Saudi Arabia’s bid to “contain” the Houthis in Yemen while doubling down on economic growth at home is collapsing, posing one of the most serious tests for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since he rose to power, according to analysts and diplomats.
A decade ago, the crown prince led the kingdom into a war aimed at ousting the Houthis from power. The conflict turned into a quagmire for Saudi Arabia, sapping its resources and sparking widespread backlash due to its devastating bombing campaign. In the end, Saudi Arabia cut its losses and maintained an uneasy truce with the Houthis since 2022.
“This is the collapse of Saudi Arabia’s containment strategy,” Rob Geist Pinfold, an international security expert at King's College London, told Middle East Eye.
“The way Saudi Arabia approached the Houthis in the last few years was not dissimilar to how Israel treated Hamas in Gaza before 7 October [2023]. The Saudis felt they had the Houthis where they needed them. They weren’t at the stage to reach a political solution, but they felt they had disincentivised them from escalating again.”
The conflict erupted again after Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa airport in July to prevent a plane carrying Houthi officials from landing. MEE reported that Iranian, Syrian and Hezbollah military advisors were on board along with weapons systems.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
The Houthis declared a blockade against Saudi shipping as a result, and launched a lightning offensive down the Red Sea coast last month, which the kingdom and its Yemeni allies have struggled to counter.
'Literally striking'
Unlike the last time a full-scale war raged in Yemen, Saudi Arabia now has more to lose from a widening of the conflict, and the Houthis have become more sophisticated adversaries, experts say.
Saudi Arabia faced Houthi missile and drone attacks during the last round of fighting, but they were nowhere near as precise as this time.
In the last week alone, the Houthis struck Riyadh’s international airport three days in a row. A strike on Saturday killed at least 13 people and injured 300. The group’s targeting capabilities were underscored again on Tuesday when they hit the headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant, Aramco, in the eastern city of Dhahran.
The strikes have caused some to question the capabilities of Saudi Arabia’s military.
The kingdom is a major buyer of American weaponry, including Patriot and Thaad air defence systems. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the kingdom spends 6.5 percent of its GDP on military gear, one of the highest ratios in the world.
“It’s quite striking, literally, that the Houthis can hit, at will, these incredibly important facilities in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis can’t defend them,” Gregory Gause, an expert on the Gulf at the Middle East Institute, told MEE.
“They clearly have much better missiles and targeting technology than they did before,” he said.
A western defence official in Riyadh told MEE that Saudi Arabia is absorbing the vast majority of missiles and drones fired at it, saying the number is likely in the low 90 percent range. But the Houthis are more skilled at penetrating the kingdom’s air defences.
“The Houthis are a lot more effective than Iran was back in February. They learned from earlier this year,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is a combination of innovation, rapid speed and the latest intelligence,” the official said.
The Houthis honed their targeting skills after 7 October 2023, attacking vessels in the Red Sea in what they claimed was solidarity with besieged Palestinians in Gaza. A four-year ceasefire gave the group time to entrench itself in Yemen’s rugged northwestern mountains. They have also received more assistance from Iran and even Russia, MEE has reported.
The gap between aerial offence and defence is not new. Israel is constantly innovating its air defences, and the war between Ukraine and Russia has become a testing ground for new military hardware.
The problem for Saudi Arabia is that it has more to lose from a return to fighting this time.
Who has more to lose?
Saudi Arabia is more connected to the global economy than it was in 2015. It is loath to issue a prolonged closure of Riyadh airport because it is hosting a flagship investment conference at the end of the month, experts say.
The costs of a new escalation are also high. Saudi Arabia generally avoided the worst of Iran’s retaliation against the US and Israel’s attack in February. The kingdom benefited from selling oil at higher prices, as it flexed its stability. That advantage proved fragile.
Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline was temporarily disabled in a strike last month that the kingdom blamed on Iran-aligned militias in Iraq.
'A Houthi strike on Riyadh airport is so much more damaging to the Saudis than a Saudi strike on Sanaa airport is to the Houthis'
- Gregory Gause, Middle East Institute
The kingdom’s economy is already under strain. Saudi Arabia expects its economy to shrink by 3.6 percent this year and has already had to scale back megaprojects that formed part of its Vision 2030 economic plan. A wider war could put more pressure on the kingdom's purse.
