Houthis Stop Retreating and Hit Saudi Airports as Riyadh Prepares Their End

Military analysts watching the war say the battle to follow is at Taiz, not on the coast. Taiz, Yemen’s third-largest city, is almost encircled. Only its southern corridor still works, and Houthi fighters keep slipping in to blow up the bridges along it and shell its roads. They do not need to capture the corridor. As long as they threaten it, it cannot function as a supply line.

Taiz is a hub for the military support that reaches government forces. If it fell, the Houthis would choke that supply, gain their strongest card for any negotiation with Riyadh, and open a road toward Marib, whose oil and gas fields and refinery are among Yemen’s most valuable assets. Houthi media are already pushing out footage they say was filmed at a house belonging to Rashad al-Alimi, chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council that leads the recognised government, to sap Saudi morale. The trade is clear: Taiz would be the Houthis’ bargaining chip, and the government’s gains on the coast are Saudi Arabia’s.

From 2015 to 2022, Houthi fighters sheltered in caves and mountain tunnels, and Saudi aircraft rarely inflicted the kind of losses that changed a battle. That has changed. Saudi Arabia committed 100 fighter jets this week, and analysts told Al Jazeera that the rate and accuracy of the strikes exceed even the 2015 campaign, helped by coordination with US intelligence. Accounts that track the war with intelligence sources describe heavy Houthi losses from the air, and those losses opened the way for the government’s advance.

Allies are flying alongside. Britain has deployed an RAF Voyager tanker to refuel Saudi jets on missions against Houthi missiles and drones. France has sent warships to the Red Sea, and Italy has sent its navy to escort shipping through Bab el-Mandeb. Intelligence and aerial refuelling are what Saudi Arabia takes from its partners. The strikes themselves are Saudi.

Every government advance draws more of that help. Nobody is about to land troops, but governments will send more weapons, intelligence and money once they can see results, and the results are visible: the Houthi hold on Bab el-Mandeb and the Yemeni coast has been weakened. That is attractive to Western capitals and to Washington, and it gives the Mecca Pact real work to do.

On October 5, Saudi Defence Minister Prince Khalid bin Salman announced that the Mecca Pact had activated collective deterrence after an emergency meeting of its political and defence committee in Riyadh. The pact, signed by Saudi Arabia, Türkiye and Pakistan on August 7, treats an armed attack on one member as an attack on all three, and this was its first use. Our report on the activation covers the meeting.

Pakistan has made clear it will not publish the details of its military help. It wants to stand by Saudi Arabia without being dragged into Yemen, and to gain from the alliance without paying for it. Defence Minister Khawaja Asif told reporters that Pakistani and Turkish forces are playing a supporting role, including reconnaissance, while “the combat is practically being conducted by Saudi Arabia’s own forces,” Al Jazeera reported. Expect Pakistani air defence batteries, military advisers for Yemen’s government forces, troops guarding vital Saudi installations and JF-17 fighters on Saudi bases, enlarging the Saudi air force rather than leaving it to fight alone. Unconfirmed social media reports say Pakistani advisers have already reached government units.

Türkiye has said it has heard Saudi Arabia’s requests and will provide a different kind of military support. Reports say Turkish medium-range air defence systems have reached Saudi Arabia, and footage has circulated of Turkish armoured vehicles with Yemeni government forces. That is equipment and a presence on the ground, with no Turkish combat force behind it.

In Ankara, opposition leader Özgür Özel told his party’s lawmakers: “We reject the adventurism that would send Turkish soldiers into Yemen’s deserts after 100 years,” Turkish Minute reported. He warned the pact would pull Türkiye into Yemen, and from there into a war with Iran. Özel is wrong. Türkiye, a NATO member with bigger problems closer to home, will not put troops on the ground in Yemen unless Turkish personnel operating air defences or other assets in Saudi Arabia suffer heavy losses. Sending soldiers abroad requires a vote of parliament under Article 92 of the Turkish constitution, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not ask for one. Erdogan is no bad ally; Turkish interests simply cannot carry a ground war in Yemen. Saudi Arabia itself has no ground troops in Yemen and relies on Yemeni government forces. Pakistan and Türkiye want what the Egyptian proverb calls not leaving the fair without chickpeas: to activate the pact and collect the largest possible return for backing Saudi Arabia, without bleeding for it.

The Saudi relationship with Washington is the other front. According to Tactical Report, a Beirut-based intelligence newsletter, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has now tested Donald Trump twice: in September 2019, when Houthi-claimed drones and missiles hit Saudi Aramco’s Abqaiq and Khurais plants, and now, as the Houthis advanced in Yemen. Both times he learned the same lesson. A defence agreement with the United States, which Washington had dangled as a reward for normalising relations with Israel, does not mean America will come when it is needed.

When Riyadh asked for US help in Yemen, Trump’s answer, according to the newsletter, was: “I will give you everything except bombs.” No American troops on the ground in Yemen, and no American bombs dropped on it. CBS News reported in September that the crown prince had personally pressed Trump for strikes and that Trump had offered intelligence and targeting support instead.

Trump has a defence ready. US intelligence, he tells the Saudis, warned them repeatedly about Houthi intentions before the war resumed, and they did not respond enough. The New York Times reported this week that American military and intelligence agencies had been warning Riyadh about the growing Houthi threat for months, and that Washington had said it would not strike Houthi positions, according to a TASS summary of the report. The warnings may well be real. Using them to blame Riyadh is an excuse. Trump does not want to be seen walking away from an ally, so he has built a reason not to act.

The less visible point is that Trump is pleased with what is happening. He sees Britain’s tankers over Saudi Arabia, French and Italian warships off Yemen, and Pakistan and Türkiye signing up to defend the kingdom, and he likes it. His own biggest mistake was starting the war with Iran alone, with only Israel at his side. Saudi Arabia did not repeat that mistake: it went into Yemen and gathered the widest coalition it could, and partners answered because of the kingdom’s relationships. Asked on October 5 about the Saudi and Yemeni offensive against the Houthis, Trump said: “It will work out very well,” Middle East Eye reported. Even Houthi strikes on Saudi airports and bases serve his purpose, because they confirm that Saudi Arabia is now formally at war and will stand with Washington when the United States returns to the confrontation with Iran. This time it would not go back alone. It would have Saudi Arabia, other Gulf states, and a coalition stretching from Britain, France and Italy to Türkiye, Pakistan and Egypt.

Saudi Arabia also proved braver than expected. We had expected that Riyadh would not move against the Houthis until after the US midterm elections and only with American forces beside it. It moved first, on its own.

The Houthis will not go quietly. Bloomberg argued this week that they are hard to defeat partly because outsiders misread them. They are often pictured as men in sandals riding pickup trucks. They are something else. The movement presents itself as an enemy of Israel, but its doctrine also sets it against Saudi Arabia, and it fights the kingdom as a religious war. It receives heavy arms from Iran, and it now builds missiles and drones in its own workshops from parts bought abroad: a Bloomberg investigation found that about 35 per cent of documented materials seized on their way to the Houthis between 2021 and 2025 were of Chinese origin, against 21 per cent from Iran. Advisers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and from Hezbollah fight alongside them. Their tactics are those of an army.

An army with those backers and that doctrine must not be allowed to reach its goals on Saudi Arabia’s border. The further Saudi Arabia advances, the more states will join it, many of them eager to punish Iran by punishing its most useful ally.