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  • Commentary: The Viability of a Partitioned Yemen: Challenges to a Houthi State

    The Houthis simply don’t have the financial resources to support a government, pay salaries, and invest in the infrastructure and rebuilding that will be necessary in a postwar scenario. Nor does the group control the oil and gas fields in Yemen that would allow it to make money on the world markets. This realization is largely what has driven successive Houthi offensives on Marib since 2020. But each time the Houthis came up short, as Saudi air power proved decisive. Now with the war seemingly nearing an end, the Houthis are in a difficult position: The group holds territory but doesn’t have the finances to maintain it. Of course, the Houthis could always make another attempt on Marib after the Saudi withdrawal, but that would almost certainly invite renewed Saudi airstrikes.

  • Deep Dive: Armed groups in Iraq, Yemen warn US of multi-front response to Gaza war

    hiite armed groups in Iraq are threatening to target American assets in the region if the US intervenes in the Hamas-Israel war—or if Tel Aviv “expands the battleground.” This comes amid reports of a possible Israeli ground incursion into Gaza, and as Israel may also target Lebanon, where several cross-border confrontations with Hezbollah have taken place. Meanwhile, Yemen’s Ansarullah movement—better known as the Houthis—has stated that it will respond if the US intervenes in Gaza.

  • Yemen flare-ups jeopardize peace negotiations

    Both sides in Yemen's eight-year war have accused each other of attacks that break a relative lull in fighting and jeopardise peace talks that had been gathering momentum. Yemen's Houthi movement has battled a Saudi-led coalition since 2015 in a conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands and left 80 percent of the population dependent on aid. Houthi spokesperson Mohammed Abdulsalam said the coalition killed 12 of the group's soldiers in the last month along the Saudi border. "While we consider incidents of truce violation to be regrettable... we stress the importance of entering into a phase of serious peace," he told Reuters.

  • Opinion: Saudi Arabia’s New Strategy in Yemen: Border and Proxies

    Saudi Arabia is pursuing a two-pronged exit strategy from the war in Yemen. Having failed to secure a military victory on the ground, the kingdom has chosen to talk directly with the Houthis to insulate the border and neighboring waters from attacks. At the same time, Saudi Arabia has stepped up its activism in Yemen’s South through proxy-like loyalists to counter secessionist and pro-Emirati forces. This marks a strategic change in Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni policy, which had previously prioritized pursuing a countrywide cease-fire and maintaining a unified Yemeni state, mainly by engaging with formal institutions.

  • Yemen’s rebels optimistic after Saudi Arabia peace talks

    Among the rebels' demands were the payment of salaries for Houthi appointed civil servants, the release of Houthi prisoners and the launch of new routes from the airport in Houthi-controlled Sanaa. The Saudi Foreign Ministry released a statement welcoming the "positive result of the serious discussions regarding reaching a road map to support the peace path in Yemen." The Houthi delegation also met Saudi Arabia's defense minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, brother of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

  • Saudi Arabia welcomes positive results of talks to support peace process in Yemen

    The Houthi delegation arrived in Saudi Arabia last week. It was the first such official visit to the kingdom since the war broke out in Yemen in 2014 after the Iran-aligned group ousted a Saudi-backed government there. The talks are focused on a full reopening of Houthi-controlled ports and Sanaa airport, payment of wages for public servants, rebuilding efforts, and a timeline for foreign forces to quit Yemen. An agreement would allow the United Nations to restart a broader political peace process.

  • Saudi Arabia welcomes positive results of talks to support peace process in Yemen

    Saudi Arabia welcomed positive results from discussions to reach a road map supporting the peace process in Yemen, the kingdom's foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday, after Houthi negotiators' talks with the Saudis in Riyadh. Houthi enovys left Riyadh on Tuesday after a five-day round of talks with Saudi officials on ending the eight-year-old conflict in Yemen, sources familiar with the meeting and Houthi media said.

  • Saudi Arabia praises ‘positive results’ after Yemen’s Houthi rebels visit kingdom for peace talks

    Saudi Arabia on Wednesday praised the “positive results” of negotiations with Yemen's Houthi rebels after they visited the kingdom for peace talks, though Riyadh released few details on their discussions to end the war tearing at the Arab world's poorest nation. The five days of talks, which represented the highest-level, public negotiations with the Houthis in the kingdom, come as Saudi Arabia tries a renewed bid to end the yearslong coalition war it launched on Yemen. That conflict had become enmeshed in a wider regional proxy war the kingdom faced against its longtime regional rival Iran, with which it reached a détente earlier this year.

  • Saudi Arabia executes 2 soldiers convicted of treason as it conducts war on Yemen’s Houthi rebels

    Saudi Arabia executed two soldiers Thursday who were convicted of treason as the kingdom conducted its war on Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

  • Delegation from Yemen’s Houthi rebels flies into Saudi Arabia for peace talks with kingdom

    A delegation from Yemen's Houthi rebels has flown into Saudi Arabia for talks with the kingdom on potentially ending the yearslong war tearing at the Arab world's poorest nation, officials said. It remains unclear what terms are being discussed between Riyadh and the Iranian-backed Houthis, who have held Yemen's capital of Sanaa since September 2014. But this first public trip by a senior Houthi delegation comes after regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran reached a Chinese-mediated détente earlier this year and as there has been a flurry of diplomatic activity between the different parties in the proxy war. This latest effort appears to have begun with a visit Monday to Oman by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the assertive son of King Salman who launched the kingdom-led war back in March 2015. Oman long has served as an interlocutor between both Iran and the Houthis during the war.