Revealed: US Officials Met Houthis in Muscat — Who Promised to Spare American Ships
American officials held a previously undisclosed weekend meeting with a Houthi delegation at the US embassy in Muscat, Oman brokering — sanctioned senior figures across the table — where the group affirmed it does not intend to attack American vessels and remains committed to its 2025 ceasefire: everyone’s shipping spared, in the Yemeni source’s telling, “except those belonging to Saudi Arabia”. Hours later the Houthis claimed fresh strikes on Khamis Mushait and Yanbu.
The meeting formalises the war’s most cynical equilibrium: Washington securing safe passage for its own flag while its closest Arab partner is exempted from the protection by name — an arrangement analysts read correctly as Houthi statecraft, buying American neutrality at the exact moment the group consolidates a strait it can close “at any time and for any reason in the future”. For Riyadh, learning that its ally’s diplomats sat with its bombers days after its capital was struck will corrode trust in ways no communiqué repairs; the appeal to Beijing suddenly reads less like desperation than diversification. American realism has a case — reopening Red Sea transit for the world — but the case has a price, and Saudi Arabia is paying it. Watch whether the “except Saudi” carve-out survives contact with Congress and the Gulf summit at UNGA.