On July 3, an Iranian Mahan Air flight landed at Sana’a airport and took off an hour later, carrying a Houthi delegation to Tehran to attend the funeral of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Ten days later, the delegation attempted to fly back to Sana’a, but before the flight could land, warplanes – likely from Saudi Arabia – bombed the runway, diverting the plane to Houthi-controlled Hudaydah. The Houthis responded by attacking Saudi targets with drone and missile strikes; the Kingdom responded with more airstrikes of its own, and the situation deteriorated into full-scale hostilities. Saudi Arabia struggled to defend its airspace, and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked Washington to intervene on the Kingdom’s behalf. But US President Donald Trump demurred, leaving Saudi Arabia to fend for itself.

The Kingdom is in a challenging position. Despite advanced military assets and its international importance for the global economy and as a spiritual center for Islam, its vulnerability stems primarily from domestic factors. These include a lack of clear strategic vision, excessive centralization and slow decision-making, a reliance on buying loyalties rather than building genuine alliances, and corruption in managing regional affairs. Historically, Riyadh has relied on American security guarantees, permitting it to pursue a relatively cautious foreign policy. However, as the United States loses the will and the capability to intervene in the Middle East at the scale it has in the past, Saudi Arabia is pursuing a more muscular foreign policy, which is being forged in Yemen.

The Iranian Axis and Its Proxies

Yemen’s strategic position at the entrance to the Red Sea means its civil conflict has garnered attention from regional and international powers. The United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Israel have all been drawn into Yemen’s political strife, in pursuit or defense of their national interests, over the course of the war.

Iran has been the most successful. While the origins of the Houthi movement go back to the early 1990s, it is only through Iranian assistance that they have become the threat to Riyadh that they are today. Iran, through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), capitalized on local power vacuums and turmoil to support Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen, nearly encircling Saudi Arabia with the self-described “Axis of Resistance.” Iran and the Axis represent Riyadh’s most dire security threat, with the ability to undermine the energy-dependent Saudi economy and attack Saudi cities and infrastructure. Members of the Axis have shown what they are capable of this year, attacking Saudi oil infrastructure and cutting off Saudi shipping in the Strait of Hormuz and the southern Red Sea, resulting in a further contraction in a Saudi economy already strained by the US-Iran War.

Following Israel’s campaign to degrade Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis have become Iran’s most important and assertive proxy. They control Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, a majority of the population, and a substantial share of the country’s economic resources and revenues, and are now closer to resembling a state than Iran’s other proxies.

Ideologically, the Houthis have adopted a hardline sectarian stance toward Saudi Arabia, with some leaders going so far as to call for the liberation of Mecca and Medina from Wahhabism, a conservative Sunni movement associated with the Saudi state. After the Houthis seized Sana’a in 2014, Saudi Arabia led an Arab coalition, including the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Sudan, to support the internationally recognized government and overturn the coup. That confrontation has developed into a prolonged war.

In March 2022, the parties reached a UN-brokered truce that reduced major combat operations. Direct Saudi–Houthi talks followed, producing progress toward a “roadmap” for a negotiated settlement that would end Saudi participation in the conflict and envisioned intra-Yemeni talks to follow. But the agreement remained unsigned. The process was frozen when the Houthis began attacks on Red Sea shipping in late 2023, and despite intermittent contact, was suspended again after the US administration designated the Houthis a Foreign Terrorist Organization in January 2025, before its own bombing campaign in Yemen against the Houthis, which ended several months later following an Omani-brokered truce.

The bombing of Sana’a airport has brought a new round of escalation. On July 20, 2026, the Houthis announced a blockade of Saudi Arabia. They have subsequently attacked Aramco facilities, Saudi cities, and oil tankers. In July, an Iraqi militia attacked the Kingdom, reportedly with Houthi assistance. At the beginning of September, the Houthis launched a broad offensive in Taiz, Hudaydah, and along the West Coast, pushing south along the Red Sea coast as far as the Bab al-Mandab. They have continued to target Saudi territory, and Saudi airstrikes and countermeasures have been ineffective in halting their advance or stopping their attacks on the Kingdom.

Saudi Arabia recognizes that the Houthis pose a major and persistent threat to its security and stability because of their ties to Iran. Sectarian tensions and their presence on its southern border make this threat more complex and enduring. The longer Saudi Arabia delays addressing it, the more costly it becomes.

With Washington’s refusal to defend Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom has had to find other allies and pursue the war on its own. However, its options are limited. One option is its former ally in Yemen, the United Arab Emirates.

The Abrahamic Axis

Saudi-Emirati relations appeared strong when Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman took power, particularly as Riyadh moved against Islamist currents within the Kingdom, including moderate Islamists who had served as instruments of Saudi influence both domestically and abroad. The UAE joined the coalition against the Houthis in Yemen in 2015, although Saudi Arabia and the UAE pursued their own political objectives. The honeymoon did not last long. Differences emerged over Emirati conduct in Yemen and its support for secessionist groups in southern Yemen. Economic competition between the Gulf states intensified following Saudi Arabia’s launch of Vision 2030 – the Kingdom’s attempt to diversify away from oil – which the UAE viewed as a serious economic threat. Saudi Arabia’s decision to prohibit government entities from contracting with foreign companies unless their regional headquarters were located in the kingdom, together with the huge scale of Saudi projects, prompted hundreds of companies to relocate their regional headquarters from the UAE to Saudi Arabia.

