Why the Houthis' new offensive could reverberate beyond Yemen

The past week has seen a dramatic and worrying escalation in the Yemen conflict, with the Iran-backed Houthis launching simultaneous attacks against the internationally recognised Yemeni government and its backer, Saudi Arabia.

The return of large-scale fighting risks bringing a violent end to the 2022 ceasefire and inflicting additional chaos on a wider region already reeling from the Iran war.

In the latest indication that internal escalation in Yemen won’t remain confined to the country’s borders, Houthi spokesperson Yahya Saree announced Sunday the group targeted a Saudi Aramco refinery in the kingdom’s southwestern city of Jazan.

Additionally, the group said it fired missiles and drones at Yemen’s Mocha port, one of the main ports still controlled by the internationally recognized government that was using it as an alternative to the major Houthi-held Hodeidah port.

The cross-border strikes followed two separate Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia’s Najran border province last week, injuring 11. The group also resumed attacks on commercial ships passing through the Red Sea, sinking an Indian-flagged vessel.

On Thursday, they escalated inside Yemen, launching attacks against government forces in Hadhramaut and Marib provinces, killing an estimated 38 to 58 troops.

Over the weekend, Yemen’s army announced the launch of a military operation in response to these attacks and accused the group of dragging the country into regional conflicts.

Yemen on the brink

“We are on the brink of another escalation, but it's unclear to what scale this will take shape,” Ryan Bohl, a senior Middle East and North Africa analyst at the risk intelligence company RANE, told The New Arab.

“It’s clear the Houthis are now pushing on the Marib front line,” he said. “But what is less clear is whether or not the Saudis are going to escalate to responses beyond that geography or towards other cities throughout Houthi-controlled territory like Taiz or Hodeidah.”

The RANE analyst assesses this latest attack as significant since they suggest the Houthi offensive will consist of ground offensives against Saudi Arabia’s coalition allies in Yemen.

“This suggested that the Houthi campaign is not merely about harassing Saudi Arabia’s economic model,” Bohl said. “But also taking and holding ground within Yemen over long-disputed territory.”

Emergent alliances

A Saudi official said late last week that the kingdom was bracing for “multiple coordinated attacks” against it by both the Houthis and the Iran-backed Iraqi militias.

Citing “multiple intelligence reports,” the official said Iran-backed Iraqi militias plan on attacking Saudi Arabia “in coordination with the Houthis” and guided by Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps paramilitary.

In a first in late July, Saudi Arabia and the United States executed joint airstrikes targeting IRGC-backed Iraqi militias across Iraq after these groups after the kingdom came under fire from Iraq in tandem with Houthi attacks.

Reuters subsequently reported that the Houthis had attacked Saudi Arabia from Iraqi territory in addition to Yemen in coordination with the Iraqi groups.

Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed a new defence agreement in Mecca titled the “Mecca Joint Defence Agreement” on Friday. In a joint statement, the three countries affirmed that the agreement means that an armed attack against any one of these countries would be seen as an attack on all three.

“I think it’s too early to say whether or not the tripartite pact will actually have an impact on Saudi Arabia’s security environment,” said RANE’s Bohl.

“Turkey is very unlikely to intervene against militias in Iraq or the Houthis, and for that matter it doesn't look like Pakistan will either,” he added. “But the alliance isn’t designed for that sort of tripwire deterrence. Instead, it may shape perceptions of risk and escalation.”

For now, the RANE analyst believes it’s hard to assess how much political will Saudi Arabia has to escalate against the Houthis.

“I tend to see that the immediate outlook is that they will focus on using their Yemeni proxies to reduce Houthi capabilities and pressure them along the front lines,” Bohl told The New Arab.

“But if the Houthis continue to escalate against them, I think that they might consider more significant ground operations starting with major pushes around disputed cities,” he added.

“However, if there is an offensive, it could exacerbate the already dire humanitarian situation in Houthi-controlled territory.”

New threshold

Fatima Abo Alasrar, author of the Ideology Machine, a publication on authoritarian information systems, says that the attacks inside Yemen mark a new “threshold” in the conflict with regional ramifications extending beyond that country.

She strongly underlined that these latest developments in Yemen aren’t merely tied to a perceived threat to the Houthis from Saudi Arabia.

“The Houthis are an arm of Tehran and cannot be seen any other way,” Alasrar told The New Arab.

“They’re moving to solidify their grip on Yemen and protect themselves from any backlash precisely because Iran is interested in the Bab al-Mandab and through them it implements this policy,” she added.

“So, they’re moving to make sure they don’t incur any losses.”

The timing of the Houthis latest moves inside Yemen undoubtedly benefits Tehran in its current negotiations, as the Bab al-Mandab is important for the IRGC.

Iran is presently negotiating over the Strait of Hormuz with Oman and the United States, making severalsteep demands for any reopening on Sunday.

Having the Houthis positioned to close Bab al-Mandab alongside Hormuz simultaneously gives Tehran greater leverage against its adversaries and the capability to disrupt and escalate far beyond its borders and impact global trade.

The Iran-backed group already declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia in July after Riyadh opposed Tehran resuming flights to Yemen’s Houthi-controlled capital city Sanaa.

The past week’s events, Alasrar noted, mark the deadliest escalation between the Houthis and the government in years. The Houthis’ renewed and ferocious attacks in Yemen are aimed at shoring up their position and undermining the government’s power ahead of any movement against the vast swathes of strategic Yemeni infrastructure and territory it controls.

The group currently controls about one third of Yemen’s landmass, in which at least 70 percent of the population lives.

Alasrar recalled that the previous Saudi-led intervention against the Houthis from 2015 until 2022 prevented the Iran-backed group from capturing even more vital territory in Yemen, such as Marib but also Hadramawt and Aden.

The latter critical port city is where the UN-recognised government, the Presidential Leadership Council, has operated since the Houthis captured Sanaa in 2014.

“The direct challenge by the Saudi-led coalition quickly saw the Houthis pushed back from these strategic areas,” Alasrar said. “That was significant since the Houthis main objective was and remains land conquest, unilaterally controlling Yemen, and guaranteeing a permanent foothold there for Iran.”

“The Houthis seemed to show restraint at the start of the regional Iran war earlier this year, but in reality, they were preparing precisely for this present moment,” she added.

“As I wrote in early March, they had already spent months turning the civilian infrastructure they control into a conscription apparatus for a war no one, but them, was planning for yet.”

Now it seems that war may have just begun.

Paul Iddon is a freelance journalist based in the Middle East who writes extensively about the region's affairs, conflicts, and politics

Follow him on Twitter: @pauliddon

Edited by Charlie Hoyle