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Riyadh is seeking to be dragged into a bloody standoff with the Yemeni militia, which has wreaked havoc by attacking ships and firing missiles into Israel.
By Vivian Neréim
Vivian Nereim has been running in Saudi Arabia since 2015, the kingdom and the war in Yemen.
After Iranian-backed rebels seized Yemen’s capital in 2014, a 30-year-old Saudi prince, Mohammed bin Salman, led a military intervention to defeat them.
Armed with weapons and the United States, the Saudi pilots embarked on a bombing crusade called Operation Decisive Storm deep inside Yemen, the mountainous country on their southern border. Authorities hoped to temporarily defeat the rebels, a ragtag tribal defense force known as the Houthis.
Instead, the prince’s forces have spent years locked in a standoff that erupted into fighting between several 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 violence, hunger and out-of-control disease.
Saudi Arabia and its main component, the United Arab Emirates, eventually scaled back their military commitment, in part due to U. S. pressure, and Saudi officials began peace talks with the Houthis, who have secured northern Yemen.
Today, the war in Gaza has thrust the Houthis – whose ideology is driven by hostility to the United States and Israel and to the Palestinian cause – into the global spotlight.
The militia is creating chaos in the Red Sea by lobbing missiles and drones toward Israel and at commercial ships, and the United States has marshaled an international maritime coalition to try to deter them and is weighing other measures to confront the group.
Saudi Arabia, however, prefers to sideline those more recent advances, and the prospect of peace on its southern border is a more attractive goal than joining efforts to end attacks that the Houthis say are directed against Israel, a state the kingdom likes. officially identified and widely vilified by its population.
Crown Prince Mohammed is now the de facto Saudi ruler and is keen to be dragged back into a showdown with the Houthis, according to Saudi and U. S. officials.
“To have a strong region, it is necessary for the region to progress economically,” Prince Mohammed said in a televised interview in September, shortly before the start of the war in Gaza, when Saudi officials hosted a Houthi delegation in the Saudi capital. Riyadh. ” We don’t want to see unrest in Yemen. “
As the prince rushes to advance his sweeping plan to turn Saudi Arabia into a global business hub by 2030, he is bidding to ease conflicts and tensions in the Middle East, as well as through a rapprochement with the kingdom’s regional rival, Iran.
Saudi officials and analysts say the return of Houthi missiles flying over Riyadh or attacking cities in southern Saudi Arabia — a not unusual occurrence at the height of Yemen’s war — is the last thing the prince wants as he seeks to convince tourists and investors that Islam is not the only thing the prince wants. The kingdom is open for business.
“Escalation benefits no one,” Prince Faisal bin Farhan, Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, said in a televised interview this month. “We are determined to end the war in Yemen and to a permanent ceasefire that opens the door to a political process. “
Saudi officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Saudi Arabia’s new strategy in Yemen – which moves away from direct military action and focuses on maintaining relations with Yemeni factions – is based on the truth that after eight years of war, the Houthis have won hands down. The force – espousing an ideology fostered through a subsect of Shiite Islam – has come to exert force in northern Yemen, where it has created an impoverished proto-state that it regulates with an iron fist.
While facing the prospect of a showdown with the United States with evident enthusiasm, the Houthis rely on their expanded military roles and evident bravery that has been evident in their clashes with the Saudi-led coalition.
If the U. S. sends troops to Yemen, its troops will face a clash worse than its endless wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, leader of the defense forces, threatened in a televised address Wednesday. The Houthis are “not afraid” to fight the U. S. and, in fact, would prefer that, he said.
While the Houthis claim to be at war with the United States, they also appear to have used the standoff in Gaza as an opportunity to further a central goal.
“Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews” is the group’s motto, and the Houthis have portrayed their attacks on advertising ships as a just war to force Israel to end its siege of Gaza.
The Houthis are also a vital offshoot of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance,” which includes armed teams across the Middle East, even though Yemeni analysts and Saudi officials say they see the defense forces as a complex Yemeni organization and not a purely Iranian proxy.
In his speech on Wednesday, al-Houthi demanded that Arab countries withdraw and “let the Americans and Israelis engage in a direct war against us. “
“If you want to dance on the bodies of victims, dance,” he said — a veiled reference to a string of recent concerts in Saudi Arabia, including a performance by Metallica. “But don’t participate with the Americans in a war against us.”
For the Houthis, such a war would be “a golden opportunity to concretize their narrative, allowing them to recruit smoothly and gain credibility among the people,” said Shoqi Al-Maktary, a senior Yemeni adviser to Search for Common Ground, a Washington organization. -organization. Organization for the resolution of conflicts.
That is particularly true as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza — launched in response to the deadly Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 — sparks grief and anger around the Middle East, aimed not only at Israel, but also the United States, its main ally.
Before the start of the war in Gaza, the Houthis were on the verge of signing a U. S. -Saudi Arabia-backed peace deal that could potentially consolidate their current position and allow the foreign network to claim the start of the war. End of the war in Yemen.
At least so far, the Houthis’ reaction to the Gaza war appears to have reduced Saudi Arabia’s appetite for a deal on Yemen, analysts say.
“The war in Gaza has jeopardized talks between the Houthis and the Saudis; on the contrary, it has brought them even closer,” 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 Ansar Allah Politburo, the political arm of the Houthis, said that negotiations with Saudi Arabia had been “full of seriousness and optimism.”
Mr. al-Qahoom said that they had discussed how to facilitate salary payments for public servants — who have gone uncompensated for years — and the potential reopening of airports and ports, steps that could ease the suffering of millions of Yemenis in desperate need of aid.
“Our prospects were quite close,” al-Qahoom said. What prevents reaching an agreement is the disregard of the obligations of Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Britain and the United States to deal with the destruction caused by 8 years of war and other problems such as reconstruction and reparations.
This appears to be a reference to the financial reimbursement the Houthis hope to get from Saudi Arabia as part of an incentive for any deal.
According to analysts, the Saudi government will most likely offer some form of payment to close the deal.
Amid those negotiations with the Houthis, Saudi Arabia has also continued to strengthen its relations with Iran, its former enemy. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi made his first stop in Riyadh in November.
This week, the United States announced the creation of a naval task force to deal with the risk posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were not among its members; the only Arab country to join was Bahrain, where the resolution provoked popular anger.
Saudi Arabia “is not interested in Western efforts toward Israel,” Sulaiman al-Oqeliy, a Saudi political commentator, wrote on the social media platform X. Many Gulf experts have also expressed frustration with the U. S. in recent days, arguing that U. S. policy toward the war in Yemen has helped the Houthis thrive.
The U. S. respects that some countries may have “internal reasons” to stay out of the task force, White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
U. S. military planners have been the initial targets of the Houthis in Yemen, should 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 threaten a wider regional region. war.
“Sometimes in the Middle East there are no bad decisions,” Prince Mohammed said in a 2018 interview when asked about the war in Yemen. “Sometimes bad decisions are made and worse decisions are made. “
CNN’s Ahmed Al Omran, Shuaib Almosawa and Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.
Vivian Nereim is the Times’ senior reporter covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. It is located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Learn more about Vivian Néréim
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