Hormuz shut, Red Sea under threat: Saudi Arabia faces a new Houthi front

Dubai: The Middle East war is threatening to open another dangerous front — and put a second vital shipping artery at risk at precisely the moment the Strait of Hormuz remains effectively shut.

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants said on Sunday they struck Saudi Aramco’s refinery in Jazan on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast, while also launching missiles and drones towards the government-held Yemeni city of Mokha.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group had “succeeded in targeting the Aramco refinery in Jazan with a drone, and the strike was precise”.

Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry said firefighting teams had extinguished a blaze at the Jazan refinery without injuries, but did not say what caused it.

The attacks come after the Houthis declared a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia in July and targeted Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. They also threaten to unravel the fragile calm that followed a 2022 truce in Yemen’s devastating civil war.

Here is why the renewed fighting matters far beyond Yemen.

Saudi Arabia led a military intervention from 2015 in support of Yemen’s internationally recognised government against the Houthis, who control Sanaa and large parts of northern and western Yemen.

The Houthis, formally known as Ansar Allah, subsequently became part of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, receiving weapons and technology from Tehran.

A UN-brokered truce in 2022 largely halted major hostilities between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, although it never produced a permanent peace.

But the Houthis insist their renewed confrontation with Riyadh is not simply being directed by Tehran.

Nasr Al Din Amer, a member of the Houthi politburo, told CNN that the group does not need orders from Iran to intensify its conflict with Saudi Arabia.

Because another of the Middle East’s most important shipping routes is already under severe pressure.

Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has disrupted the principal maritime route out of the Arabian Gulf.

Saudi Arabia has consequently been trying to reroute millions of barrels of crude towards its Red Sea coast for export.

But the Houthis are now threatening that route too.

Their blockade targets Saudi shipping passing through Bab Al Mandeb, the narrow waterway connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

Saudi crude exports through Bab Al Mandeb have at least halved since the blockade was declared, according to Rahul Choudhary, vice-president of upstream research at Rystad Energy.

Only about 1.5 million barrels a day can currently cross the strait, compared with 3.2 million barrels a day earlier in the conflict, Choudhary told CNN.

That creates an extraordinary strategic squeeze: Hormuz is effectively shut in the east, while the Red Sea alternative to the west is increasingly under threat.

That is one of Riyadh’s biggest concerns.

A Saudi official told CNN on Thursday that the kingdom was bracing for “multiple coordinated attacks” by Iraqi militia factions and Iran-backed Houthis.

The official cited “multiple intelligence reports” from Saudi Arabia, the US and other regional countries indicating that some Iraqi militia members, “in coordination with the Houthis”, were preparing attacks against the kingdom “in the very near future” under the guidance of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The warning came even as Saudi Arabia was pursuing de-escalation and negotiations involving Iran appeared to be moving in a positive direction.

Neither of Riyadh’s main options is straightforward.

Renewed military escalation against the Houthis could lead Saudi Arabia back into the kind of costly, open-ended conflict it spent years trying to exit.

But making major concessions could strengthen the Houthis and leave them an even greater military and political threat.

Riyadh, however, enters this confrontation with a strengthened regional security framework. On Friday, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed a mutual defence pact stipulating that an attack against any of them “shall be regarded as an attack against them all”.

The landmark agreement could strengthen Saudi Arabia’s deterrence as it confronts renewed threats from the Houthis and other Iran-backed groups.

Danny Citrinowicz, former head of the Iran branch of Israeli military intelligence, described Riyadh’s predicament as “an uncomfortable choice”.

“Escalation could lead to another open-ended war whose costs and end state are difficult to predict. But major concessions could strengthen the Houthis politically and militarily, making them an even more formidable threat in the future,” he wrote on X.

“Saudi Arabia, in other words, is caught between deterrence and accommodation,” he said. “Neither path offers a clean strategic victory.”

The stakes are particularly high because Riyadh has spent years trying to reduce regional tensions while transforming Saudi Arabia into an international investment and economic hub.

That strategy helped drive its rapprochement with Iran, culminating in the China-mediated agreement between the two countries in 2023.

A widening regional war now threatens that calculation.

That danger is growing.

UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg warned on Friday that the country faces its greatest risk of renewed conflict since the UN-brokered truce in April 2022.

He pointed to Houthi attacks against Saudi Arabia and Yemeni government forces, as well as renewed attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, and urged all sides to exercise maximum restraint.

The consequences of another full-scale Yemeni war could be catastrophic.

During the previous conflict, the United Nations described Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with more than 22 million people — three-quarters of the population — in desperate need of aid and protection.

Nine years of fighting killed thousands, devastated the economy and left tens of thousands facing famine.

Now Yemen risks being pulled back into war — while the confrontation simultaneously threatens Saudi Arabia and two of the waterways on which global energy supplies depend.