Gulf

Saudi Arabia Enters the Yemen War With 100 Jets as Houthis Retreat

Saudi Arabia has formally joined Yemen’s war with 100 fighter jets behind Operation Dawn of Yemen. The Houthis overreached at Taiz for Iran’s agenda, are losing Bab el-Mandeb and Mokha, and cannot recover.

File photo: A Royal Saudi Air Force Eurofighter Typhoon takes off from Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, on March 6, 2025, in preparation for the Red Flag-Nellis 25-2 exercise. The Saudi-led coalition said on Oct. 5 that 100 fighter jets are flying in support of the Yemeni government’s offensive against the Houthis.Photo: Airman 1st Class Brianna Vetro, U.S. Air Force (public domain)

Silent Dossier Editorial DeskOctober 5, 20269 min read

In this article

Riyadh stops fighting in silence

For two months Saudi Arabia bombed the Houthis without saying so. Its aircraft carried out more than 200 strikes on Houthi positions while the kingdom announced none of them, and the Iran-backed movement kept advancing after the 2022 truce collapsed in July: down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, onto the Bab el-Mandeb strait and around the government-held city of Taiz. On October 4 the Houthis cut the road linking Taiz to Aden and released footage they said showed their fighters at the home of Rashad al-Alimi, the head of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council.

Within hours the silence ended. Al-Alimi went on television to announce military operations “to retake the remaining territories” and extend the state’s authority “over the entire national territory,” ordering every military formation to carry out its missions “until the country is liberated from the grip of the terrorist militia.” The coalition backing his government answered at once. On October 5 its spokesman, Maj. Gen. Turki al-Malki, said 100 fighter jets were flying round-the-clock support for Yemeni forces in an operation named Dawn of Yemen, and that 324 high-value Houthi targets had already been destroyed.

This is a declaration of war, and American coverage has read it that way. It is also the campaign Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been preparing in silence for weeks. Saudi Arabia is no longer trying merely to beat the Houthis. It intends to uproot them.

Key takeaways

Saudi Arabia has formally entered the Yemen war, committing 100 fighter jets to a government offensive announced by Rashad al-Alimi on October 4, after two months of unannounced strikes.

Within roughly 24 hours government forces say they retook Dhubab and positions around Bab el-Mandeb and then the port of Mokha, while witnesses reported Houthi fighters abandoning positions around Taiz.

The Houthis overreached. By pushing on Taiz for Iran’s agenda instead of stopping at Bab el-Mandeb and bargaining, they stretched their forces over ground they could not hold, and they cannot rebuild what they are losing.

Saudi Arabia’s endurance under an economic war of pipeline and oil attacks made this reversal possible. Riyadh is winning, and it will likely use that advantage to impose harsher terms rather than march on Sanaa.

How the war turned in 24 hours

The Houthis themselves supplied the first measure of the new campaign. After al-Alimi’s speech, the Houthis said Saudi aircraft had struck them more than 100 times in a single 24-hour period, a sharp jump from the 94 strikes they had counted the day before. These were not symbolic raids. The coalition says it is hitting weapons depots, training camps and command sites, and its aircraft are flying continuous cover over government troops and over the strait itself.

The ground followed the air. Government spokesman Col. Majed al-Nuzaili said the Giants Brigades and the Nation’s Shield Forces carried out a flanking manoeuvre that secured Bab el-Mandeb, took Dhubab and its airstrip, and cut the road from Dhubab to Mokha. The Associated Press reported the recapture of Dhubab, Bab and Hadeid. By Monday evening the army said it had retaken Mokha, the port the Houthis seized during their September blitz, and had opened a “strategic offensive” toward Sanaa. Intelligence-focused accounts say Perim island in the strait has been retaken and that forces are pushing on toward the remaining Houthi camps on the coast.

Around Taiz the picture reversed just as quickly. Witnesses quoted by Al-Hadath said Houthi fighters abruptly evacuated positions in Mokha, dozens fled the heights of Jabal Habashi district, and a column of more than 50 vehicles carrying fighters pulled back from al-Burayhah and Bani Bakari toward al-Kadahah. Footage circulating on Monday showed Houthi dead in the hundreds on ground the government had just recovered. The Houthis have not confirmed their losses, and none of the battlefield claims can yet be independently verified. But the direction is unmistakable. A movement that was advancing at speed on Sunday was falling back at speed on Monday.

The cost of the fighting before this turn was already severe. The World Health Organization counts at least 959 people killed and more than 4,200 wounded since early August, with about 174,000 displaced inside Yemen and more than 3,000 fleeing across the water to Djibouti.

Analysis

Six countries’ intelligence behind the Saudi strikes

The strikes are effective because they are informed. According to intelligence and former military officials’ accounts, the Saudi target lists draw on information from six governments: the United States, Israel, Britain, France, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Any state in the region holding a file on the Houthis has handed it to Riyadh.

Parts of that picture are now on the record. US officials told the AP that Washington is providing “intelligence sharing, target identification and planning” for the offensive, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the Saudis “have a right to defend themselves.” In September, Israel and Saudi Arabia held talks mediated by US Central Command on building an intelligence picture of Houthi deployments, and Britain agreed to send military advisers after Riyadh asked for help at Bab el-Mandeb.

