For Yemen, the danger is not simply a return to fighting. The country has yet to recover from the devastating conflict of 2015-2022, which killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, contributed to a severe cholera outbreak and pushed the country towards famine before an April 2022 truce brought relative calm.
Now, unresolved grievances from that war are being pulled back into a wider regional confrontation. The Iran-backed Houthi movement and forces aligned with the Saudi-backed Presidential Leadership Council, or PLC, are again moving towards direct confrontation, while Saudi Arabia is reinforcing its military and diplomatic position without yet committing to a major ground offensive.
The Soufan Center, in its assessment of the escalating conflict, describes the renewed confrontation as a consequence of the U.S.-Iran war and the unresolved tensions left by Yemen’s previous civil war. The developments underline how quickly a dormant conflict can become active when regional rivals once again have strategic incentives to use Yemen as a theatre of confrontation.
The latest escalation began when the Houthis, supported by Iran, sought to challenge Saudi Arabia’s control over traffic through Houthi-run ports and airports. The movement announced its own blockade of Saudi shipping through the Red Sea, pursuing both its longstanding objective of breaking the Saudi blockade and Iran’s broader strategic interest in putting pressure on Saudi Arabia.
The Houthis subsequently expanded their attacks to facilities belonging to Saudi Arabia’s state-backed oil company, Aramco. By early August, the confrontation had moved beyond attacks and counter-attacks into exchanges of fire between ground forces.
Early this month, Houthi forces launched their deadliest attacks in years in the oil-rich and contested province of Marib. Yemeni sources said 58 PLC troops and several civilians were killed. The death toll from Houthi strikes in Marib and neighbouring Hadramout in early August was estimated at as many as 60 Yemeni forces.
The Saudi response has combined diplomacy with military preparation.
On July 30, Saudi de facto leader Mohammad bin Salman assembled a 14-state maritime coalition to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Two Gulf states, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, did not join. Their positions on Yemen and wider regional issues have differed from Riyadh’s.
Oman has remained the principal broker between the Houthis and the international community and is attempting to negotiate a mechanism for commercial transit through the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE, meanwhile, has supported separatist factions in southern Yemen and has favoured confrontation with Iran and the Houthis rather than compromise.
The differences are significant because the anti-Houthi camp is itself divided. UAE-backed factions challenged the authority of the PLC during major clashes in the oil-rich Hadramout region last December.
Saudi Arabia has nevertheless continued to strengthen its regional alliances. On August 7, it brought Türkiye and Pakistan into the “Mecca Joint Defense Agreement”, a pact containing a mutual defence commitment resembling Article 5 of the NATO charter. Neither country, however, has so far joined Saudi retaliatory attacks against the Houthis or other Iran-backed groups that have targeted the Kingdom.
At the same time, Riyadh is preparing its forces.
The mobilisation does not necessarily mean that Saudi Arabia has decided to launch a major ground offensive. Mohamed Qubaty, a former Yemeni tourism minister and acting chairman of the Southern Civil Democratic Rally, argues that Saudi Arabia is preparing for several possible scenarios rather than committing itself to a ground battle.
If Riyadh eventually chooses to support a major offensive, the key target would most likely be Hodeidah, the strategic Red Sea port through which the Houthis import weapons from Iran. Yet Hodeidah presents an extraordinary dilemma: it is also the principal entry point for much of the international humanitarian assistance reaching Houthi-controlled territory.
That concern was central to international pressure against a planned operation to seize the port in 2018. The United Nations, aid organisations and international leaders had warned that fighting around Hodeidah could interrupt humanitarian supplies.
The Houthis, meanwhile, are attempting to prevent Saudi-backed forces from consolidating their positions before any major confrontation begins. They have concentrated drone and artillery attacks on a major PLC-led base in Mokha, along a coastline regarded as strategically critical from Bab-el-Mandeb through Mokha and Hodeidah to Ras Isa and As-Salif.
Qubaty told journalists that the Houthis understand that the coastline could eventually determine the outcome of a major confrontation.
The anti-Houthi forces face their own structural problems. Saudi Arabia has been attempting since January to reorganise the Yemeni forces into a more cohesive military structure, but the PLC-led forces remain a mixture of units under the Ministry of Defence and rival militias, including the UAE-backed Giants Brigades.
Another semi-autonomous force, the Guardians of the Republic, operates in Mokha.
In recent weeks, Saudi Maj.-Gen. Falah al-Shahrani has been tasked with consolidating military decision-making through a single operations centre and integrating anti-Houthi forces into Yemen’s defence and interior ministries. Saudi-created Nation’s Shield and Emergency Forces were also established in early August, while new army and air-force commanders have been appointed.
The scale of these changes suggests that Riyadh is preparing for the possibility of sustained warfare, even if it has not yet decided to launch one.
Any Saudi-backed ground offensive would also raise the question of American involvement. President Donald Trump is already attempting to extricate the United States from the Iran war and is facing shortages of some precision-guided munitions. Whether Washington would provide substantial and active support for anti-Houthi ground operations if Saudi Arabia requested it remains uncertain.
The conflict is also demonstrating how dramatically warfare in Yemen has changed since 2015.
Armed drones are playing a far greater role for both sides than they did during the previous war. The systems are being used for reconnaissance, attacks, defence and battlefield operations, adding a new dimension to an already fragmented conflict.
Marius Bales, a doctoral researcher at the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies, said the PLC-led side was acquiring an important tactical capability of its own. Reusable remotely piloted drones, he said, could be particularly useful along relatively static front lines, even if they could not match the Houthis’ strategic strike range.
On Monday, PLC-led troops reportedly used drones and artillery to kill more than 200 Houthi fighters, marking a significant escalation in their attacks. Their operations have focused on Houthi positions across Marib, al-Jawf, Taiz, Hajjah, al-Dhalea and other fronts, with video footage released of several operations.
Rueben Dass, an associate research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told Al Jazeera that the PLC had publicised its use of drone-dropped munitions, apparently released from rotary-wing drones. He said the systems may have been modified to carry improvised payloads against ground targets, similar to methods used by state and non-state actors in other conflicts.
Yet the Houthis retain a substantial technological advantage.
Bales said the group had accumulated roughly a decade of operational experience and possessed a broader range of systems, from short-range attack drones and reusable systems to long-range, one-way unmanned aerial vehicles capable of striking targets far beyond Yemen.
The Houthis also continue to benefit from Iranian technological assistance despite efforts by the United States, Saudi Arabia and other partners to intercept Iranian weapons shipments.
That combination of regional rivalry, military mobilisation and increasingly capable drones has created a dangerous new phase in Yemen.
The 2022 truce brought relative calm, but it did not resolve the underlying conflict. The current escalation demonstrates how quickly the unresolved war can be reignited when the strategic calculations of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United States and Yemen’s rival armed factions begin to converge.
For millions of Yemenis who have already endured years of war, displacement and humanitarian crisis, the immediate danger is that what began as renewed exchanges of fire could develop into another sustained ground conflict.
The battlefield is changing, but the underlying danger remains familiar: Yemen once again risks becoming the place where larger regional conflicts are fought through local forces.
