Peloni: MBS had an important opportunity to form a coalition against the Houthis with UAE several months ago, and instead they chose to literally bomb the UAE out of Yemen. It was a significant self owned error for which Riyahd is now facing a war with the Houthis with limited choices. As Christine Douglass-Williams notes below, the Saudis have a history of being at war with the Houthis, and it is a humiliating tale of defeat followed by defeat. It will be interesting to see if Riyadh is capable of changing that trend in the coming conflict.
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U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
The Houthi are also now working alongside Iran to “charge ships to transit the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea, threatening another waterway after Tehran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.”
Last week, the Houthis struck two Saudi oil tankers, amid a warning from Marco Rubio that they “should have stayed out,” but the Houthis have a history of war with Saudi Arabia. Now that the Saudis have announced a new maritime defense coalition to counter the Houthis’ expanding campaign against Red Sea shipping, a wider escalation looks inevitable.
Iran is now desperate, and its loyal proxies, including the particularly resilient Houthis — advanced in guerrilla warfare and weaponry — will not back down. The official Houthi slogan — “Allahu akbar, death to America, death to Israel, a curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam” — is explicitly inspired by the political rhetoric of the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution.
The Houthis have also developed an advanced global supply chain of weapons-smuggling that stretches as far as Eastern China. The Houthis have had remarkable successes. One may wonder how a jihad group from the mountains of poverty-stricken and war-torn Yemen could threaten the world, but they have managed to do so. Fanatical religious zeal combined with a sense of having nothing to lose is effective. Westerners underestimate the depth and power of Islamic religious zeal. Yet with Saudi Arabia now in the mix, the war is now unpredictable, as the Saudis gear up for major retaliation, including a “possible ground invasion” against the Houthis.
“Houthis vow ‘full escalation’ as Saudi Arabia launches Red Sea coalition,” by Clara Nabaa, Euronews, July 31, 2026:
Yemen’s Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi threatened Saudi Arabia with “full escalation,” hours before Riyadh announced a new maritime defence coalition designed to counter the Iran-backed group’s expanding campaign against Red Sea shipping.
“The indicators show that the Saudi side is heading towards full escalation, and we will respond to its full escalation with full escalation,” al-Houthi said in a lengthy televised address on Thursday.
The Houthi leader also warned that aircraft Turkey sold to Saudi Arabia would “turn into unsellable stock once they are shot down in Yemen,” saying Riyadh had already lost American MQ-9 drones and Chinese-supplied aircraft in the conflict.
Al-Houthi accused Saudi Arabia of keeping Yemen in a deliberate cycle of economic and political crisis, saying what he described as “US-Saudi aggression” had been under way since the Saudi-led coalition intervened in the war in 2015…
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