Why UN Mediation in Yemen Needs an Overhaul

Although originally established to facilitate a negotiated political settlement to the Yemen conflict, for over a decade the focus of the United Nations (UN) Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen (OSESGY) has shifted toward reactive crisis management. Successive UN special envoys—including the current incumbent, Hans Grundberg—have been forced to pivot from governance reform to taking short-term steps to support fragile ceasefires.

The UN mission currently operates with a focus on damage control in small steps. For instance, it facilitates limited prisoner exchanges, conducts routine consultations with local and regional actors, and keeps basic lines of communication open to potentially negotiate incremental roadmaps to peace. These efforts, however, remain short-term tactical fixes. Today, the overall strategy of UN mediation efforts in Yemen has been fundamentally compromised by contextual disconnects, institutional self-preservation, and perceived conflicts of interest. Diplomatic resolution of the conflict will continue to be futile unless the UN mission in Yemen undergoes a fundamental overhaul.

Frozen in Time: The UN in Yemen

The United Nations launched its mediation process in Yemen during the 2011 uprising. Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general at the time, appointed Moroccan diplomat Jamal Benomar as his representative. Benomar began in an advisory role, but in June 2012 the UN institutionalized the role with the establishment of the Office of the Special Adviser to the Secretary-General on Yemen (OSASGY). Two months later, Benomar was formally appointed as its first special adviser. As Yemen’s streets were boiling with protests amid deadly security crackdowns in the early 2010s, the UN mission’s initial focus was to transition Yemen toward democracy. It facilitated a November 2011 political transition agreement between former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s regime and opposition forces, with a power transfer deal from Saleh to Vice President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, and supported the 2013–2014 National Dialogue Conference.

In 2015, OSASGY transitioned into the Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen (OSESGY). UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 2216 on the Yemen conflict was passed in April 2015, requesting the Secretary-General to use his good offices to facilitate “a peaceful, inclusive, orderly, and Yemeni-led transition process that meets the legitimate demands and aspirations of the Yemeni people.” This resolution provided the basis for subsequent UN mediation efforts. But since then, UNSCR 2216 has been neither updated nor replaced, which means that today’s mediation framework incorporates understandings of Yemeni power dynamics from 2015 that are now outdated. The resolution penalizes former President Ali Abdullah Saleh for his alliance with the Houthis, for example, but Saleh was killed by the Houthis in 2017. The resolution similarly commits to restoring the government of President Hadi, but Hadi resigned in 2022 and transferred authority to the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC). UNSCR 2216 is based on political conditions that no longer exist.


UNSCR 2216 also treats the Houthis primarily as armed rebels. It demands that the Houthis unconditionally disarm and fully withdraw from all the cities they had seized, including Sanaa. But the movement has now been entrenched in Sanaa and northern Yemen since 2014: treating the de facto Houthi authorities in the north as a short-lived insurgency is an unrealistic approach to peace negotiations. This detachment from current realities in Yemen has been underlined by the international community’s failure to enforce other terms of the resolution. UNSCR 2216 established an open-ended arms embargo to curtail Houthi capabilities, but the group has persistently managed to circumvent sanctions through smuggling, successfully maintaining its domestic missile and drone manufacturing capabilities. Many sanctions have proved ineffective because the group had few external assets or foreign vulnerabilities; punitive blacklists have barely affected them. As documented in the 2025 report by the UN Security Council Panel of Experts on Yemen, furthermore, the Houthis have largely consolidated military and societal control across areas under their dominance.

The 2015 resolution also considered the Houthis as a local Yemeni actor. But in 2026, the Houthis seem poised to become a regional actor with potentially global economic leverage, as demonstrated by the group’s involvement in the Gaza war and its military activities in the Red Sea. The rigid mandates of UNSCR 2216 are decoupled from current geopolitical realities and are ill-suited for contemporary conflict resolution. The existing framework offers no mechanisms to address the expanded threat of the Houthis. Neither the UN secretary-general nor the special envoy has publicly pressed the Security Council for an updated resolution.

