain furious counterattacks by the IRG (Yemen’s Internationally Recognised Government) and the Saudis who will do whatever they can to prevent the fall of a major city like Marib or Taiz or an advance on Aden,” Bohl added.

More broadly, the RANE analyst noted, these advances certainly help the Houthis with their broader Red Sea strategy and potentially give them additional territory which they can trade for a future settlement with Riyadh and the Yemeni government.

Heras echoed this assessment. “The Houthis understand the limits of their power in Yemen beyond the core areas of Zaydi population concentration and are instead seeking to improve their ability to pressure the Saudis to pressure the Americans to support Iran,” he said.

“This Houthi campaign along Yemen’s coast is a declaration that the Houthis are key actors in global geopolitics who are able to undermine the US geostrategy in the Middle East.”

Sherwan Hindreen Ali, a Yemen analyst at Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED), assesses that these Houthi advances mark the “most serious territorial gain” the group has made in years, putting the entire Hodeidah governorate under its effective control.

“This is a major defeat for the IRG - which just a few days ago was boasting of military advances in the very same governorate - and a sign of the extreme unpredictability of the current escalation," he told The New Arab.

Saudi support

RANE’s Bohl expects Saudi air support will prove critical for blunting any further Houthi advance and supporting IRG counterattacks.

“At the same time, so will unity amongst the IRG's ground forces,” he said. “This latter element is the most critical because without a sense of unity these counteroffensives will be stuck being localised and unable to comprehensively roll the Houthis back.”

According to an Axios report, Saudi Arabia’s powerful Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman twice called US President Donald Trump during the Houthi advance, requesting renewed US strikes against them.

Trump declined. Nevertheless, US military advisors in Saudi Arabia are providing expanded intelligence and targeting support for the kingdom’s operations against the Iran-backed group, according to a CNN report.

Bohl noted that Saudi Arabia is already responding to Houthi attacks and advances and is “likely to be drawn into further involvement” in the civil war raging over its southern border. That further involvement could potentially lead to a deployment of Saudi forces into Yemen alongside “enhanced airstrikes” against the group.

The escalation, and ongoing Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia, come a little over a month after the kingdom signed the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement with Turkey and Pakistan on 7 August.

Pakistan has already clarified that it hasn’t planned any military response against the Houthis for their attacks.

“There is no such thing under discussion right now … When the time comes (we) will act under the agreement,” Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesperson Sajjad Haider Khan said on 10 September, the same day Mocha fell.

“As for other members of the Mecca pact, they will remain wary of conducting military operations inside of Yemen given the distant geographies from Turkey and Pakistan, as well as the prospect of trapping their forces in an intractable conflict,” Bohl said.

“But most notably, the change in the Trump administration from the first to the second term may prove to be important.”

He recalled that in its first term at the end of the 2010s, the Trump administration focused on “containment and mitigating the humanitarian impacts” of the Yemen conflict.

Now, in its second term, it perceives Yemen as “part of the struggle” against Iran. Consequently, it may be more likely to support broader Saudi military operations against the Iran-backed group while making “fewer demands” to change tactics that could have a significant humanitarian impact.

Potential scenarios

ACLED’s Yemen analyst Ali sees several potential scenarios for Yemen after these latest Houthi advances.

“The Houthis may press their advantage and launch more attacks to seize the coast of Taiz governorate just south of Hodeideh, bringing the entirety of the Yemeni Red Sea coast under their control,” he said.

“Alternatively, IRG forces may regroup to carry out a counterattack and attempt to reclaim lost territories.”

Both scenarios would mean a “heightened level of violence” and “increased risk for civilians” in Yemen in the coming weeks in addition to “hundreds of military casualties” from “deadlier clashes” along other internal frontlines. Ali anticipates fighting focused in al-Jawf in the east, which borders Saudi Arabia.

Both sides are engaged in heavy clashes there, with strategic sites “changing hands” at a rapid rate. 

“Alternatively, the Houthi blitzing may force Saudi Arabia - which is the IRG’s main backer - back to negotiating with the group to avoid further potential losses for their Yemeni allies in the IRG, which could mean an abrupt end to the current round of escalation,” he said.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, who writes about Middle East affairs

Follow him on X: @pauliddon

Edited by Charlie Hoyle