“The Saudis can bomb the Houthis as many times as they want, but it doesn’t hurt them because they aren’t interested in creating a modern economy,” Gause said.
“A Houthi strike on Riyadh airport is so much more damaging to the Saudis than a Saudi strike on Sanaa airport is to the Houthis,” he added.
The one advantage Saudi Arabia has this time is that it has a bit more sympathy abroad.
Diplomats and analysts say Saudi Arabia has generally responded with restraint to the Houthi attacks. Video footage from the Houthis' Saturday strike on Riyadh airport showed Umrah pilgrims absorbing the blast, sparking widespread condemnation against the group.
'Is Saudi Arabia too dovish?'
“The Saudis have upped their game when it comes to more precise air raids,” Bader al-Saif, an expert at Kuwait University, told MEE.
The kingdom wants to keep the international community on its side, experts say, especially for wider strategic reasons. Early this month, it activated the Mecca Pact - a joint defence agreement with Pakistan and Turkey. Islamabad has already sent military aid to Saudi Arabia, and Turkey is expected to.
The US, Saudi Arabia's closest ally, has so far refused to become publicly involved in the conflict, although it has sent defensive support and intelligence, experts say.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hosted Democratic Senator Chris Murphy earlier this month in Riyadh. Murphy was one of the sharpest critics of the war in Yemen before the 2022 ceasefire. Notably, he did not call for Saudi Arabia to stand down this time.
Saif, at Kuwait University, said Saudi Arabia may be acting with too much restraint.
“I think you need to flex some muscle. Being dovish when you are being attacked is not quite wise,” he said. “The Houthis need to be pushed to the negotiating table, and that means forcing changes on the ground,” he said.
Because Saudi Arabia is loath to deploy its own ground forces into Yemen, it needs to rely on its local allies.
The kingdom is the biggest backer of Yemen’s internationally recognised government, but those forces are deeply fractured.
'Melted away, showed up unarmed'
The Yemeni government announced earlier this month a full-scale military offensive whose aim is to retake all the territory held by the Houthis since 2014. But a western official in the Gulf tracking the offensive said he was “disappointed” in their performance.
“The capabilities of Yemeni government forces have been hyped up in recent months, but they have been pretty defective,” the official said. “One force showed up to fight without food and water. Other units have just melted away, leaving the flanks exposed.”
The most effective fighters against the Houthis are Yemeni factions aligned with the UAE. Saudi Arabia clashed with the Gulf neighbour over its support for these forces' secessionist ambitions, complicating efforts to create a cohesive military.
Last month, Saudi Arabia hosted UAE Vice President Mansour bin Zayed in a bid to mend fences with its neighbour. But on Tuesday, the exiled head of Yemen’s secessionist movement, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, appeared in a video with a map of the former southern Yemeni state behind him.
Yemen was divided in two from 1967 to 1990, with southern Yemen as an independent Marxist state.
Although Zubaidi called for mobilisation against the Houthis, he also called on the global community to recognise the constitutional declaration of a southern Yemeni state.
"His appearance was unnecessary and revealed the underlying Saudi-Emirati divergence despite Abu Dhabi’s messaging of solidarity. His statement was not one of cohesion,” Ibrahim Jalal, an independent expert on Yemen and the Arab Gulf, told MEE.
Still, Jalal said that the counter-offensive was still in its early days and Saudi Arabia could do more to empower its local allies. “The Houthis can go further up the escalation ladder than Saudi Arabia,” he said. “So Saudi Arabia needs to arm the government of Yemen in a way that is more enabling.”
Gause, at the Middle East Institute, told MEE that Saudi Arabia is unlikely to change the realities on the ground in Yemen without broader regional deconfliction.
The Houthis have internal motivations for their offensive, but experts say their calculations can’t be separated from the stalled ceasefire between Iran and the US.
“The only practical path the Saudis have right now is pushing the US to have an end to the conflict with Iran. The only way the Houthis get restrained here is if the Iranians tell them to. That can only come from a US-Iran political deal,” he said.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. To learn more about republishing this content and the associated fees, please fill out this form. More about MEE can be found here.