Inertia has further compromised the effectiveness of the UN mission, which increasingly functions as a self-preserving administrative apparatus rather than an effective mediation operation. Peacemaking has been turned into a self-perpetuating bureaucratic exercise, which critics argue prioritizes the preservation of a formal mandate over achieving real conflict resolution. The UN has annually reauthorized the mandate of the UN Mission to Support the Hodeidah Agreement (UNMHA), established in 2019 by UNSCR 2452, as a matter of routine, even though its underlying political framework to demilitarize Yemen’s vital Red Sea ports had already failed. In effect, the UN mission maintained a multi-million-dollar presence simply to preserve its diplomatic footprint, favoring mandate survival over actual conflict resolution. UNMHA was not terminated until March 2026. Diplomatic activity often seems to outlive the developments to which it was intended to respond.

Above Suspicion

Appointing a Swede, Hans Grundberg, as UN Special Envoy in August 2021, initially leveraged Sweden’s long-standing reputation among Yemenis for the country’s respect for human rights and neutrality. Grundberg officially maintains clear structural neutrality, with no partisan ties to the Saudi-led coalition, the Yemeni government, or the Houthis. Grundberg has nevertheless encountered some significant obstacles in advancing his mission.

While previous UN envoys have met face-to-face several times with the Houthi leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, Grundberg has never managed to do so. UN high-level access to Sanaa was already constrained. After a visit to the capital in May 2023, Grundberg was unable to travel there again for nearly two years. During that time, matters deteriorated further following the Houthis’ mid-2024 arbitrary detention campaign of UN and civil society personnel. After Houthi authorities publicly accused the detainees of belonging to an alleged “American-Israeli spy network,” direct UN visits to the capital were frozen. Apart from a rare three-day visit in January 2025—aimed primarily at demanding the release of detained personnel—direct UN visits to the capital have remained frozen. This lack of contact has functionally paralyzed in-person mediation between the two sides.

On August 15, 2024, Grundberg’s spouse, Alexandra Rydmark, was appointed as Sweden’s Ambassador to Israel. Her appointment came just one month after the Houthis’ unprecedented drone attack on Tel Aviv on July 19, 2024. The attack was the first time a Houthi projectile had successfully penetrated Israel’s advanced multilayered air defenses to hit the city center, killing one person and injuring ten others. Retaliatory Israeli attacks rained down on the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah Port the following day. Pro-Houthi media argued that Rydmark’s appointment would compromise Grundberg’s position, undermine the UN’s perceived neutrality, and create an acute conflict of interest in mediating the Yemen conflict.

Once the Houthis entered direct fighting with Israel, Grundberg’s personal connections cannot be considered in isolation. In high-stakes conflict mediation, where perceived impartiality is as decisive as structural neutrality, even indirect familial and marital ties to an active belligerent risk compromising the envoy’s standing as a neutral broker. Grundberg’s effectiveness as the UN special envoy is further undermined by his inability to speak Arabic, which makes it difficult for him to grasp this local social and cultural context.

Institutional Overhaul Required

A comprehensive reform in the UN mediation framework—legal, structural, diplomatic, and operational—is essential for genuine progress in UN peace efforts in Yemen. The responsibility lies on the shoulders of the UN Security Council and the secretary-general.

First, the UN Security Council, led by its permanent five members China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, should immediately draft and promote an updated resolution on Yemen. The new resolution must formally abandon the old text and political references from 2015. It must reflect current power dynamics, such as the PLC and current de facto territorial authorities, establish a multipolar conflict resolution framework, and replace unconditional disarmament demands against the Houthis with a structured, phased security architecture. Punitive and static sanctions should be replaced by dynamic incentives. By treating full disarmament as a prerequisite rather than a phased outcome, moreover, the UNSCR 2216 left the Houthis with no political incentive to negotiate, effectively reinforcing their drive to fight. To achieve meaningful peacemaking, the UN must replace open-ended penalties with flexible, benchmarked incentives tied to realistic, phased security commitments.


