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ARCHIVE – Vehicles drive past a banner of Houthi leader Abdel Malik al-Huthi. Photo: Osamah Abdulrahman/AP/dpa/Archive photo
Keystone
In Yemen, Houthi leader Abdel Malik al-Huthi has threatened neighboring Saudi Arabia with attacks on oil facilities, airports, and other sensitive targets. All of Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities and critical infrastructure within the country are “targets for our missiles and drones,” al-Huthi said in a televised speech. He stated that the appropriate response to the recent attack on Sanaa Airport in Yemen—which is controlled by the Houthis—would be an attack on Riyadh Airport.
On Monday, one of the most serious confrontations in years broke out between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which is supported by Saudi Arabia. The attacks on Sanaa Airport in northern Yemen and on targets in Saudi Arabia have raised new concerns that the war in Yemen, which has been ongoing since 2014, could flare up again. An informal ceasefire has been in place between the two sides since 2022.
“The ceasefire is hanging by a thread,” Nadwa al-Dawsari of the U.S. think tank Middle East Institute told the newspaper *The National*. “It was never truly sustainable because the parties fundamentally disagreed on its terms.”
The Houthi militia in Yemen is, alongside Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran’s most important non-state ally. During the Iran-Iraq War, it had declared its “full and unwavering solidarity” with Tehran.
At first, the Houthis had only outdated weapons systems from the former Soviet Union, but they have since continued to expand their arsenal. Today, it includes a wide range of missiles, cruise missiles, drones, and drone boats. With these, they can directly threaten ships, critical infrastructure, and residential areas in the region.
Although the Houthis’ arsenal has been severely damaged by repeated U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, they are still able to obtain supplies for their weapons systems via smuggling routes—such as those around the Horn of Africa—from Iran as well as other countries. According to the British organization Conflict Armament Research (CAR), in a major discovery of weapons and weapons technology last year, only five percent of the components came from Iran; the rest, it said, originated from at least 16 other countries.
From Yemen, the Houthis control the Bab al-Mandab Strait, which lies on the route between Europe and Asia and, along with the Strait of Hormuz, is one of the world’s most important sea lanes. The Houthis have threatened new attacks on the strait after having already severely disrupted global trade with hundreds of attacks on shipping beginning in 2023.
16.07.2026, 19:12
