Saudi Arabia Needs a New Yemen Strategy to Defeat the Houthis
By Hussain Abdul-Hussain
Israel’s formidable military and intelligence machines chewed up and spit out two of Iran’s most powerful regional proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah. Tehran’s militias in Iraq have proved far less capable of threatening their neighbors. Yet Iran’s fourth major regional partner, Yemen’s Houthis, has proved astonishingly resilient.
For much of September, the Houthis appeared almost unstoppable. They burst out of the territory they control in northern and central Yemen, swept down the Red Sea coast, seized the strategic port of Mocha and expanded their presence around Bab al-Mandab. As [MidEast Journal recently documented in detail](MidEast Journal’s analysis of the Houthi seizure of Mocha and Mayyun), those gains gave the militia far greater leverage over one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints.
Saudi Arabia has now responded. Beginning October 5, Saudi-backed Yemeni forces launched a major counteroffensive along the western coast, backed by a Saudi-led air campaign involving around 100 aircraft. Government-aligned forces have retaken Dhubab and other positions around Bab al-Mandab and claimed to have pushed the Houthis out of Mocha. The Houthis, in turn, have retaliated with missile and drone attacks against Saudi airports, oil facilities and military targets.
That counteroffensive changes the immediate battlefield picture, but it does not solve Saudi Arabia’s Yemen problem. If anything, the speed with which Yemen returned to full-scale war demonstrates just how dangerous it was for Riyadh to assume that the Houthi threat could simply be contained indefinitely.
The Houthis have become a formidable force because they are no longer merely a localized tribal rebellion. Known formally as Ansar Allah, the movement has developed into a sophisticated military organization with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, drones and anti-ship weapons, capabilities built in large part with Iranian support, training and technology.
The relationship has grown even closer this year. Reuters reported in July that Iran flew between 10 and 21 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel, including senior commanders, into Yemen along with missile- and drone-related equipment. During the Houthis’ September offensive, Yemeni military sources told Reuters that IRGC commanders helped direct the campaign along the Red Sea coast. Those sources said they believed the Iranian effort was being overseen by senior Quds Force commander Abdolreza Shahlaei, also known as Hajj Youssef, for whom the United States is offering a reward of up to $15 million.
This does not mean that every Houthi operation is ordered directly from Tehran. The Houthis have their own leadership, interests and decision-making structure, and even Iranian sources have acknowledged that the decision to seize Mocha was ultimately Houthi-made. But the level of Iranian involvement in building the group’s military capabilities—and increasingly in advising its campaigns—has become impossible to dismiss.
The Houthis have also evolved beyond traditional asymmetric warfare. Hamas and Hezbollah spent decades perfecting methods designed primarily to bleed an advancing Israeli army in dense urban areas, fortified villages and difficult terrain. The Houthis have developed something different: the ability to conduct sustained campaigns across large distances while simultaneously projecting missile, drone and maritime power across international borders.
By repeatedly targeting Saudi infrastructure and threatening shipping through the Red Sea, they have transformed themselves from a Yemeni insurgency into a geopolitical threat to Riyadh. Saudi Arabia has already learned how costly this can become. After years of war, the kingdom largely halted offensive operations against the Houthis following the UN-mediated truce in April 2022 and increasingly sought a negotiated exit from Yemen.
But the years that followed did not eliminate the underlying problem. They merely postponed it.
Saudi Arabia also spent much of the past year reshaping the anti-Houthi coalition inside Yemen. Riyadh had increasingly consolidated power around the internationally recognized Presidential Leadership Council led by Rashad al-Alimi while clashing with UAE-aligned southern separatists. Saudi intervention against the Southern Transitional Council helped drive Abu Dhabi to withdraw from much of its direct role in Yemen, weakening a network of forces that had supplied some of the anti-Houthi camp’s most effective fighters.
The weakness became painfully obvious when the Houthis pushed toward the Red Sea in September. Government forces retreated rapidly from Mocha and other strategic positions, exposing how brittle the Saudi-backed military architecture had become. Ironically, some of the most important forces in the current counteroffensive are once again the southern Giants Brigades, units long associated with Emirati support.
Corruption has made the problem worse. Yemen’s armed forces have long been plagued by so-called “ghost soldiers”—fictitious or inactive personnel placed on military payrolls so commanders can collect their salaries. The Yemeni government only recently began shifting soldiers to direct bank payments precisely to reduce this practice. A military that exists partly on spreadsheets rather than on battlefields will inevitably collapse when subjected to serious pressure.
This is why Saudi Arabia cannot treat the current counteroffensive as the solution simply because it has regained some territory.
The kingdom certainly possesses overwhelming technological superiority. The Houthis have no conventional air force capable of matching Saudi Arabia, and they cannot compete with Riyadh’s arsenal of advanced aircraft, surveillance platforms, air defenses and precision weapons. The Saudi-led offensive around Bab al-Mandab has already demonstrated what coordinated air and ground power can achieve when Riyadh is prepared to use it seriously.
But Saudi Arabia has enjoyed technological superiority before.
The challenge is turning battlefield superiority into a sustainable political and military outcome.
First, Riyadh cannot wish the Houthi problem away. The assumption that Saudi Arabia could reduce its exposure to Yemen while allowing the Houthis to consolidate their rule in the north has now been tested. The result is a militia capable of threatening Saudi cities and infrastructure while simultaneously placing pressure on the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab.
Second, the Saudis must rebuild an effective Yemeni coalition. That means putting military competence ahead of factional loyalties, eliminating ghost soldiers, restoring unified command structures and finding workable arrangements with southern forces that have repeatedly demonstrated greater battlefield effectiveness than many units formally controlled by the recognized government.
Third, Saudi Arabia must understand that the Houthi problem cannot be separated from Iran. A strategy that repeatedly strikes missiles and launchers in Yemen while leaving Tehran free to replenish the network will produce an endless cycle of destruction and reconstruction. Iran’s ability to move advisers, missile technology, financing and equipment into Yemen must therefore be treated as part of the same strategic problem.
Finally, Riyadh needs to define what victory actually means. Saudi Arabia spent years conducting military operations without establishing a political end state that could survive once the bombing stopped. Another open-ended air campaign will eventually reproduce the same problem.
The answer does not necessarily require occupying northern Yemen, something that would be enormously costly and probably counterproductive. But it does require sustained intelligence pressure, military deterrence, capable Yemeni ground forces, disruption of Iranian supply networks and a credible threat against Houthi leadership and strategic infrastructure when the militia attacks Saudi Arabia or international shipping.
Saudi Arabia now appears to have concluded that restraint alone will not protect it. The Houthis’ missile and drone attacks against Jizan and Najran airports this week illustrate why. Three people were injured in the strikes even as Saudi-backed troops were advancing inside Yemen.
The question is therefore no longer whether Riyadh will fight. It already is.
The real question is whether Saudi Arabia has finally learned the lesson of the past decade: military force without a coherent political strategy merely resets the clock until the Houthis recover, rearm and attack again.
The Houthi problem is vast, and only bold ideas can solve it. Half-measures and inconclusive campaigns have repeatedly allowed the militia to survive. And what does not kill the Houthis has, so far, only made them stronger.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD).