Over the past week, Saudi Arabia has come under attack—on two fronts.
First, in Yemen, the Houthis seized the port city of Mocha on September 10 and advanced along the Red Sea coast toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a vital waterway for Saudi exports. Meanwhile, drones from Iraq struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, the roughly 750-mile artery carrying oil from the eastern fields toward Red Sea export terminals.
The attacks coincide with the Iraqi government’s September 30 deadline for nonstate groups in the country to disarm, and with mounting U.S. and Israeli pressure on the Islamic Republic that arms and sustains them.
They also come amid a much broader campaign against the regional proxy system that Tehran has spent decades building. Since the U.S. war with Iran began on February 28, Operations Epic Fury and Economic Fury have placed the Islamic Republic under severe military and financial strain, while the U.S. Treasury Department has targeted Iranian oil exports, shadow-fleet tankers, financial intermediaries, and foreign procurement networks.
Clearly, that pressure hasn’t dissuaded the Houthis. For months now, the Islamist militia based in northern Yemen has terrorized commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. Efforts from international forces—including the United States—have failed to stop them, despite an extraordinary disparity in conventional military power.
The question—as Saudi Arabia finds itself under attack, rebuffed in its requests for U.S. aid, and caught in the middle of a U.S.-Iran war now dragging into its seventh month—is why? Why is this seemingly ragtag militia group so hard to beat? And, in the wake of Mohammed bin Salman’s Monday meeting with the head of U.S. Central Command, what does the Houthis’ continued activity mean for the broader regional order?
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