Saudi Arabia’s Oman Offer to the Houthis Is a Bid for Time, Not Surrender

This war was imposed on Saudi Arabia before it was ready. The Houthis did not stumble into it over a closed airport in Sanaa or a blocked civilian flight from Iran. Iran spent four years helping them build the missile, drone and fast-boat arsenal now aimed at the kingdom, and when the moment came they used it. The Saudi military was caught by surprise.

What Riyadh needs now is time: time to gather its allies, time to bring in more air defence, and time to reorganise the Yemeni government forces that have to fight on the ground. Foreign analysts made the same point: if Saudi Arabia could secure even a short truce, it would win on every count, because time is the resource the Houthis are playing against.

According to reporting by the Lebanese daily Al Akhbar, relayed by The Jerusalem Post on September 18, the Saudi proposal carried through Oman was a two-week ceasefire and direct talks. A truce of two weeks or a month would have let Riyadh restock and regroup. The Houthis saw that clearly and said no. Their refusal is the best evidence that they know exactly what Saudi Arabia is trying to do.

Riyadh’s handling of Tehran makes the same point. When Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi called Prince Faisal bin Farhan after the airport strike and offered Iran’s help in starting a dialogue between Saudi Arabia and “Yemen”, Riyadh did not take it. Krimly said Saudi Arabia had not requested any Iranian mediation and keeps its own direct channels to the Houthis, with Oman only a facilitator. A kingdom preparing to surrender would have accepted the offer. Silent Dossier explained at the time why Iran’s mediation offer was a trap.

The Houthis say they want a comprehensive agreement rather than a simple truce. That sounds like a peace offer. In practice it is a demand for Saudi money.

Under the arrangements that followed the UN-brokered truce of 2022, part of the money Saudi Arabia sent into Yemen found its way to the Houthis. Suppose Riyadh budgets $3 billion for Yemen in a year, for the internationally recognised government and its forces. By experts’ estimates, close to $1 billion of that would end up with the Houthis. The group used Saudi money to pay its government and its civil servants, and skimmed from it too.

Now imagine, for argument’s sake, that the Houthis win this war. Who pays the people under their rule? Without Saudi money they cannot govern. Unpaid salaries bring protests, then unrest. Iran cannot write them a cheque for a billion dollars a year. So Saudi money is part of what a Houthi victory would have to look like.

That is what “comprehensive” means: keep every piece of land seized since the summer and get the Saudi payments back. If it were that simple, Riyadh might accept. It will not, because Saudi Arabia does not want a settlement on those terms. It wants to return to the fight on its own terms, once its ranks are in order. That is why the Oman offer was a smart move and not a surrender.

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War note that the Houthis have widened their strikes on Saudi Arabia while still avoiding the kingdom’s red lines. They have hit Riyadh’s airport again and again, most recently with a ballistic missile that struck the main terminal, and they have hit Aramco facilities. But three targets remain untouched.

The first is a heavy, sustained attack on Abqaiq in the Eastern Province, the processing heart of the Saudi oil industry. The second is the kingdom’s desalination plants, on which its cities depend for water, an attack Saudi Arabia would never tolerate. The third is the royal palaces. Cross any of them, and the Saudi response would be enormous.

Within those lines, the Houthis are playing the game they played in 2022, when sustained pressure on Saudi Arabia ended in a truce on terms they liked. This time the chances of Riyadh signing the same kind of deal are remote. There is blood between the two sides now, and that blood prevents Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from making peace with the Houthis. Both sides are heading to the end.

These Houthi strikes are far heavier than anything in the previous war. The group has changed: it wants Iranian ballistic missiles it can modify to do more damage in Saudi Arabia. Yet the kingdom has absorbed it all and is still standing, and that resilience points to a strong Saudi answer to come.

Saudi Arabia has changed too. Earlier this month the Saudi-led coalition launched a major offensive to retake the ground the Houthis seized on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. It is also gathering allies: talking to Washington, seeking military help from France, and building on the mutual defence agreement it recently signed with Pakistan and Turkey. France, Pakistan and the United States have sent personnel. None of this existed in 2022. On October 17 The Guardian reported that the UAE, which quit Yemen in January, has agreed to resume payments to southern government forces, with Saudi Arabia providing air cover. Egypt’s president has asked parliament for powers to defend Saudi Arabia, and the UN Security Council affirmed on October 15 the kingdom’s right to self-defence.

