Saudi Arabia faces high-stakes choices as war with Houthis escalates

Yemen’s Houthi rebel fighters have broken free from the front lines that have remained broadly frozen in the country since 2022, surging forward to take key positions close to the vital Bab al-Mandeb Strait and opening a new front line in the war that has roiled the region since the US and Israel’s attack on the Houthis’ allies in Iran in February.

In the last few days, Iran-backed Houthi fighters have seized control of the Greater and Lesser Hanish islands and the Red Sea port city of Mocha, tightening the group’s grip on one of the world’s key energy routes in the face of resistance from Yemen’s government-aligned forces.

The Bab al-Mandeb strait’s importance has only grown since Iran, responding to the US and Israeli attacks, proved itself able to significantly restrict shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, with some analysts warning this latest advance stands to add further upward pressure on fuel prices globally.

For Saudi Arabia, the threat is no longer about hypotheticals. A drone strike on its East-West Pipeline, the roughly 1,200km (750-mile) conduit that carries around 4 percent of global oil supplies from the Gulf coast to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, forced a shutdown with future passage unknown.

With that pipeline down and the Houthis tightening their hold on the Red Sea coast and islands near Bab al-Mandeb, Saudi Arabia’s two main alternative export routes around Hormuz risk being squeezed at once.

Through its alliance with the Houthis, Iran is threatening almost a third of the global oil economy, said Baraa Shiban, a researcher and political analyst on Yemen and the Gulf at the Royal United Service Institute (RUSI).

“Iran knew it couldn’t win a traditional battlefront war, so it is inflicting economic warfare on the world,” he said of the US’s inability to sustain a prolonged and expanded conflict in the Gulf. “The last thing Trump can do is go back to the American public and say they need to get engaged on yet another front inside Yemen.”

As the conflict draws closer to Riyadh’s economic lifelines, the relevance of the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement , inked between Saudi Arabia, Turkiye and Pakistan in August, grows more immediate. Earlier this month, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif said the Mecca pact would be activated in the event of an unprovoked attack on Saudi Arabia or if fighting from Yemen were to spill over into the kingdom. “There should be no doubt in this,” Asif said.