None of this is a comment on Saudi intelligence, which is capable on its own. It is a statement of intent. A state that wants to defeat a militia uses its own means. A state that waits, gathers every available file and only then strikes with 100 aircraft is planning to destroy it.

Riyadh also repaired its own coalition first. The quarrel with the UAE that Silent Dossier warned had to end has been set aside, at least on the battlefield. The UAE-backed Giants Brigades are leading the coastal push, weapons are flowing to government forces, and Saudi air power has arrived in force, which is exactly what the Houthis had bet would not happen. Preparation on this scale would normally take more than a year. Riyadh assembled it in days.

Analysis

Why the Houthis overreached, and why they cannot recover

The Houthis misjudged their own strength and their enemy’s weakness. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi saw his forces advance against little resistance and concluded that Yemen’s government would never stand up again. He took vast territory he had no means to secure. When government forces finally pushed back, he had to rush reinforcements from Sanaa, which is precisely what an enemy waiting to flank his columns and cut his supply lines wants.

The Houthis were attacking, not defending. They stretched their lines so far that they took ground they could not swallow and won victories they could not digest. And the decision to keep going was not theirs alone. Had they stopped at Bab el-Mandeb and offered to negotiate with Riyadh, they would have served their own agenda, because that was the limit of what their forces could hold. Insisting on taking Taiz served Iran’s. Now the Houthis are paying for carrying out Tehran’s plan.

They cannot undo the damage. The government’s forces can recover from losses and stand up again with Saudi and Emirati backing. The Houthis cannot. Rebuilding would depend on local manufacturing, their largest source of weapons, and on supplies from Iran that are slow and hard to move. They spent four years preparing for this offensive, and if it fails those four years fail with it. They have lost a large share of their fighters and equipment along with the ground. Anyone expecting the Houthis to regroup and turn the war around again should expect disappointment. The movement is breaking from within.

Analysis

The economic war Saudi Arabia refused to lose

The kingdom has been fighting on two fronts: a brutal economic war and a military one. Since Iran began restricting passage through the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has paid more for the region’s crisis than anyone, the United States included. Americans have felt higher prices. Saudi Arabia faced a threat to the oil exports at the centre of its economy, and the Houthis, who justify their attacks as retaliation for Saudi air raids and what they call a blockade of Yemen, set out to close its last outlet.

Its answer was the 1,200-kilometre East-West pipeline, which carries crude from the eastern fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The pipeline was halted from September 11 to 22 after earlier attacks, despite a Chinese mediation effort meant to keep it off the target list. On October 4 smoke rose again from Pumping Station No. 2 in Khurais, east of Riyadh. The first images led many to believe the main station had been destroyed; closer imagery showed the strike hit an auxiliary facility rather than the main plant. Even so, an energy-sector source told AFP the pipeline had been stopped again.

The losses to the Saudi economy from these attacks are large. What matters more is that Riyadh absorbed them and did not bend. The Houthis bet that economic pain would force the kingdom to back down. That bet has failed, and Saudi steadfastness is the reason the battlefield looks the way it does today.

Militarily, Riyadh has also learned from the war it launched in 2015. It understood it could not fight the same campaign again. Yemen’s government forces needed different weapons and real close air support, not aircraft striking targets that did nothing to move the front line. Dawn of Yemen pairs ground advances with air cover designed to serve them. That is a major shift, and the results of the first 24 hours show it.

What comes next: harsher terms, not Sanaa

Saudi Arabia is winning. The harder question is where it stops, and whether Iran will stay quiet if government forces approach Sanaa. Silent Dossier’s judgment is that the government’s forces, however strong, will not take the capital: the Houthis will fight to the last there, with suicide attacks and worse. Analysts on Arab television made the same distinction this week between the political ambition of recovering Sanaa and what the forces on the ground can do after years in which Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah helped the Houthis move from smuggling missiles and drones to building them.

But the campaign does not need Sanaa to succeed. Recovering the territory lost since the summer would be a decisive result in itself. Houthi losses along the way will be far heavier than most expect, Bab el-Mandeb will be freed, supply lines will reopen and shipping will move again.

Riyadh is unlikely to want a war of attrition. The more probable course is a negotiation on Saudi terms, harsher and broader than anything offered before. Throughout their advance the Houthis refused to talk to the kingdom. With the tide now running against them, they will accept Saudi conditions. Whether Riyadh settles for that deal or presses on to drag Abdul-Malik al-Houthi out by the collar, the momentum belongs to Saudi Arabia, and it deserves to win.

There is a reason to say this plainly now. In June 1967, Egyptian radio told its listeners their army was winning while it was being routed in Sinai, and a generation never trusted official news again. When the Houthis were rolling down the coast and closing on Taiz, Silent Dossier said so, even when that was unwelcome in Riyadh, because comforting readers with false advances is a betrayal. The same standard applies now that the war has turned. The Houthis are retreating, and Saudi Arabia has the upper hand.