Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has announced the start of a military counteroffensive against the Iran-backed Houthis, aimed at seizing the territory under their control.
Renewed warfare between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia has reignited Yemen’s frozen civil war and heightened risks to Red Sea shipping, further disrupting Middle Eastern energy exports already choked by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Houthis are a military, political and religious movement that rules over most of northwest Yemen and has disrupted global trade and energy markets with attacks on ships and tankers in the Red Sea.
It began firing on ships in the Red Sea and launching drones and missiles at Israel in November 2023, saying that it was doing so in support of Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza.
Those attacks on Red Sea shipping, as well as on Saudi Arabia, resumed this year in response to the United States’ war on the Houthis’ close ally Iran.
The group emerged in far north Yemen in the 1990s.
When Yemen’s longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh was brought down in the 2011 "Arab spring” protests, the group consolidated its control over northern Yemen, rejecting a Gulf-backed political transition.
With Iranian support, the group’s secretive leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, turned his faction of mountain fighters into a force of tens of thousands.
In 2014 they seized the capital Sanaa, driving the internationally recognised government south towards Aden.
Concerned of growing Iranian influence in Yemen and chaos on its borders, Saudi Arabia led a military intervention against the Houthis in early 2015 to dislodge the group, restore the government and revive the transition plan.
However, neither side was able to gain much ground in Yemen’s mountainous terrain, and the Houthis remained in control over the northwest, where most of the population lives.
After years of fighting, the UN brokered a 2022 truce between the warring sides in Yemen that maintained peace until this year.
The group’s attacks on Red Sea shipping between 2023 and 2025 significantly disrupted global trade, forcing cargo ships travelling between Europe and Asia to take a long, expensive route around Africa.
Their threats to oil tankers during the Iran war have added to the squeeze on energy out of the Gulf after Tehran mostly choked off the Strait of Hormuz, adding to a global oil crisis. – Reuters