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