Houthis escalate Red Sea strikes as humanitarian crisis deepens in Yemen

Saudi Arabia woke Tuesday to air raid sirens across six provinces, including the coastal city of Jeddah. The warnings came a day after Houthi militants claimed responsibility for a large-scale assault on King Khalid airbase in the southern city of Khamis Mushait, using what they described as dozens of ballistic missiles and drones. The alarms were lifted relatively quickly, but they marked something new: an unprecedented sense of vulnerability spreading across the kingdom itself.

The immediate trigger was military, but the deeper crisis was economic and humanitarian. Fighting across Yemen had already displaced roughly 100,000 people, according to UN assessments. Oil markets reacted sharply. When shipping sources reported that Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu had suspended loadings, Brent crude jumped nearly 3 percent to $108 a barrel—already elevated after Saudi Aramco had shut down its East-West pipeline following an earlier Houthi attack. Crude was trading well above $100 per barrel, and the pressure was building on two critical waterways: the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Bab al-Mandab at the southern mouth of the Red Sea.

The Bab al-Mandab had become vital to Saudi oil exports precisely because the wider Middle East conflict had choked the Hormuz. On Monday and Tuesday, the Hormuz remained largely closed to commercial traffic—only four ships crossed on Monday compared to a peacetime average of about 130. A Qatar-flagged vessel lay disabled in the waterway. Qatar's foreign ministry official Ibrahim al-Hashmi put the stakes plainly: if the Bab al-Mandab also fell under hostile control, it would be catastrophic for global trade. The world was already suffering from Hormuz's closure, he said. Adding the southern strait to that equation was unthinkable.

Diplomatic efforts were stalling. Qatar, acting as mediator between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council, had organized talks for Monday in Oman aimed at establishing an authorized shipping corridor through the Hormuz. Saudi Arabia postponed the meeting, citing what it saw as Iranian-backed Houthi attacks on its cities. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, traveled to Beijing to discuss China's possible role in resolving the dispute—a sign that Tehran was still seeking a broader solution. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, spoke with Oman's foreign minister on Tuesday, concerned that Oman might cede too much control of the waterway to Iran. If both straits ended up under the control of forces hostile to the West, it would represent a significant strategic reversal for the United States and Europe.

The Trump administration had declined Saudi requests for direct military support. Houthi leaders, meanwhile, had spoken with US Vice President JD Vance, assuring the White House that their operations targeted only Saudi-owned shipping and aimed to pressure the kingdom to lift what they characterized as a blockade of Houthi-controlled territory. The Houthis had signed a ceasefire agreement with the US but remained under American sanctions. The UK was unlikely to offer direct military assistance unless Washington gave clear direction to do so.

Inside Yemen, the military picture was fragmented. The UN-recognized government was weak, and various militias with different ideological and regional allegiances operated alongside the official national army. On paper, anti-Houthi forces could number as many as 500,000 troops, but in practice they did not all cooperate or fight outside their home areas. Saudi Arabia backed the Homeland Shield Forces. The United Arab Emirates had supported both the 80,000-strong Southern Transitional Council's Giants Brigade and a separate 20,000-strong force led by Tareq Saleh—though the UAE had since withdrawn from Yemen after backing separatist forces in the south. Western governments were providing intelligence and targeting advice rather than direct military involvement, trying to help integrate these disparate anti-Houthi forces.

Maysaa Shuja al-Deen, an analyst at the Sana'a Center think tank, argued that any renewed military campaign required serious reassessment of past failures. Saudi Arabia had often chosen weak Yemeni figures who were easily manipulated and willing to follow orders, she said. If instead the kingdom selected competent, strong actors who could implement a shared agenda, it would gain respect from other capable Yemeni figures. Iran and the UAE, by contrast, had generally given their local allies more room to maneuver while building relationships around specific objectives and clearer mandates. Yemen's foreign ministry countered that if the world wanted stability and calm in the region, it needed to tell Saudi Arabia to stop interfering in Yemeni affairs.

The next major military engagement was likely to focus on the city of Marib, where Saudi air raids had been attempting to weaken Houthi formations. But the broader question remained unresolved: whether diplomatic pressure, military action, or some combination could restore the flow of commerce through two of the world's most critical waterways, or whether the region was settling into a new equilibrium of disruption and risk.