Control of territory around Bab el-Mandeb — which lies between Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African coast — could deepen the Houthis' regional reach, putting the Horn of Africa within easier reach of their logistical and smuggling networks.
Combined with Iran's leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, another vital route for global energy supplies, the foothold gives Tehran and its allies influence over two critical maritime choke points.
MbS's foreign policy strategy, built on trying to stabilise the region via a détente with Iran, has unravelled since the start of the war as his economic transformation agenda comes under mounting strain, increasing pressure on the kingdom's de facto ruler.
The absence of Western military assistance in Yemen, and the absence of these powers from a newly formed defence coalition, exposed the limits of its ability to rally support at a moment of acute vulnerability.
Riyadh appears increasingly to have been outmaneuvered by its adversaries and left wanting by its allies.
The Houthi offensive revealed a blind spot in Saudi and U.S. strategy: while Washington and its allies focused on containing Iran directly, Tehran widened the battlefield by opening fronts from Iraq to the Red Sea, using energy assets, shipping routes and proxies as instruments of pressure.
The larger significance of the Houthi breakthrough lies not only in the blow to Saudi Arabia but in the momentum it restores to Iran's influence across the region, after major setbacks to its allies in Gaza, Syria and Lebanon.
For Iran it's a "win-win-win," said Farea Al-Muslimi.
Some political analysts say the more consequential blow is not the battlefield reversal but Washington's reluctance to come to its ally's aid. That signal, they say, has emboldened adversaries, weakened Riyadh's leverage and reinforced doubts over the reliability of U.S. security guarantees.
Al-Muslimi described Washington's refusal to help defend Saudi territory as "the biggest dismissing of the Saudi-American arrangement" in decades.
"The Americans are saying No," he said. "That kind of understanding in the relationship between Riyadh and Washington has never been tested more than now."
Yemen's long record of defeating foreign powers - from Egypt in the 1960s to the Soviets and, more recently, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia - helps explain why Riyadh's search for partners may yield only limited results.
Few regional powers appear eager to be drawn deeper into a conflict that has repeatedly frustrated attempts at outside intervention and acquired a reputation as a graveyard for foreign military ambitions.
"Yemen is the Vietnam and Afghanistan of every power dragged into it," Muslimi said, referring to conflicts in which foreign powers were humbled.
"The Saudis failed in Yemen, the Americans failed in Yemen," he said, adding in reference to Egypt's costly intervention in Yemen in the 1960s: "The Egyptians failed in Yemen."
XLE•
