by After Iran-backed rebels took control of Yemen’s capital in 2014, a 30-year-old Saudi prince named Mohammed bin Salman led a military intervention to defeat them.
with american attendance and weapons, Saudi pilots embarked on a bombing campaign called Operation Decisive Storm inside Yemen, the mountainous nation on their southern border. Authorities hoped to quickly defeat the rebels, a ragtag tribal militia known as the Houthis.
Instead, the prince’s forces spent years mired in a conflict that splintered into fighting between multiple armed groups, drained billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s coffers and helped plunge Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. . Hundreds of thousands of people died from rampant violence, hunger, and disease.
Saudi Arabia and its main partner, the United Arab Emirates, eventually reduced their military involvement (partly due to American pressure) and Saudi officials began peace talks with the Houthis, who secured control of northern Yemen.
Now, the war in Gaza has thrust the Houthis — whose ideology is driven by hostility toward the United States and Israel and support for the Palestinian cause — to an unlikely place in the global spotlight.
The militia is creating chaos in the Red Sea by launching missiles and drones toward Israel and commercial ships, and the United States has formed an international maritime coalition to try to deter them and is weighing other measures to confront the group.
Saudi Arabia, however, would prefer to watch these latest developments from the sidelines, with the prospect of peace on its southern border being a more attractive goal than joining an effort to stop attacks that the Houthis say are aimed at Israel, a state which the kingdom does not officially recognize and what is widely vilified for its people.
Crown Prince Mohammed is now the de facto Saudi ruler and is not interested in being drawn back into a conflict with the Houthis, according to Saudi and US officials.
“To have a stable region, you need economic development throughout the region,” Prince Mohammed said in a television program. interview in September, shortly before the war in Gaza began, when Saudi officials received a Houthi delegation in the Saudi capital, Riyadh. “There is no need to see problems in Yemen.”
As the prince races to advance his sweeping plan to try to transform Saudi Arabia into a global business hub by 2030, he has been working to calm conflicts and tensions across the Middle East, including through rapprochement with the rival regional kingdom, Iran. .
Saudi officials and analysts say the return of Houthi missiles flying over Riyadh or attacking cities in southern Saudi Arabia – a relatively common occurrence at the height of the Yemen war – is the last thing the prince needs as he tries to convince tourists and investors that the Islamic regime The kingdom is open for business.
“Escalation benefits no one,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, said in a statement. television interview this month. “We are committed to ending the war in Yemen and we are committed to a permanent ceasefire that opens the door to a political process.”
Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment.
The new Saudi strategy in Yemen, which moves away from direct military action and leans toward cultivating relationships with Yemeni factions, is driven by the reality that after eight years of war, the Houthis have effectively won. As the fighting has subsided, the militia – which espouses a religious ideology inspired by a subsect of Shiite Islam – has settled into power in northern Yemen, where it has created an impoverished proto-state that rules with a Iron fist.
As they face the prospect of conflict with the United States with evident relish, the Houthis are taking advantage of their expanded military capabilities and an apparent bravery honed in their clashes with the Saudi-led coalition.
If the United States sends soldiers to Yemen, its troops will face a conflict worse than its protracted wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the militia leader, threatened in a televised speech Wednesday. The Houthis are “not afraid” to fight the United States directly and, in fact, would prefer that, he declared.
If the Houthis say they want a war with the United States, they also appear to have used the Gaza conflict as an opportunity to promote a central goal.
“Death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews” is part of the group’s motto, and the Houthis have presented their attacks on commercial ships as a fair battle to force Israel to end its siege of Gaza.
The Houthis are also an important arm of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which includes armed groups across the Middle East, although Yemeni analysts and Saudi officials say they view the militia as a complex Yemeni group rather than a purely Iranian proxy. .
In his speech on Wednesday, al-Houthi demanded that other Arab countries step aside and “let the Americans and the Israelis enter into a direct war with us.”
“If you want to dance on the bodies of the victims, dance,” he said, in a veiled reference to a series of recent concerts in Saudi Arabia, including a Metallica performance. “But do not participate with the Americans in a war against us.”
For the Houthis, such a war would be a “golden opportunity to fulfill their narrative, allow them to recruit easily and gain credibility among the people,” said Shoqi Al-Maktary, senior Yemeni adviser to Search for Common Ground, a Washington organization. Grassroots organization that works to resolve conflicts.
This is particularly true as the Israeli bombing of Gaza – launched in response to the deadly Hamas attacks on October 7 – generates pain and anger throughout the Middle East, directed not only at Israel, but also at the United States, its main ally. .
Before the war in Gaza began, the Houthis were on the verge of signing a peace deal backed by the United States and Saudi Arabia that would potentially consolidate their position in power and allow the international community to declare the beginning of the end of the war in Yemen.
At least so far, the Houthi response to the Gaza war does not appear to have dampened Saudi Arabia’s appetite for a deal on Yemen, analysts said.
“The war in Gaza did not undermine talks between the Houthis and the Saudis; on the contrary, it brought them closer together,” said Ahmed Nagi, senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group.
In an interview with The New York Times in late September, Ali al-Qahoom, a member of the Politburo of Ansar Allah, the political arm of the Houthis, said that negotiations with Saudi Arabia had been “full of seriousness and optimism.”
Al-Qahoom said they had discussed how to facilitate the payment of salaries to public officials (who have not received compensation for years) and the possible reopening of airports and ports, measures that could alleviate the suffering of millions of Yemenis who desperately need help. .
“Our opinions were quite close,” al-Qahoom said. “What prevents reaching an agreement is the renunciation of obligations by Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Britain and the United States to address the destruction caused by eight years of war and other issues such as reconstruction and reparations.”
This appeared to be a reference to the monetary compensation the Houthis hope to receive from Saudi Arabia as part of an incentive for any deal.
Analysts say the Saudi government is likely to include some form of payment to close the deal.
Amid these negotiations with the Houthis, Saudi Arabia has also continued to cultivate a warmer relationship with Iran, its old enemy. President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran made his first visit to Riyadh in November.
This week, the United States announced a naval task force to address the threat posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were not among its members; the only Arab nation to join was Bahrain, where the move sparked popular anger.
Saudi Arabia “is not interested in any Western efforts to protect Israel,” said Sulaiman al-Oqeliy, a Saudi political commentator. wrote on the social media platform frustration with the United States in recent days, arguing that US policy toward the war in Yemen helped the Houthis prosper.
The United States respects that some countries may have “domestic reasons” for remaining outside the task force, said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. told reporters.
U.S. military planners have prepared preliminary Houthi targets in Yemen, in case senior Biden administration officials order retaliatory strikes, two U.S. officials said. But military officials say the White House has shown no desire to respond militarily to the Houthis and risk a broader regional war.
“Sometimes in the Middle East you don’t make good and bad decisions,” Prince Mohammed said in a interview in 2018, when asked about the war in Yemen. “Sometimes bad decisions and worse decisions are made.”
Ahmed Al-Omran, Shuaib Almosawa and Eric Schmitt contributed with reports.
