1 hour ago
3
In the space of just a few days, Yemen appeared to be slipping out of its fragile de-escalation and back into the heart of regional tensions.
The incident involving the Iranian aircraft that entered Yemeni airspace was not merely a dispute over a flight. It exposed the extent to which the war in Yemen has become intertwined with the confrontation between the United States and Iran, and raised an old question in a new form: Can Yemen remain outside any broader regional escalation?
The Iranian aircraft’s attempt to land in Sanaa, the subsequent targeting of the airport runway to prevent it from doing so and its eventual landing in Hodeidah opened a dispute that extends far beyond civil aviation.
The internationally recognised Yemeni government and Saudi Arabia treated the flight as a test of sovereignty and of Iran’s ability to establish a direct link with Houthi-controlled areas. The Houthis and Tehran, meanwhile, presented it as an attempt to break the restrictions imposed on Sanaa.
The Houthis’ response against Saudi Arabia was therefore not entirely unexpected. Their targeting of Abha airport in retaliation for the strike on Sanaa airport that prevented the aircraft from landing marked the first Houthi-claimed attack on Saudi Arabia since the informal truce began in March 2022.
So far, however, the attack has remained limited, and Saudi Arabia has not responded with a full-scale military campaign. This suggests that, despite the heightened escalation, both sides are still proceeding with careful calculations.
It was in this context that the US Department of State responded to a question from a television channel about reports that President Donald Trump had given Saudi Arabia the green light to act against the Houthis.
Washington did not explicitly confirm those reports. It said it was monitoring them, before firmly affirming its support for Saudi Arabia in confronting what it described as Iranian aggression, including attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis.
More importantly, the State Department directly linked Houthi attacks and the threats the group has issued to core US interests in the region, foremost among them freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and preventing the export of terrorism.
This language does not mean that a decision to go to war has been made. But it does indicate that the Houthis’ place in US calculations has changed.
The group is no longer viewed solely as a Yemeni actor, but as part of Iran’s network of influence, capable of threatening both Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea.
Against this backdrop, Saudi Chief of the General Staff General Fayyad al-Ruwaili met Lieutenant-General Patrick Frank, deputy commander of US Central Command.
The official announcement referred to developing military cooperation and did not mention Yemen. But the timing of the meeting gives it additional significance. It came after the attack on Saudi Arabia, the Iranian aircraft crisis and amid an ongoing escalation between the US and Iran.
The situation, then, cannot be separated from the region’s wider tensions. Iran is under direct pressure in its confrontation with the United States, and the Strait of Hormuz lies at the heart of those tensions, while the Bab al-Mandab, the narrow strait linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and a vital trade route between Europe and Asia, remains one of the region’s most sensitive sources of leverage.
Should the confrontation expand, the Houthis would be among Iran’s allies best placed to open another pressure front.
This is what gives the military movements in Marib, al-Jawf, Harf Sufyan and elsewhere in Yemen their importance.
There is not yet sufficient evidence that a decision has been made to launch a major ground war. But forces are being placed on heightened alert and mobilised across several fronts at an extremely sensitive moment. As regional escalation intensifies, any internal confrontation becomes more likely to expand.
In the opposite direction, United Nations Special Envoy Hans Grundberg travelled to Muscat, where he met Omani officials and Mohammed Abdul Salam, the head of the Houthi negotiating delegation.
His primary mission now appears to be not to launch a comprehensive settlement, but to prevent this round of escalation from turning into a new war.
De-escalation, the attack on Saudi Arabia, Iranian flights and the rules governing the use of Sanaa airport are likely to be at the heart of the current discussions, even if their details have not been made public. Those efforts may succeed, or they may not.
Calm remains the most likely scenario in the short term. Saudi Arabia does not appear eager to return quickly to a broad war, while the Houthis understand that an open confrontation with the kingdom, coinciding with the US-Israel war on Iran, could expose them to an entirely different level of pressure.
The responses may therefore remain measured. The escalation may stop at a certain point, and Muscat may succeed in bringing both parties back towards restraint. But that does not mean the underlying causes of the confrontation have disappeared.
The Iranian aircraft incident exposed the fragility of the current de-escalation. The targeting of Abha airport reopened the Saudi front. The US position has also become clearer in linking the Houthis to Iran and to security in the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, military movements on the ground indicate that the parties are not behaving as though a settlement is close.
For these reasons, I believe the confrontation has been postponed, not cancelled. Any expansion of the regional conflict will make it increasingly difficult to keep Yemen out of it.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
