Yemen's Houthis are upending the Gulf order. The Saudis are the biggest losers

A ballistic missile strike hits a fuel depot close to Riyadh’s international airport. Air raid sirens wailed across the Saudi capital before dawn on Saturday, as they did across other regions, including Jeddah, Taif and Yanbu.

The Houthi strikes exposed how vulnerable the Gulf kingdom is to the Yemeni group’s recent wave of attacks on the country, which they say are a response to Saudi strikes on Yemen. 

Will US President Donald Trump assist his friend Mohammed bin Salman? The crown prince - who the US president failed to help when oil terminals were hit by missiles from Iraq in 2019 - called the White House asking for US support in its war with Ansar Allah (Houthis). Once again, Trump said no.

The $600bn that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman committed to investing in the US in his deals with Trump last year has bought almost zero protection from the world’s military superpower.

The administration offered to share intelligence and assist Riyadh with targeting operations, but Trump desperately wants to avoid opening any new fronts, with US forces overstretched in the blockade of Iran.

Instead, Trump made a deal with the group that had fought the Saudi coalition to a standstill in Yemen after a devastating eight-year war. Under the terms recently agreed in Muscat, Houthi leaders confirmed they would uphold a 2025 ceasefire with the US, ensuring the Red Sea remains open to global shipping, except for Saudi vessels. 

In sum, the Houthis would continue the war with Saudi Arabia, and the US would stay out of it. Mohammed bin Salman was politely thrown under the bus.

Meanwhile, military commanders from the US and aligned Arab states were reportedly brought together with their Israeli counterparts in Germany - a secret meeting organised by US Central Command (Centcom) to discuss the Iran war. Israel then leaked the meeting.

Sources told Israeli journalist Barak Ravid that the “private retreat” was organised by Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper, and attended by the military chiefs of staff of Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt.

Any time Arab states secretly meet with Israeli officials, they should by now realise that it will not remain so, due to Israel’s predilection for boasting. Israel doesn’t do discreet diplomacy. It’s no secret that pro-western Arab states have been doing under-the-counter deals with “the Zionist entity” for decades.

Earlier this month, Houthi fighters launched a rapid assault from southern Hodeidah and western Taiz, capturing the Red Sea port of Mocha overnight. They then advanced to capture the Bab al-Mandeb Strait and Perim Island - a strategic point overseeing the vital waterway - as Saudi-backed government troops withdrew. 

The fighting was bloody. Anti-Houthi National Resistance Forces reported that more than 500 of their fighters were killed and 1,500 injured. Clashes continue near Mocha and other fronts.

Saudi strikes on Yemen’s Houthi forces have been met with Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia. The key East-West Pipeline to the Red Sea has been hit. But Riyadh’s new Mecca defence pact allies, Turkey and Pakistan, have not come to its aid.

If not them and not Washington, then who? 

Enter Benjamin Netanyahu, who has offered military and intelligence assistance to the Gulf states. Saudi Arabia is already getting intelligence from Israel via the US on the Yemenis, according to Kan. Still, Riyadh does not see Israel as a reliable military partner, says Gulf analyst Andreas Krieg. “Riyadh does not want to move from dependence on Washington to dependence on an Israeli security architecture,” he told The New Arab.

Fears that Iran's Yemeni allies will close off the main route for energy and shipping through the Red Sea, on top of the semi-paralysed Strait of Hormuz, have caused further spikes in oil and diesel prices.

A senior Israeli intelligence source told Al-Monitor: “At the moment, no one has deterrence over the Houthis. Not the Americans, not us, and certainly not the Saudis. They are the dark horse that no one expected.”

Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, has agreed to send military advisers to Saudi Arabia, raising fears that the UK could once again be drawn into a Saudi war on Yemen.

Trump will not intervene for Mohammed bin Salman, but he will sell billions of dollars worth of F-35s and one-tonne bombs to Riyadh. The US has just signed off on massive shipments of bombs to both Israel and Saudi Arabia. 

For Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration approved a $5bn package including 10,000 JDAM guidance kits and 10,000 bombs, split evenly between 500lb munitions and 2,000lb BLU-117s. For Israel, the $2.8bn US taxpayer-funded shipment includes 40,000 bombs - half BLU-117s and half MK-84s - and 20,000 penetrator warheads for hardened targets. It is the largest single transfer of this type of bomb to Israel in years.

The scale of these planned shipments is terrifying, as American commentator Tucker Carlson recently pointed out, dwarfing the equivalent tonnage of the Second World War US bombings of Tokyo and Hiroshima. Like those airborne atrocities, the bombs will likely be used against defenceless civilians in Gaza, Lebanon and Yemen.

How can this latest escalation be brought to an end? Ansar Allah, which governs more than 70 percent of Yemen’s population, insists that the war can be stopped by lifting the 12-year-old Saudi blockade on Yemen.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi spokesperson, told Sky News that Sanaa was seeking “to end the blockade and to end the aggression against Yemenis … The ball is in the Saudis’ court; it is their decision to stop this war.”

He added: “All we have done is put the equation of a blockade for a blockade”, referring to the Saudi air, land and sea cordon around Yemen, which has starved its people and caused untold suffering, leading to tens of thousands of deaths.

In the words of US journalist Ryan Grim, the solution to the wider conflict is simple, if unpalatable for Washington: “End the wars and treat Yemen and Iran like sovereign nations with an equal place in the world. (And also stop Israel’s attacks on southern Lebanon.) That’s it. That’s basically all they’d have to do. Just stop insisting on domination.”

Put this way, it is extraordinary how the US can disguise its actions, and those of its allies, as defensive, when in fact it has been waging a decades-long war on Iran using sanctions, assassinations, sabotage and blockades. This conflict is now longer than the Cold War.

The US empire has yet to reach a point of realism, where it can retreat from its unbridled supremacy with grace. And yet, six weeks out from the midterm elections, Trump needs to find a way to wind down the Middle East war he helped start with Netanyahu, and to tamp down record fuel prices for Americans - hence the deal with the Houthis.

Washington is not yet ready to treat its opponents as sovereign states with legitimate interests, and to cut lasting deals with them. The June memorandum with Iran looked promising, but almost immediately, Trump ripped it up.

Yet after November’s midterm elections, when Republicans are likely to be punished for Trump’s war, that may begin to change. Trillion-dollar defence bills are piling up the national debt, while global holders of US treasuries are offloading them at a worrying rate. 

After the 2028 presidential election, perhaps Trump or his successor will do as former President Richard Nixon did, and make peace with Washington’s enemies. But they would have to cut Israel loose to do it.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.