The decisive Saudi moves will come after the US midterm elections on November 3, when Washington may join in. Riyadh has to hold until then, and the Houthis know that as well. So they are trying to make every strike count: they have stayed away from the red lines, but they are concentrating their munitions to inflict maximum damage on each target they choose.

The Houthis are not firing alone. Intelligence reporting says Iranian experts in Yemen are overseeing the strikes and that Iran gathers intelligence inside Saudi Arabia and passes it to the Houthis. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 17 that Iran is giving the Houthis targeting and intelligence for their attacks on the kingdom. Iran, worn down by its own war, cannot collect all of that by itself. The Russians and the Chinese help, and Krimly himself said some capabilities and intelligence reaching Iran and the Houthis come from elements in Russia or China.

Saudi Arabia is fighting the war the United States could not win. America fought Iran with Russia and China behind it. Saudi Arabia is fighting all four: the Houthis, Iran behind them, and Russia and China behind Iran.

Iran is also squeezing the kingdom from other directions. US media reported this week that Iran has moved infantry units to its border with Iraq. US intelligence reads the move as defensive, a guard against Kurdish fighters crossing from Iraq. Israeli outlets disagree, because it comes alongside Iranian threats to invade neighbouring states if the United States strikes Iran. Forces in Iraq could push towards Saudi Arabia. Even if they never move, they force the Saudi army to watch a second land front just when it might send ground troops into Yemen to finish the job alongside the government. And Iran is choking the Strait of Hormuz to cut Saudi oil exports, so that a weaker kingdom accepts Houthi terms sooner. Iran is besieging Saudi Arabia from every side it can reach.

Saudi Arabia is still largely alone, and someone has offered to change that. On October 16, asked whether the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements under which the UAE, Bahrain and later Morocco and Sudan normalised ties with Israel, could now be extended to Saudi Arabia, Donald Trump answered: “Yeah, I think so. Maybe more than ever. Saudi Arabia is very happy to have Israel’s support and our support.” Asked whether Riyadh should accept Israel’s help against the Houthis, he said: “I think they will. Israel has been very helpful to Saudi Arabia.” Some called it an improvised answer. It did not sound like one. It sounded like a man who had been thinking about exactly that.

The Israeli press has spelled out the offer. Saudi Arabia’s weakest point is air defence. Eight months of Iranian fire during the US-Iran war drained its Patriot stocks, and the Houthi campaign has forced it to spend more Patriot and THAAD interceptors, while the Houthis modify their missiles to get through. The result is a gap, and the airport strikes are its clearest sign: hitting the capital’s airport disrupts business, tourism and even Hajj and Umrah travel across the whole kingdom.

A Jerusalem Post analysis lists what Israel could offer: Iron Dome for individual sites, David’s Sling and Arrow against missiles, all of which would have to work alongside the kingdom’s American-made Patriot and THAAD batteries. That is the catch with the Steel Dome Saudi Arabia acquired from Turkey: it can intercept drones and cruise missiles, but it stands alone and does not talk to the American systems. Israel’s could. And Israeli commentary has a message for Riyadh: Israel is in no hurry, because the Saudis will come.

That line should shame every Arab government. Israel is telling the world it is waiting for the land of Mecca and Medina to come asking. Where are the Arabs? Israel would answer a Saudi request at once, even in the middle of its own war with Iran. It may already have shared intelligence that Riyadh found valuable, and Trump’s remark points that way. But Israel cannot spare large quantities of interceptors while it faces Iran. At most it would send a token share, if it sends anything. Silent Dossier does not expect Riyadh to make that request.

Iran is satisfied with the war the Houthis are waging, though not with everything they do. Tehran does not want the Houthis to strike Mecca and Medina, because a religious war would unite the Arab states against it. Its greatest success so far is not the damage the missiles have done. It is that Saudi Arabia stands alone.

A Saudi request for Israeli help, or a Saudi signature on the Abraham Accords, would serve Iran well. If Israel and the United States are busy defending Saudi Arabia against the Houthis, who is striking Iran? It would also hand Tehran a justification for its attacks: it is hitting the state that allied itself with Israel. Iran treats the Accords with Bahrain and the UAE one way. A deal by the custodian of Mecca and Medina would give it a far more powerful argument.