Why are the Houthis back in the news?

Andrew Leber: Earlier this month, the Houthis—an armed political movement that has controlled much of Yemen’s territory for more than a decade—claimed control over Yemen’s Red Sea coastline. Their rapid capture of the Port of Mokha marked the group’s first major military advance in nearly five years and shattered a de facto ceasefire brokered by the United Nations. It also further threatened global oil trade at a time when the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has spiked energy prices worldwide.

The Houthis initially stayed out of direct involvement in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which some analysts attributed to the group viewing the battered Islamic Republic as a “weak horse.” Still, their advance into Mokha reflects a steady escalation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis since mid-July, after the collapse of an initial U.S.-Iranian memorandum of understanding. Over the weekend, the Houthis bombed a fuel depot at the main airport in Riyadh, sending a plume of black smoke over the Saudi capital.

This development reflects both the dynamics of a no-longer-frozen domestic Yemeni conflict and continued fallout from the U.S.-Iranian military and diplomatic stalemate in the Persian Gulf. It has also raised the possibility of additional U.S. intervention in the region against the Houthis, though President Donald Trump has thus far declined to use force against the group.

How do these events change the security calculus in the region?

Andrew Leber: The Houthis’ advance gives them control (for now) of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait—a crucial chokepoint at the southern end of the Red Sea. It also raises the possibility of opening a second front in the current Gulf conflict—one that could target Saudi oil facilities and population centers and threaten an additional Red Sea chokepoint for global energy trade and other goods shipments. Past Houthi attacks on Red Sea traffic have already curtailed shipping through the strait while raising insurance and security costs on the remaining vessels.

Previous air campaigns by Saudi Arabia (with the support of other countries) sought to dislodge the Houthis to limit the influence of Iran and Iran-aligned groups on the kingdom’s borders. However, these efforts contributed to a humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen and entrenched the UN-recognized Government of Yemen (GoY) forces in a fraught stalemate with the Houthis. Later military interventions by both the Biden and Trump administrations against Houthi forces likewise ended in strategic defeats.

The latest Houthi advance also calls Saudi Arabia’s bluff that it could contain the Houthis on its own, through a combination of quiet diplomacy and the unification of fragmented GoY forces.

Lesley Anne Warner: In the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, the Houthis now control the island of Perim (also known as Mayyun), which allows them to more aggressively harass and disrupt maritime traffic. The Houthis’ advance also brings them within 80 miles of Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, which houses Combined Joint Task Force–Horn of Africa and is the United States’ only permanent military facility on the continent. Its mission has previously included operations to support crisis response in the Horn of Africa as well as U.S. combat operations against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula across the strait in Yemen. Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict and the resulting impact on maritime insecurity in the Red Sea, Djibouti has reportedly not allowed the United States to use its base for offensive operations against the Houthis. The country has continued to play a balancing act between its criticism of Israel’s approach in Gaza and its utility as a relatively secure, geostrategic country that houses several foreign military bases.

When testifying before Congress last year, General Michael Langley, then the commander of U.S. Africa Command, warned that the Houthis already possessed the capacity to strike the base facilities, should they decide to escalate attacks against the United States or U.S. interests. A recent UN report notes an exchange of weapons and technical training between al-Shabaab—the Somalia-based al-Qaeda affiliate—and the Houthis, with the former providing the latter with hard currency to sustain its political administration and regional military control, and the latter providing the former with advanced weaponry to fight the government in Mogadishu. 

With a strengthened Houthi presence in the Bab al-Mandeb, the Houthis and al-Shabaab have more operational space for collaboration. Meanwhile, the Houthis have expanded the battle space and forced any multinational effort to confront them and their Iranian patrons to divide their attention.

These developments come as the United States has been signaling for several years that it will eventually terminate U.S. funding for UN logistical support for the African Union’s stabilization and counter–al-Shabaab mission in Somalia. This development, which would take effect at the end of 2027, is expected to give the militant group more freedom of movement in the areas in which it operates.

How does this affect Saudi Arabia’s energy shipping?

Andrew Leber: Houthi control of Red Sea shipping corridors (at least the southern end) compounds a disastrous period for Saudi energy shipments. Around the same time as the Bab al-Mandeb takeover, Iraq-based militias severely damaged the kingdom’s crucial East-West Pipeline. That energy corridor, combined with Red Sea ports in Jeddah and Yanbu, had allowed Saudi Arabia to offset a significant portion of the U.S.-Iran war’s direct economic costs.

The one-two punch of pipeline attacks and Red Sea seizures, however, risks forcing Saudi Arabia into relying more on fraught “dark crossings” of the Strait of Hormuz to evade Iranian attacks—or face a dramatic drop in oil revenues. Tellingly, the kingdom has already begun canceling key oil shipments to Europe.

Houthi gains further complicate efforts by the Arab Gulf states to establish a common position for negotiating with Iran on reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia will want some kind of understanding with the Houthis to be part of any Arab-state agreement with Iran, while Iranian leaders will be just as eager to present the Yemen conflict as outside the scope of cross-Gulf relations.

There’s also a Somaliland dimension to this that doesn’t get much attention outside specialist circles. Can you unpack that?