A new Security Council resolution should also establish a mechanism for distributing humanitarian operations to regional hubs, depriving central authorities of their ability to exploit dependency or detain staff for political gain. Even though in September 2025 the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator relocated to Aden, such ad hoc relocations are insufficient given the concentration of administrative clearance, logistical approvals, and country headquarters in Sanaa, which give the Houthis a quasi-monopoly over aid distribution. A new resolution must mandate that UN agencies, funds, and programs systematically distribute procurement, logistical clearances, and staff management across regional hubs such as Aden, Marib, Mocha, and Mukalla.

The most significant reform in the mediation framework is enforcing strict conflict-of-interest protocols by the UN Secretariat. Establishing explicit diplomatic firewalls and ethics standards for UN envoys to Yemen will help prevent the already dire situation from deteriorating. During regional wars, the UN must enforce mandatory disclosures and assessment protocols for potential perception risks—such as diplomatic postings of immediate family members—that jeopardize perceived impartiality and potentially endanger both local and international UN personnel. Simple details, such as local language proficiency, must also be addressed in the reform. Senior leadership and core mediation teams on the ground must be able to verify their Arabic proficiency and deep understanding of the local context.

The UN has no magical powers to force warring parties to engage and cooperate, whatever peace model it adopts. Mediation in Yemen fundamentally depends on the political will of local and regional parties. But to have a chance to improve the situation, the UN must first set up its mediators for success.

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This policy analysis was first written for and published in the website of the Arab Center, here. 

Yemen as a Bargaining Chip

The Houthi armed group’s decision to declare a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia on July 20 marks the latest example of how local factions in Yemen are exploiting the broader U.S.-Irael war on Iran, using regional chaos as cover to capture domestic leverage. This interplay of regional and domestic wrangling has long defined the war in Yemen, with disastrous results for the Yemeni people as the conflict reheats.


The Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Saree said in a televised statement on July 20 that the group would enforce “an eye for an eye, blockade for blockade” against what he described as “the criminal Saudi enemy.” The group frames the blockade as a necessary, retaliatory measure against Saudi Arabia’s prolonged 12-year economic blockade on Yemen’s airspace and ports of entry, accusing Riyadh of stalling peace negotiations and exploiting regional dynamics to weaken them.


The decision came after the Saudi-led coalition and Internationally Recognized Government of Yemen (IRG) blocked Iranian flights carrying a Houthi delegation that attended the funeral of former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to Sana’a on July 13, with an exchange of fire on Sana’a International Airport to block the flight leading the Houthis to attack Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia the same day. Another Iranian flight was blocked on July 19, leading to the Houthi blockade decision.


The Houthis’ shift from rhetoric to active maritime interdiction against Saudi-bound shipping threatens Saudi Arabia’s economic supply lines and domestic security. Requiring an external, existential threat to maintain domestic coercion, the group thrives on violence and likely viewed this move — especially the narrative of solidarity with their Iranian ally against American and Israeli threats — as beneficial. As such, it is slowly resuming the conflict, shattering the 2022 truce with the Saudi-led coalition and the IRG, breaking the domestic stalemate.


The escalation is directly connected to regional developments. The United States and Iran have increasingly traded fire for nearly two weeks in what likely signals the collapse of their June 17 memorandum of understanding that guided ceasefire negotiations. Washington has increasingly targeted civilian infrastructure in Iran, with U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to continue escalating until Tehran capitulates. Iran, in turn, is scaling up pressure on the United States in Yemen through its close ally, the Houthi Movement (Ansar Allah), putting pressure on Saudi Arabia and global energy markets. Beneath the implicit coordination between Iran and the Houthis, the group agreed to help so as long as the effort aligns with their interests: Strengthening their domestic power.


That reasoning is appropriate given developments within Yemen over the last year. In particular, the United Arab Emirates’ withdrawal from Yemen in January 2026 has fostered recalculations on the part of the major factions in Yemen’s war. Both domestic and regional actors hope to exploit the new power dynamics defining this reality on the ground to advance their territorial and political agendas, assessing that they can do just that today.


