The speed of the Houthi advance along the Red Sea coast has changed the strategic landscape. After capturing Mocha, Houthi forces moved into Dhubab and reached Mayyun, or Perim Island, at the narrowest point of the Bab al-Mandeb strait. These are not peripheral gains.
They give the movement unprecedented leverage over one of the world’s most important maritime corridors. This latest escalation in Yemen is not simply another episode in its long civil war. It is also not simply an escalatory move by Iran against Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia.
It is at once a struggle for the control of Yemen, a renewed confrontation between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, and another front in the wider war involving Iran, Israel and the United States. Several factors contributed to it, including the false sense of balance of power in Yemen, the Houthi desire to secure a stronger negotiating position, and the spillover of the Iran war. The latest offensive cannot be understood without considering the false sense of peace that preceded it.
A United Nations-mediated truce took effect in April 2022. Although it formally expired six months later, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis largely maintained a de facto ceasefire. Saudi and Omani delegations travelled to Sanaa a year later.
In June 2023, direct flights resumed between Sanaa and Saudi Arabia to carry Yemeni pilgrims to Hajj, the first such flights since 2016. In September 2023, a senior Houthi delegation visited Riyadh for talks on ending the war. These were important confidence-building measures.
But they also encouraged the dangerous assumption that Yemen’s conflict was gradually resolving itself. The internationally recognised government appears to have mistaken the absence of major fighting for a durable balance of power. Despite repeated talk since April 2025 of an offensive along the western coast, its leaders remained divided, and its armed formations answered to competing commands.
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