For more than four years, a fragile truce prevailed in Yemen, where a Saudi-led military coalition and the Iran-backed Houthi militia had fought a war that pushed the country to the brink of famine.
The limbo was most likely never going to last. Talks toward a durable peace deal had stalled, and the Houthis were growing increasingly frustrated. Saudi officials — distracted by other crises and loath to return to combat — hoped the stalemate would hold a bit longer.
Into this tinderbox, the U.S. war with Iran flung a spark. Over the past few weeks, the Houthis and Saudi Arabia have rapidly spiraled into a conflict that could expand into a full-blown war.
Saudi officials express little interest in another clash with the Houthis. Their previous bombing campaign became a decade-long quagmire that depleted the kingdom’s finances, damaged its reputation and contributed to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Yemenis from violence, hunger and disease.
The battle-hardened Houthis apparently believe they have little to lose and much to gain from escalating their confrontation with Saudi Arabia, including obtaining access to Yemeni oil revenue and greater authority over Yemen, according to officials and diplomats who have dealt with the militia.
The Houthis are acting to aid their main ally, Iran, but also to force the kingdom and the international community to make political concessions in Yemen, according to researchers who study the group.
“The Houthis have one solution for every problem in the world, which is go to war,” said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen-focused fellow at the London-based research group Chatham House. “The Saudis solve every problem by trying to shower it with money,” he added, “and the Houthis by shooting at it.”
In the past week, the Houthis have fired missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia and at ships in the Red Sea, disrupting global energy markets, while a Saudi-led military coalition has carried out airstrikes in Houthi-held territory for the first time in years.
“There is a real concern that the internal Yemeni war could reignite,” said April Alley, who worked on Yemen’s peace process at the United Nations and is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, a research organization.
This account of the situation in Yemen is based on interviews with Yemeni officials, current and former Western diplomats involved in Yemen’s peace process and regional analysts. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the details of sensitive political negotiations.
Trapped in the middle of the power struggle between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia are tens of millions of Yemeni citizens suffering from widespread deprivation. Some of them say that even a return to fighting would be better than their current despair.
“We’ve had enough of this hardship, and we needed a way out, whether through dialogue or war,” said Ayman Abdulhaq, a 43-year-old father of four and taxi driver in the Houthi-controlled capital of Yemen, Sanaa. “People are always looking for a breakthrough, no matter the consequences,” he added.
The Houthis were once a ragtag group of Shiite Muslim rebels in Yemen’s mountainous north, with a slogan calling for death to America and Israel. With Iranian support, they started a civil war and overran Sanaa in 2014, routing the internationally recognized government.
Officials in Saudi Arabia, Yemen’s neighbor to the north, were alarmed at the idea of an Iran-backed militia on their border. A Saudi-led military coalition began a bombing campaign, backing anti-Houthi forces. But the war dragged on for years, and Saudi Arabia pulled back amid international pressure over its role in exacerbating Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.
By the time the truce was declared in 2022, the Houthis had created a de facto state in northern Yemen. The south is nominally controlled by the internationally recognized government, which is financially and militarily dependent on Saudi Arabia. Saudi officials continue to assert final say over a variety of Yemeni affairs.
At first, it seemed like military fatigue and political will on both sides could lead to a lasting peace. In late 2023, with the help of the United Nations, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis came close to signing a preliminary peace deal — referred to by officials as a “road map” — that would have provided an outline for a long-term political resolution, according to Yemeni and Western officials involved in those efforts.
A key component of that deal was an agreement to enable salary payments to Yemeni government employees in Houthi territory whose paychecks had been suspended during the war. The amount at stake was significant — between $1 billion and $2 billion annually, according to two Western diplomats and a Yemeni official briefed on the plan. The money was mainly to come from Yemeni oil revenue, those people said; Yemen’s oil resources are outside Houthi territory, and the Houthis were eager to gain access to them.
Before the deal could be finalized, the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023, followed by Israel’s devastating bombardment of Gaza, derailed Yemen’s peace process. The Houthis announced a military campaign in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, shooting missiles and drones at Israel and at ships in the Red Sea.
Saudi officials and international diplomats believed that the Houthis had violated the cease-fire that was a precondition of Yemen’s peace process, making it impossible to move forward, according to the Yemeni official and two diplomats who were briefed on the discussions. But the Houthis argued that their cease-fire with Saudi Arabia was intact and pushed to continue the peace process, those people said.
Throughout the war in Gaza, the Houthis avoided attacking Saudi Arabia. But their attacks in the Red Sea drew the ire of countries that depended on the waterway for shipping. When President Trump began a second term in 2025, he declared the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization and led a bombing campaign against them.
That designation worsened an already painful economic situation in areas under Houthi control, said Mr. al-Muslimi, the Chatham House researcher, and the Houthis were worried about growing resentment in those areas.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi political official, blamed Saudi Arabia for “failing to implement any of the provisions of the road map, foremost among them the payment of salaries for all state employees.”
He said that Saudi Arabia was at fault for the current escalation, and he accused the kingdom of imposing restrictions on aviation and shipping to Yemen, which the Houthis, and many Yemenis in their territory, describe as a blockade.
In a social media post on Saturday, the Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, said that the kingdom was keen to de-escalate and supported efforts toward a comprehensive peace in Yemen. He blamed the Houthis for “insisting on a path of escalation and violence,” and accused them of serving foreign agendas that do not benefit Yemen’s people.
In February, when the United States and Israel went to war with Iran, the Houthis seemed willing to stay on the sidelines. After a cease-fire between the United States and Iran fell apart, the calculus for the Houthis altered. Some analysts said they believed that change was because of Iranian pressure to become more involved. The Houthi intervention serves Iran’s interests, but it also serves the Houthis’ desire to impose a new political reality on Yemen, the analysts said.
After a conflict erupted over an Iranian plane landing in Sanaa, the Houthis subsequently declared a maritime blockade on Saudi Arabia. With Yemen’s strategic location along the Red Sea, the Houthis are well positioned to disrupt energy markets. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, typically sends most of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz, near Iran, but because of the war, it has been forced to reroute through the Red Sea.
“The Houthis are good at smelling blood in the water,” Ms. Alley, the Washington Institute analyst, said. “What they want is to consolidate their control in Yemen and to gain resources internally and unfettered access to the outside world.”
Whether things escalate from here could depend on where the Trump administration stands, analysts said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
On July 23, after the Houthis claimed attacks on two Saudi oil tankers, Mr. Trump threatened on social media to inflict “major military punishment” on the militia if the attacks continued.
He also expressed disappointment with the Houthis, saying that they had, “until now, acted very professionally and smart.”
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