With the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council’s (STC) dissolution and Abu Dhabi’s military exit, the fractured anti-Houthi coalition — led by the IRG’s Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) — is now unified under a single command structure in Riyadh and southern Yemen’s Aden. For the Houthis, that development marks a major setback, as the group has long capitalized on division among its Yemeni rivals. The PLC is no longer burdened with managing infighting within its anti-Houthi bloc, such as the STC separatists in Hadhramaut or Aden, and confronting the Houthis in the north.


As the Houthis have crossed Riyadh’s red lines with their attempts to regain control of Yemen’s airspace and the blockade decision, Saudi Arabia will likely utilize this newfound political cohesion to fight the group, especially through Saudi-backed, pro-government factions like the National Resistance Forces along the Red Sea Coast. That campaign will constitute a highly localized, aggressive military campaign focused on the western coast, especially in the Houthi-controlled Hodeidah Governorate. The goal will be to push Houthi forces away from critical maritime choke points, stripping the group of their Red Sea launch pads and, thus, their maritime leverage. That effort may already be underway, with fighting between the Houthis and IRG forces in and around the strategically crucial city of Hodeidah, Yemen’s primary port city, intensifying over the past few months.


For the Houthis, a battle in Hodeidah is welcome, especially after winning previous battles for the city in 2014 and 2018. The group has faced unprecedented domestic economic failure and rising local anger in recent years across territory under their control. Starvation and poverty are increasing, especially with aid flows to Houthi areas drastically decreasing since 2025, in no small part due to U.S. aid cuts under the Trump administration and Houthi pressure on aid providers. Last month, the United Nations warned that tens of thousands are facing starvation in Houthi-controlled territories, among the over 18 million people in Yemen experiencing crisis-level hunger or worse.


In such a difficult economic situation, the Houthis understand that resuming the conflict helps them preserve their authoritarian grip on the north. An active ground campaign in Hodeidah gives them the perfect narrative to declare full military mobilization and crack down on internal dissent under the banner of "defense against Saudi-U.S. aggression" without facing immediate domestic accountability. The group’s failure to secure Iranian flights landing at Sana'a airport further incentivizes the Houthis to act, as it exposed their lack of genuine sovereignty over the areas they govern. For the group, to gain domestic and regional concessions that assert their sovereignty, the Houthis must leverage every pressure card at their disposal and have a long history of doing so.


With the Houthis, the IRG and their respective supporters transforming civil infrastructure, airspace and maritime gateways into active, high-stakes battlegrounds in and around Yemen, there will be immediate negative consequences, including on the global economy and the already catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Any battle for Hodeidah and the Red Sea coastline, a primary commercial and humanitarian aid lifeline for the country, facilitating around 80 percent of humanitarian aid and 70 percent of commercial imports, risks sending Yemen back down a humanitarian spiral, underscoring the urgent need for a durable and just conflict resolution rather than military force. The current severe economic depression risks worsening widespread hunger into acute famine.


Peace efforts led by U.N. Special Envoy Hans Grundberg and Oman risk freezing as well, a setback presaged by the Houthis' recent decision to postpone detainee exchanges until further notice. Renewed fighting would ultimately send already difficult negotiations on Yemen’s future backward at the expense of all Yemenis, who deserve a democratic future that they themselves lead. Renewed war does not help Yemen or its people get closer to that outcome.


As the regional conflict between the United States, Israel and Iran continues with no end in sight, unaddressed questions in Yemen are naturally and unfortunately spilling over as a result. Whether the worst-case scenario for the country can be averted remains to be seen. For now, a return to full scale war appears most likely, with disastrous results for Yemeni communities.

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*This article was first written for/published on the DAWN website. 