Lesley Anne Warner: Following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, and continuing during the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran this year, the Houthis have targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea—including more recently near the 18-mile-wide Bab al-Mandeb that connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden. The Bab al-Mandeb is a maritime chokepoint through which roughly 12 percent of seaborne-traded oil travels, and the uptick in threats has forced many vessels to reroute around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. This has increased the strategic value of Somaliland, the partially recognized state that declared independence from Somalia in 1991, and has added to the view in some Washington-based foreign policy circles that the United States should recognize Somaliland’s independence.

The Mogadishu-based federal government has never recognized Somaliland, treating it as an autonomous region. Tensions between Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa, and Mogadishu escalated in 2024, when Ethiopia signed a memorandum of understanding with Somaliland, granting landlocked Ethiopia a fifty-year lease on approximately 20 kilometers of Somaliland’s coastline for a naval base and commercial port access, with the prospect that the former would extend formal diplomatic recognition to the latter in return. The memorandum provoked fierce opposition from Mogadishu, which accused Addis Ababa of violating its territorial integrity. In December 2024, Türkiye brokered the Ankara Declaration between Ethiopia and Somalia, which committed both parties to respect each other’s territorial integrity and work toward “mutually advantageous” commercial arrangements for Ethiopian port access.

In defense policy circles, increased U.S. military engagement in Somaliland could be perceived as a hedge for the U.S. military presence in Djibouti, where President Ismail Omar Guelleh has been in power for almost three decades and is approaching his eighties. In addition, with the establishment of China’s first overseas military installation in Djibouti in 2017, Djibouti is the only place on the planet that has a permanent military presence from both the United States and China. 

Until Israel’s unilateral recognition of the region as an independent state in December 2025, no country had ever recognized Somaliland. There has been speculation as to whether the United States would follow suit, due to Trump’s close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his frequent disparagement of people of Somali descent as well as Somalia as a whole. In addition, Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi (also known as Irro) was in Washington last week, making the case for Somaliland recognition. As yet, there are no public indications that the executive branch has changed U.S. policy on recognition of Somaliland as an independent country.

What will you be watching for as this story evolves? 

Andrew Leber: On the Yemen side of things, I will be watching to see if Houthi forces can consolidate their hold on port cities such as Mokha and Dhubab, as well as the Red Sea island of Perim.

I will also be watching to see whether domestic pressure mounts on Saudi de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman to “do something” about the security dilemma facing the kingdom, as happened in the run-up to Saudi Arabia’s intervention in Yemen last winter. Currently, Saudi commentators are more focused on exhorting the international community to take action.

So far, Trump has demurred, with U.S. diplomats reaching out to Houthi counterparts mainly to ensure that the conflict does not directly implicate the United States. Saudi Arabia has reportedly reached out to China instead to try to restrain Houthi forces via Iran.

Lesley Anne Warner: From the U.S.-Africa policy perspective, I’m watching whether the worsening of the security environment in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa provides additional justification for increased U.S. engagement. I anticipate this could be confined to intelligence-sharing and security cooperation and that it would not require an official U.S. diplomatic or military presence. In fact, non-recognition of Somaliland has not inhibited high-level U.S. engagement with the region. A recent State Department report to Congress noted that the U.S. military “has regular engagements with Somaliland authorities and is exploring areas for potential cooperation.”

The United States has also been exploring a closer relationship with Eritrea, which sits north of Somaliland and Djibouti along the Red Sea. Last week, Washington allowed sanctions to expire on members of the ruling party and security forces tied to Eritrea’s conduct during the 2020–2022 conflict in northern Ethiopia, when it was on the side of the Ethiopian government. Given anticipation of renewed conflict in northern Ethiopia (and that Ethiopia and Eritrea have again fallen out and would be on opposite sides of the conflict), overlaid on rising insecurity in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandeb, I would not be surprised if these developments provide additional justification for U.S. engagement with Eritrea—notwithstanding the country’s human rights record.

I’m also watching the impact on maritime security, given the slight uptick in Somali piracy, which peaked over a decade ago. Back then, a combination of industry-led measures and multinational naval patrols addressed the threat, but there are a few new variables this time around. One is that international order is more contested, meaning less coherence around military and nonmilitary means of addressing the evolving threats in the Bab al-Mandeb. The second is that the cross-strait relationships are now more evolved and strategic, although the connections between the Houthis and al-Shabaab are primarily transactional and strictly non-ideological. The third is that the battlespace has evolved: Al-Shabaab and ISIS-Somalia already use drones for reconnaissance, and the latter group conducted its first confirmed drone strikes in January 2025. Given trends in commercial off-the-shelf drone technologies in the Sahel and West Africa, an expansion in use cases for these technologies seems likely.

I also anticipate higher insurance costs for the shipping industry as a result of insecurity and higher freight costs associated with any need to reroute from the Bab al-Mandeb around the Cape of Good Hope. These costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers. In particular, African economies have already weathered a succession of geopolitical shocks in recent years, with little time in between to increase their resilience, and they will have to brace for higher commodity costs.

Lastly, there’s a humanitarian element. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, over 3,000 people have fled Yemen across the strait to Djibouti. Calling on the United Nations and international partners for support, the Djiboutian interior minister has projected that arrivals could reach 10,000—a number that would strain available resources.