MBS Will Not Surrender: Saudi Arabia’s Home Front Will Decide the Houthi War

Taiz has been besieged on and off since 2015. A road reopened in June 2024 eased the pressure, and the southern route through al-Turbah kept the city connected to Aden and the rest of government territory. That lifeline is now gone. The Houthis took al-Turbah by October 4, cutting the main road between Taiz city and government-held areas, and the eastern crossing has also been closed. The Institute for the Study of War describes a Houthi force that kept attacking, wave after wave, and accepted heavy losses in men and equipment to complete the encirclement.

As things stand, Taiz is closer to falling than to being rescued. Its defenders can no longer receive supplies from outside, and besieging forces do not wait; they tighten the ring and attack from every side. Inside, a 20-litre can of petrol on the black market has tripled in price, and a local official told Al Jazeera the siege is more comprehensive than the one of 2015. Only a breakout by government forces, opening a corridor under Saudi air cover, can change that. It is possible, and it is the most likely way the siege ends well.

Losing Taiz would be a major military victory for the Houthis, because their strategy is to cut the supply lines of Yemen’s legitimate forces. Taiz has fed reinforcements to the government’s southern front for years and was the stronghold the Houthis could never take. If it falls, Aden is exposed, and the Giants Brigades that have pushed toward the Bab al-Mandab risk being cut off. We argued earlier that Taiz will decide Saudi Arabia’s war on the Houthis; this week shows why.

While the Houthis work on the ground in Yemen, Iran is working on Saudi Arabia’s wallet. Attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz have surged this month, with strikes reported almost daily against vessels Iran says are sailing without its permission.

This matters because Saudi Arabia’s escape route has already been hit. Its 7-million-barrel-a-day East-West pipeline carries crude from Abqaiq in the Eastern Province across the desert to Yanbu on the Red Sea, so oil can leave without passing Hormuz. The kingdom relied on it during the war with Iran. Then, in September, drones launched from Iraqi territory struck the pipeline, knocking much of it out for weeks, and Saudi exports leaned again on the Hormuz passage that US forces had reopened. Now Iran is trying to close that passage too. Saudi Arabia is being besieged financially while its allies are besieged in Taiz.

This is the picture Iran is selling to the world: the Houthis are closing on the Bab al-Mandab, Tehran is choking Hormuz, and the Islamic Republic controls both of the region’s great straits and emerges from its war with America stronger than it went in.

The most troubling report of the week concerns Saudi Arabia’s main ally. Babak Taghvaee, a military analyst whose reporting news agencies have drawn on, says Saudi officials have noticed that US forces are not using their air defences against missiles aimed at Saudi targets. Before the war with Iran, he says, American forces at Prince Sultan Air Base flew patrols over Saudi airspace and their batteries engaged incoming threats even when the targets were Saudi; that continued in the opening phase of the Iran war. Now, as Houthi missiles fall on King Khalid International Airport, the American batteries stay silent. Washington appears to be conserving interceptors for a renewed war with Iran.

What the US is providing is limited. Some 200 American intelligence and military personnel are working with Saudi command centres on targeting, and President Donald Trump has rejected Saudi requests for direct US strikes on the Houthis. In practice the Americans are stepping back from the fight. Trump has talked about joining Saudi Arabia in Yemen, but as we have written, if he wanted to join the war he would already have done so.

Part of the reason is the threat itself. Britain’s Telegraph reported that the Houthis have been modifying their missiles to get past American and Saudi air defences, and the Associated Press has described warheads that can change direction in flight, a challenge for the Patriot interceptors Saudi Arabia relies on. The problem is a smarter missile as well as a thinner stockpile, and the Americans worry that if they join the war they will struggle to protect their own bases from a Houthi arsenal that Iran, their main enemy, keeps improving.

The crown prince’s movements reflect a clear reading of how this kind of war escalates. An attacker who sees that you are still resisting moves up the ladder. If striking airports does not break you, he goes after power stations. If you are still standing after that, he goes after royal palaces. Every Houthi loss on the battlefield will be answered with a more ambitious target in Saudi Arabia. Moving between bunkered residences is how a leader prepares for the next rung while refusing to come down from the fight.

The airport strikes have already shown what the Houthis alone can do. More than 1,100 flights have been cancelled at Riyadh’s airport, which a NOTAM keeps closed until October 17, and airlines have dropped services to Jeddah and Dammam as well; almost 1,500 flights have been cancelled across the kingdom.

Iran took note. A Houthi strike on King Khalid International Airport broke a red line, and Tehran now says the front is one. Iranian officials have warned that if the United States strikes Iran again, Iran will not limit itself to military bases in the Gulf. It will go after data centres, undersea cables and communications networks and the financial systems that run on them, civilian infrastructure meant to blind the American military in the region. Iran is showing off its strength and believes time is on its side.

On October 11 Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi called his Saudi counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan. Tehran’s account says Araghchi offered to help start a dialogue between Saudi Arabia and Yemen and warned that insisting on a military approach would only complicate the situation. The wording matters. Iran did not mention the Houthis. It spoke of “Yemen”, treating the Houthis as the Yemeni state, so that a Saudi acceptance would amount to admitting that Saudi Arabia is the aggressor interfering in another country.

The timing was deliberate. Riyadh has few other channels to the Houthis. Oman, the usual go-between, has troubles of its own, and Saudi authorities this week displayed a truck carrying 24 smuggled missiles, 12 Kornet anti-tank missiles and 12 LAW rockets, which they said had come through Oman’s Sarfait border crossing. With no one else to mediate, Iran’s message to Riyadh was plain: give in now, before the losses grow and the Houthis take Aden after Taiz.

Saudi Arabia did not accept. Its foreign ministry said only that the two ministers discussed the recent escalation. As we argued when the call took place, Iran’s mediation offer is a trap, and Riyadh was right to refuse it. The refusal means one of two things: either Saudi Arabia has a plan of its own, or Iran and the Houthis are far too confident that the kingdom will crack. The evidence points to the first.

Every piece of bad news this week carries a second meaning. A crown prince moving between palaces is a leader who knows how this war ends and intends to fight to the end of it. A country that turned down a way out is a country that believes it can turn the battle around.

On the ground, the Houthis have had their say at Taiz, but Yemen’s government forces have not yet had theirs. The forces advancing so far are mainly the Giants Brigades, southern units that pushed toward the Bab al-Mandab with surprising ease when they moved. The main government offensive has not been launched; those forces are being heavily reinforced for it. Saudi Arabia, one of the region’s strongest militaries and the largest military spender in the Middle East, has the equipment to win. The crown prince has said the kingdom has the military means to answer any threat, and his energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said this week that “our response must be equally serious.”