My Interview with Tahjeer Podcast

 

Yemen's Houthis: From Restraint to Calculated Involvement

As Yemen passes 15 years of devastating conflict, the country faces renewed risk of escalation amid the widening regional confrontation involving Iran, Israel and the United States. After weeks of speculation over whether Yemen's Houthis would remain on the sidelines, the movement launched ballistic missile attacks toward Israel on March 28. While the limited nature of the assault suggests an attempt to signal alignment with Iran's regional posture without triggering full-scale retaliation, the question now is whether Houthi thinking remains limited to this signaling or reflects the beginning of a sustained escalation, once again making Yemen an active front in the Middle East's expanding conflict.

The depth of the relationship between Iran and the Houthis is central to this question, constituting one of the most contested debates surrounding the group. For some analysts, the movement operates as a crucial component of Tehran's regional network of allied militias. "The Houthis always try to present themselves as independent decision-makers," said veteran Yemeni journalist Anwar al-Ansi in an interview with Democracy in Exile. "But we know there has been a very close ideological and military relationship with Iran for nearly three decades."

According to al-Ansi, the group's military capabilities — from ballistic missiles to drones and naval mines — were developed largely through training and assistance from Iran's Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) and Lebanon's Hezbollah. "Without Iranian weapons, the Houthis would not be what they are today," he said.

Numerous reports highlight how Iranian military support to the Houthis has grown over the course of the war in Yemen. The United Nations Panel of Experts on Yemen found in 2018 that Iran "failed to take the necessary measures to prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer" of various ballistic missiles that the Houthis have used to perpetrate unlawful attacks. As a result, Iran agreed to significantly reduce its support for the Houthis in the March 2023 China-brokered deal re-establishing diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Other experts describe the relationship in broader strategic terms. Nadwa al-Dawsari, a veteran Yemeni researcher, argued in an interview that the movement functions within a transnational project tied to Tehran's regional ambitions. "The Houthis are a transnational group," she said, explaining that "Yemen, for them, is a base where they organize, regroup and launch cross-border operations." In her view, the IRGC maintains significant influence over the group.

Yet not all analysts see the Houthis as mere proxies. Speaking in an interview for Democracy in Exile, historian and instructor at Harvard University, Asher Orkaby, notes that Yemeni political movements — particularly the Houthis — have historically shifted alliances based on power calculations rather than ideological loyalty. "The Houthis have continuously backed the winning party," he said. "What they understand is power — military power and financial power."

In "Beyond the Arab Cold War: The International History of the Yemen Civil War, 1962-68," Orkaby documents how Zaydi royalist forces drawn from the same northern highland communities and religious tradition that later gave rise to the Houthi Movement relied on shifting external support for survival. Backed primarily by Saudi Arabia and, at times, covertly by Israel, these actors navigated alliances pragmatically rather than ideologically. Most notable is the group's brief tactical alliance with the former Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite having fought multiple rounds against him in the Saada Wars that precluded Yemen's civil conflict.

That alliance was derived purely out of self-interest. The Houthis needed access to state military networks and resources in their effort to conquer the state. Once they secured this objective, they turned on Saleh — killing him in 2017.

Orkaby argues that the Houthis similarly rushed to support Gaza because the group understood they would gain more than lose, winning the hearts and minds of people at home and abroad. That pragmatism may explain their delayed decision to join Iran's confrontation with Israel and the United States, even as other Iranian partners across the region have been weakened or sidelined.

For Orkaby, the Houthis may have been calculating the broader geopolitical balance. With several Iranian allies diminished in recent years, the group may hesitate to tie its fate too closely to Tehran. "They understand that Iran is a sinking ship," he explained.

Early Houthi restraint appeared to be driven by a combination of Iranian strategy and the group's domestic calculations. Al-Dawsari believes Tehran initially preferred to keep the group out of the war unless absolutely necessary. "Iran has lost most of its proxies, and now the Houthis represent the proxy with the most potential to support Iran's regime," she said. Preserving the Houthis was intended as a strategic priority. "The Houthis will likely intervene more fully only in the event of an existential threat to Iran's regime," she argued before the group launched strikes at Israel.

