Iran-backed Houthi fighters pose next to a captured vehicle following what the source described as an attack on Saudi-backed forces in the location given by the source as al Jawf governorate, Yemen, in this screengrab taken from a video released by Houthi Military Media on Sept. 15, 2026. Photo: HOUTHI MILITARY MEDIA/Handout via REUTERS

IRAN — Yemen’s Houthis have escalated attacks on cities and energy infrastructure in neighboring Saudi Arabia over the past week while seizing territory along the Red Sea toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key maritime chokepoint.

The lightning Houthi advance has bolstered the ability of the Iran-backed, internationally designated terrorist group to control one of the world’s most important shipping routes for goods and commodities, including oil.

Sweeping through Yemeni towns and seizing islands in the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb, the Houthis’ renewed campaign has led to a spike in global energy prices and extended Iran’s reach in the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia has responded with airstrikes against the Houthis, who have in turn launched drone and missile attacks across the border.

Amid the fighting, Yemenis this week reportedly took to boats in the Red Sea to escape fighting. According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 100,000 Yemenis have been displaced by the latest campaign, mostly within Yemen.

The violence did not appear without warning. In July, the Houthis announced a naval blockade against Saudi shipping in the Red Sea. Saudi-backed Yemeni forces increased pressure on Houthi positions, while fighting intensified along several internal front lines. By late July, United Nations mediation was continuing, but diplomats and analysts were already warning that Yemen was moving toward renewed war after four years of relative calm under a ceasefire.

The latest strikes are not just another exchange of fire across the Saudi-Yemeni border but show how an unresolved civil war has become tied to the wider confrontation between Iran and the US, Israel, and their regional partners.

The Houthis, an Iranian proxy formally known as Ansar Allah, originated in Saada, northwest Yemen. Their roots lie in the revival of Zaydi Islam, a branch of Shia Islam that has existed in Yemen for centuries. A Zaydi imamate ruled parts of northern Yemen for roughly 1,000 years before a republican revolution in 1962.

During the 1980s and 1990s, many Zaydis believed their religious and cultural identity was under strain. The region suffered from poverty, poor state services, and political marginalization. An ideological struggle intensified in northern Yemen as Saudi Arabia established Sunni Salafi schools, while Zaydi communities responded by opening their own religious schools, youth camps, and cultural organizations including the movement Believing Youth.

Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, a former member of Yemen’s parliament and figure from whom the Houthi movement took its popular name, transformed his views into a more confrontational political message. He condemned President Ali Abdallah Saleh, criticized Yemen’s partnership with the United States, and presented opposition to foreign domination as a religious duty.

The movement’s rise was therefore driven initially by local grievances and the conduct of the Yemeni state. Tensions became an armed rebellion in 2004 after Saleh’s government moved to arrest al-Houthi. He was killed by government forces that year, but his death did not end the Houthi movement. Under the leadership of his younger brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the insurgency continued through six rounds of war in Saada between 2004 and 2010.

In September 2014, the Houthis seized Sana’a, the capital, and later pushed toward Aden, ultimately forcing President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee to Saudi Arabia. Capturing the capital and state weapons transformed the Houthis from a regional rebel group to a dominant armed militia.

Saudi Arabia viewed the Houthi advance as both a Yemeni crisis and a direct national-security threat. Riyadh feared a heavily armed, Iran-aligned movement taking control of territory along its southern border. Saudi and allied aircraft began an extensive bombing campaign in 2015, while restrictions on ports and airports tightened.

Riyadh expected intervention to force the Houthis out of Sana’a. Instead, the conflict became a prolonged war of attrition. The coalition possessed overwhelming air power, but it could not defeat a movement embedded in Yemen’s mountainous northwest. The Houthis strengthened their control over the capital and the country’s most populous regions.

Iran’s relationship with Houthis grew gradually. Tehran saw strategic value in supporting a movement capable of exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia at relatively low cost. In return, the Houthis gained weapons components, technical expertise, training, and access to Iran’s wider network of regional proxies, including Hezbollah and armed organizations in Iraq.

Western countries including the US and Israel have repeatedly warned of Iran’s military support to the Houthis. In 2024, for example, the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) released a report detailing how Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been smuggling weapons and weapons components to the Houthis, including for ballistic and cruise missiles.

Iranian influence is not limited to weapons. The political language of the 1979 Islamic revolution offered Hussein al-Houthi a model of mobilization and defiance of the West. He openly admired Iran’s first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, for his ability to overturn a Western-backed monarchy and praised both Iran and Hezbollah for confronting the United States and Israel.

The Iranian influence is visible in the Houthis’ slogan known as the sarkha: “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.” Its explicitly antisemitic language and revolutionary presentation echo slogans promoted by the Shia-led Islamic Republic.

Beginning in November 2023, the Houthis launched missiles and drones toward Israel and attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea, acting in support of the Palestinians during the Gaza war. These attacks drew military responses from the United States, Britain, and Israel and pushed Yemen’s peace process into the background.

During the 12-day war between Iran and Israel in June 2025, the Houthis became more directly involved on Iran’s side, firing ballistic missiles toward central Israel. They publicly announced that the operation had been coordinated with the Iranian military, demonstrating that the Houthis’ role had expanded beyond Yemen’s civil war.

The September 2026 attacks on Saudi Arabia now threaten to erase even the limited stability created by the 2022 truce between the two sides. A renewed Saudi-Houthi war would not merely reopen old front lines but unfold in a region already destabilized by confrontation involving Iran, the United States, and Israel, with energy facilities and maritime routes exposed to attack.