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Bab al-Mandeb, Hormuz gave intertwined fates
Yemen’s battlefield has shifted from a two-way dispute into a lineup pitting the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and their allies against one another, each claiming its own stake. After Iran called for an Oman meeting on a new mechanism for the Strait of Hormuz, the American lobby urged Saudi Arabia to hold off, hoping to use the Bab al-Mandeb card as leverage there. Lacking Arab consensus, and amid Saudi anger at Tehran over the Houthi “resistance front” eroding Riyadh’s grip on Yemen, the Persian Gulf Arab states postponed the critical Hormuz meeting.
This deadlock coincided with renewed Houthi missile and drone attacks on Saudi targets. Tehran-backed militias in Iraq also forced Saudi Arabia to shut a critical east-west pipeline that had become Riyadh’s stand-in export route after Iran rendered Hormuz effectively inaccessible. That shutdown, the postponed meeting, and the Houthis’ seizure of Yemen’s Red Sea coast giving them Bab al-Mandeb too combined to push oil past $108 a barrel.
Three scenarios
While global attention stays fixed on Iran and Israel, Yemen’s humanitarian crisis keeps deepening without commensurate funding as if everyone is waiting for Saudi Arabia to finish the job with US backing. Three scenarios stand out:
1. Gradual escalation toward full-scale war (most likely, short term). Every military move is met with a counter-move, with no deterrent breaking the cycle. Analysts like Ahmed Nagi of the International Crisis Group warn that while a window for containment remains, each step narrows it. The Houthis’ capture of the western coast, UN warnings of the highest war risk since 2022, and resumed Red Sea attacks all point this way likely toward a longer war of attrition, since neither side will simply collapse.
2. Local containment, a return to “no war, no peace” (likely, medium term). With active Omani-UN mediation and a Saudi Arabia reluctant to fully re-enter the war after bearing its costs for years, the parties may settle back into a fragile equilibrium resembling 2022-2026, without a formal ceasefire but with reduced intensity. Saudi Arabia has so far avoided large-scale ground operations, mostly reacting instead.
3. De facto fragmentation of Yemen (background structural risk). The STC’s collapse in winter 2025-2026 exposed how fragile the anti-Houthi coalition is. Analysts like Abdulsalam Mohammed suggest Yemen could drift toward fragmentation instead of renewed centralized war: the north under Houthi control, the south riven by rivalry between separatists and the central government, and peripheral areas held by local groups or al-Qaeda entrenching an unstable status quo for years.