Al-Ansi points to the risks the movement could now face upon entering the conflict, especially if they do so more aggressively. In this regard, intelligence services in Washington and Tel Aviv have spent years gathering detailed information about Houthi military infrastructure. "If the Houthis begin aggressively attacking Israel or U.S. targets again, the response will be much stronger than before," he warned. One example of the devastating consequences of Israeli retaliation against the Houthis is the killing of most of the Houthi group's cabinet members in an August 2025 attack on Sana'a.

The group also faces domestic constraints. Despite controlling the capital and much of the north, the Houthis remain under economic pressure and international isolation. "Their situation is extremely difficult," al-Ansi said. "They are under sanctions, isolated internationally and face hostility even within areas they control." Last year, the United States re-designated the Houthis as a Foreign Terrorist Organization and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, deepening economic pressure, albeit likely marginally compared to sweeping aid cuts to Yemen around the same time.

If conflict between Iran and its adversaries escalates, Yemen could quickly become a key theater, with renewed attacks on Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb shipping — disruptions that would again amplify global economic pressure, as in 2024–25.

In an interview for Democracy in Exile, Yemeni academic and political analyst Abdulwahab Al-Awaj said that energy infrastructure in Gulf states could also become targets for the group. "The Houthis could attack fuel infrastructure in Saudi Arabia," he said. Al-Awaj added that such operations would likely begin from areas like Hodeidah and Ibb, where the Houthis have increasingly mobilized their forces, if Iran gave the green light.

For Yemen itself, the regional crisis could prolong the stalemate that has defined the war since a fragile truce emerged in 2022. Still, peace negotiations remain distant. Al-Dawsari argued that the Houthis have historically engaged in diplomacy to primarily buy time rather than to reach a genuine settlement: "They have never engaged in good faith in the peace process."

Meanwhile, the anti-Houthi camp has begun reorganizing after years of internal divisions. According to Al-Awaj, Saudi Arabia is working to unify Yemeni forces and assume greater control over key fronts following the United Arab Emirates' reduced role in the conflict. However, any decisive shift on the battlefield may depend on events far beyond Yemen's borders. As al-Ansi explained, the country now finds itself suspended between war and peace, waiting for the regional picture to clear.

The Houthis seem to be demonstrating a calibrated entry rather than a full escalation. What happens next will depend not only on those calculations, but on how forcefully regional actors respond. One fact is clear, however: Another critical front may be opening in this worsening regional war.

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*This piece was first written for/published on DAWN website here. 

Yemen Between Internal Deadlock & Regional War

Restoring the internationally recognised government of Yemen and undoing the Houthis' takeover of Sana’a, which had happened in September 2014, were the two key aims announced by Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, Adel al‑Jubeir, just as Saudi Arabia began a military intervention in Yemen on 26 March 2015. Eleven years on, neither the internationally recognised government was restored, nor was the Houthis ’ takeover of Sana’a undone. The war persists, not as a dramatic clash of advancing armies but as a stalemate that refuses to resolve itself, and as a situation that persistently hampers the livelihoods of Yemeni civilians.

From Military Intervention to Stalemate

Yemen today inhabits an uneasy middle ground, the sort diplomats like to label “no war, no peace”. The large offensives that once defined the conflict have mostly faded since the truce arrangements of 2022. Saudi bombardments, which visually embodied the conflict in the eyes of many, have to a large extent halted for four years. Yet peace, in any meaningful sense, has not followed.

Instead, the country has settled into fragmentation. The Houthis hold Sana’a and most of the north-west of the territory, governing a landscape they seized through years of war. Elsewhere, a collection of forces aligned with the internationally recognised government and Saudi Arabia controls parts of the south and the east.

For much of the past decade, the forces opposed to the Houthis have struggled less with their adversary than with one another. Divisions ran deep, sharpened by the differing priorities of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia wanted a unified Yemeni state under the internationally recognised government, but the United Arab Emirates wanted a fragmented Yemen, especially a semi-autonomous or independent south. Each of the two regional powers invested in its own network of Yemeni allies. Abu Dhabi backed figures such as the secessionist Southern Transitional Council it helped establish in 2017, and its affiliated forces, along with Tareq Saleh, a nephew of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. Riyadh aligned itself with actors tied to the Islah Party, including Sultan al-Arada, governor of Marib, and Abdullah al-Alimi Bawazir, who headed the president’s office.

