Saudi Arabia Plans a Yemen Offensive to Retake Bab el-Mandeb
Riyadh is preparing an offensive against the Houthis, weighing either a coastal push to secure the Red Sea shipping route or an assault on several fronts at once, regional and Western officials have said. It would be fought by Yemeni ground forces under Saudi direction and backed by Saudi air strikes, with more than a hundred thousand troops potentially mobilised. The aim is to reverse last month’s Houthi seizure of the strait.
The logic runs through the chokepoints. With Hormuz effectively closed by the war on Iran, Bab el-Mandeb is the alternative route, and the Houthis took it last month — so Riyadh has concluded it cannot return to negotiations while they hold it. The former American ambassador Michael Ratney framed the realistic objective modestly: “Ideally, it would be a fairly limited operation to retake coastal areas and get back to normal maritime traffic.” Whether the ground forces are capable of it is the open question. The analyst Mohammed Albasha warned that “many anti-Houthi forces are still not organised or prepared for the kind of sustained offensive required to push back a disciplined Houthi military force”. Washington is supplying advisers and targeting intelligence but Mr Trump has refused the crown prince’s requests for American air strikes; Turkish drones are flying over Yemen and Pakistan has sent equipment and advisers. Estimates of timing run from within a week to after the American midterms. Watch Saudi oil infrastructure.