UN envoy pushes Yemen talks as Houthi Red Sea offensive deepens crisis

UN envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said he has held talks with Houthi negotiators and the internationally recognised government in an effort to stop the latest escalation in Yemen, where fierce fighting has broken out on the country’s western coast. The renewed violence has killed hundreds and forced tens of thousands to flee, adding a new turn to a war that began in 2014.

In an interview with The Associated Press in Cairo, Grundberg said his weekend meeting in Muscat with the Houthis’ chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdul-Salam, was aimed at exploring “if there are ways of how to avoid seeing the current escalation go even further”. He said he also held talks in Riyadh with the internationally recognised government and regional powers, including Saudi Arabia, which has been the main target of what he described as the Houthis’ “unprecedented” and “dramatic” latest escalation.

The conflict began when the Iran-backed Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014, forcing Yemen’s government into exile in Saudi Arabia. A year later, Saudi Arabia entered the war with a multinational coalition. Grundberg said instability in the region, and the “influence of regional parties, including Iran, and also other neighbours to Yemen”, had also affected the course of the conflict.

Earlier this month, aided by Iranian experts, the Houthis pushed down the Red Sea coast, capturing the strategic city of Mokha and a number of Red Sea islands. The advance extended their reach to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key maritime route. It was the group’s biggest territorial gain in years and ended a 2022 ceasefire that had largely halted major fighting in Yemen’s 12-year civil war. The rebels have also stepped up cross-border attacks on Saudi Arabia, targeting oil facilities and stopping its tankers from passing through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, through which around 12 per cent of global trade passes.

According to the UN, the latest assault and the fighting with Saudi-backed Yemeni and allied forces have killed at least 838 people and wounded more than 3,640 others. The UN migration agency said the flare-up had displaced more than 145,000 people inside Yemen, while more than 3,000 others had fled across the water to Djibouti.

Grundberg said the current escalation was more complicated than earlier rounds of violence in the civil war, with battle lines shifting to the Red Sea coast, where “the most sensitive front lines” are threatening maritime corridors crucial for global trade. “We’ve seen attacks also on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and it’s a development that is alarming and that should be a concern for the Security Council,” he said.

He also said the Yemen conflict had become increasingly linked to the wider wars in the Middle East that began with Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel and, most recently, the US-Israeli war against Iran. The conflict has also become a regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, with the United States long involved on the periphery by providing intelligence assistance to the kingdom. However, international criticism over Saudi airstrikes that killed civilians led the US to pull back its support.

“The current situation is going to be challenging to resolve,” Grundberg said, adding that the warring parties and their backers “are currently trying to assess” the consequences of the escalation. “There’s a lot of dust in the air that needs to settle before they can make their own assessment on what the best alternative for the way forward is, whether it is on the battlefield or whether it’s around the negotiation table,” he said. He said the Yemen war needed to be separated from other regional conflicts to help find a settlement “defined by Yemenis”, adding: “My recommendation at this point is to make sure that you disentangle these conflicts and you address them one by one effectively and efficiently through negotiations.”

Overall, Grundberg’s message was that the fighting in Yemen has entered a more dangerous phase, with heavy human costs, wider regional links and growing risks to Red Sea shipping, while efforts continue to prevent the escalation from deepening further.