These parallel lines of support fractured the anti-Houthi camp, setting rival political projects—southern secessionism, party-based influence, and competing military commands—against one another. It pulled the conflict in conflicting directions, neglecting the initial anti-Houthi rationale of the Saudi-led coalition. The result was a patchwork rather than a unified front. Command structures overlapped or competed, military support arrived unevenly, and political loyalties remained fragmented. UAE-backed formations—including the Southern Transitional Council under Aydarous al-Zubaydi, the Security Belt forces in Aden, the Giants Brigades led by Abdulrahman al-Mahrami, and forces aligned with Tareq Saleh, as well as the Hadrami and Shabwani Elite units—operated through parallel chains of command that largely bypassed state institutions. By contrast, Saudi-backed forces remained formally tied to the ministries of defense and interior, alongside Islah-affiliated networks linked to figures such as Sultan al-Arada and formations like the Nation’s Shield Forces. In practice, however, these structures coexisted without integration, answering to different patrons and political agendas, and reinforcing a fragmented military landscape rather than a cohesive national force.

Time and again, these fractures weakened attempts to sustain pressure on Houthi positions in the north, turning what might have been coordinated campaigns into a series of faltering efforts. For instance, in 2019, clashes between government forces and UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council units in Aden led the STC to seize control of the interim capital, fracturing the anti-Houthi camp and forcing a shift in focus away from frontlines in the north. In 2020, the collapse of the government’s offensive in al-Jawf and the subsequent Houthi brief advance into Marib and Shabwah exposed the lack of coordinated command among anti-Houthi forces.

At the beginning of 2026, however, the domestic landscape had begun to shift in quieter but noticeable ways. The UAE’s military engagement was forced to end after Abu Dhabi lost its bet in expanding STC control over the east of Yemen. Saudi Arabia opposed the move, and consolidated its influence, marginalizing the UAE’s main local ally, the Southern Transitional Council, and then reshaping the Southern movement to its own advantage. These changes have created new conditions on the ground, opening space for a possible reorganisation of the Yemeni forces aligned against the Houthis. This dynamic first took the form of a new government announced in February 2026. Yet, plethoric as it is and unable to fully intervene in all the areas outside of Houthi-held territory, it remains at best fragile.

There are now efforts—tentative, uneven—to bring the various military formations under something resembling a unified command. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has taken a more direct role in overseeing key strategic areas, including Aden and stretches of the western coast, tightening its grip on the places that matter most to the broader war effort. Supporters of the STC remain active and able to organise rallies in urban areas, asserting their allegiance to Aydarous al-Zubaydi who fled Yemen in January 2026.

Riyadh’s approach now carries the unmistakable tone of someone who has learned, slowly and at considerable expense, the limits of force. And yet the problem remains. In northern Yemen, the Houthis continue to hold power with a resilience that refuses to fade. As their aggressive military strategy in the Red Sea has shown over the last two and a half years, their presence is not a temporary irritation but a long-term strategic concern—one that Riyadh cannot easily ignore.

Since November 2023, Houthi forces have targeted commercial shipping lanes, initially striking vessels linked to Israel before expanding their attacks to ships associated with dozens of countries, often indiscriminately. By October 2024, Houthi forces had carried out over 190 attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and over 2,000 ships had rerouted away from the Red Sea, disrupting global trade and forcing costly diversions around the Cape of Good Hope. Flows of Houthi missiles and drones being sent to positions in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates up until 2022 have also highlighted a form of fragility of the monarchies. They were a of prelude to the post-February 2026 situation which, through Iranian attacks and the closure of the Hormuz Straight, has exposed Gulf security failures.

Airports, petrol facilities, infrastructure and even maybe Mecca are still at reach for the Houthis. Common ground thus needs to be found. For the moment, the Saudi kingdom seems less interested in launching a new offensive against them than in tidying the house on its own side: consolidating the various Yemeni partners it supports and strengthening the lines it already holds.

And so the battlefield in Yemen remains, for now, comparatively quiet when compared to situations elsewhere in the Middle East. The Yemeni front lines hold. The war pauses without ending and both the economy and the humanitarian situation - despite evident harshness, show a form of capacity of society to adapt. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Middle East, tensions continue to rise, gathering force in ways that Yemen—so often drawn into other people’s struggles—cannot entirely escape.

Regionalization of Houthi Strategic Positioning

Viewed in a broader context, Yemen’s war drifted beyond its own borders. What began as a struggle over power inside the country now sits within a much larger web of regional tensions, most recently shaped by the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran. Currently, all eyes are on the Houthis, wondering—will they step in this time to support their major ally, Iran, as they did through attacks to support Gaza in recent years, or continue to hold back?

The waters of the Red Sea might be one more time the Houthis’ stage for action. In mid-March 2026, public calls by the new Iranian leadership to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have been answered in ambivalent terms by Houthi military leaders. Through years of external assistance and training networks tied to Iran’s security establishment, the Houthis have developed their arsenal—ballistic missiles, drones, and naval mines. The result is a movement that no longer sits neatly within Yemen’s borders. Yet their operations beyond Yemen’s borders tend to move in step with the wider calculations emerging from Tehran. What exists between the Houthis and Iran, then, is not quite the tidy hierarchy implied by the word “proxy.” It is something looser and more networked: a web of allied actors, linked by shared ideology, mutual interests, and a habit of coordination that stretches across the region.

Nowhere is this arrangement more visible than in the present confrontation involving Iran, Israel, and the US. The rhetoric, as ever, is loud and uncompromising, suggesting that the Houthis are ready to support Iran. The Houthis are careful about appearances. They can go on air and give wonderful speeches about their support for Iran. They can also mobilize hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in the streets of Sanaa, as they did on March 7th, to condemn the American-Zionist aggression in Tehran and Lebanon. Yet the Houthis themselves have so far stopped short of fully entering the fray. There is a pause in their posture, a certain deliberation that suggests calculation rather than hesitation alone.

Part of that calculation lies beyond Yemen. Tehran, too, appears cautious. Having watched several of its regional partners weakened in recent years, it seems reluctant to expend one of the few actors that has proven both durable and strategically useful. The Houthis occupy a particular place in this landscape: resilient, geographically positioned near vital shipping routes, and capable—if they chose to act—of applying pressure where it might be felt far beyond Yemen’s shores - on key maritime chokepoints and regional adversaries.

The Red Sea hangs over all of this like a silent witness. Bab al-Mandeb, narrow and vital, offers a kind of leverage the Houthis—or anyone who controls it—can barely ignore. Even a small disruption, a ripple across the waters, can unsettle global trade and energy flows far beyond Yemen’s borders. But escalation is never a one-sided affair. The Houthis, too, must reckon with their costs. A sustained campaign against Israeli or American targets would almost certainly invite a response far more forceful than anything seen in earlier rounds of confrontation. Following the military losses Houthis have endured, for instance, the killing of some of their cabinet members in an Israeli attack on Sana’a in August 2025, the Houthis understand that the consequences of their escalation could be severe, perhaps devastating.

For now, their posture seems to favour a certain deliberate ambiguity. After years of war, the Houthi armed group has secured a degree of authority at home that they are unlikely to risk lightly. To rush headlong into a broader confrontation could undo those gains, trading the slow consolidation of power inside Yemen for a far more dangerous and unpredictable fight.

Eleven years after the Saudi-led intervention began, Yemen’s war no longer belongs entirely to Yemen; it has attached itself to the wider contest now shaping the Middle East. As long as the country plays host to this sprawling regional chess game, real peace feels like a distant rumor. Yemen’s future will bend and break according to currents it barely controls.

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This is the English translation of the original essay in French, first written for/published on the orient21 website.