The UAE has also pursued an ambitious regional strategy that often runs counter to Riyadh’s interests. The UAE is actively working to reshape politics in the region: supporting the independence of Somaliland, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan, and most notably, the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen, a southern nationalist group that seeks to resurrect an independent South Yemen. Additionally, Abu Dhabi has forged a close relationship with Israel, which supports the UAE’s strategic ambitions and became the first UN member state to recognize Somaliland, likely because of its strategic proximity to Yemen and the Houthis. These ties were formalized through the 2020 Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE.

Emirati support for the STC posed a direct challenge to Riyadh. While forces affiliated with the secessionist group fought against the Houthis and Al-Qaeda during Yemen’s conflict, often effectively, they also had an adversarial relationship with the internationally recognized government. The government and the STC often seemed just as concerned with fighting one another as they did the Houthis. The rivalry culminated in December 2025, when the STC launched a rapid takeover of government-held areas in eastern Yemen, only to have its gains reversed after a Saudi air campaign, resulting in the UAE withdrawing from Yemen and the official dissolution of the STC. Saudi Arabia had launched its 2015 campaign against the Houthis with multiple allies, including the UAE and Qatar. Now only Riyadh remains.

Theoretically, the Saudis have an incentive to create a strong relationship with Israel. Despite not maintaining formal relations, Saudi Arabia and Israel have a long history of covert cooperation dating back to the Cold War, including support for Yemeni royalist forces fighting republican and Egyptian troops during the North Yemen Civil War (1962-70). Israel has proven itself to be the most effective regional power at countering Iranian influence through intelligence penetration and air capabilities.

However, a closer relationship with Israel may be more harmful for the Kingdom – and the Saudi royal family – than beneficial. Even before the Gaza War, pursuing stronger ties was fraught with reputational challenges. Since then, Saudi Arabia has regularly criticized Israeli conduct in Gaza and underscored that there would be no normalization without a two-state solution, a position the Kingdom has officially maintained since helping spearhead the Arab Peace Initiative in 2002. Israel’s strategic vision for the region – which includes alignment with separatist groups and an aversion to political Islam – also aligns more closely with the UAE than with Saudi Arabia.

By aligning itself with the so-called Abrahamic Axis, Riyadh would have to sacrifice many of the relationships it has fostered both in Yemen and the broader region. It would have to align itself with a domestically unpopular Israel, undermining the Kingdom’s first priority in protecting the royal family, and become an all-but junior partner to the UAE. Such an arrangement is incompatible with Saudi ambition – it wants to be a regional power that the UAE is beneath, not the other way around.

A Third Axis

Spurned by the US, averse to joining the Abrahamic Axis, but still needing allies, Riyadh looked elsewhere, seeking to embrace a more muscular foreign policy while returning to its conservative roots. It found ready partners in Turkey and Pakistan. At first glance, Turkey would not appear to be a natural ally. Ankara is close with Qatar, a former target of Saudi Arabia during the 2017-21 Gulf Crisis, and Turkish officials enthusiastically exposed the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, a public relations disaster for the Kingdom. But Turkey has an effective military – the second-largest army in NATO – and is on the right side of enough issues for Riyadh. It is a strong backer of the Somali government and opposes Somaliland’s independence; it supports the internationally recognized Sudanese government against the RSF; and it has strong influence over the new Syrian government, which overthrew the Iran-backed Assad regime. Pakistan is a more natural ally, a large Sunni-majority country with a history of strong relations with the Kingdom and a long border with Iran.

The three Sunni powers signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, or Mecca Pact, on August 7, with each agreeing to come to the aid of any partner who was attacked. At the same time, the Houthis were launching missile and drone strikes against Saudi Arabia. At first, the response was largely symbolic, with officials from Ankara and Islamabad condemning the attacks. Now, with the escalation of the war in Yemen, both countries have pledged to send troops to the Kingdom to help defend against Houthi attacks.

The new alliance shows that Saudi Arabia is trying to pursue a grand strategy to guarantee its security against the Axis of Resistance, and that it is doing so independently of the US, the UAE, and Israel. However, despite rejecting other visions of the region’s security architecture, Riyadh has yet to formally propose an alternative. The inclusion of Turkey and Pakistan suggests an order dominated by conservative Sunni powers, but the Kingdom has not provided the comprehensive vision that some had expected from Mohammed bin Salman.

There is little time to act. Historically, Riyadh’s caution has made the Kingdom slow to respond to crises and has cost it strategic opportunities on the ground. This has had significant consequences, including the loss of government-held territory in Yemen. The Kingdom’s centralized decision-making process has compounded this problem, making it difficult to actively manage the wide array of issues facing a regionally active power.

Saudi Arabia faces a complex predicament: it can no longer rely on the United States and must use alternative partners and strategies to combat adversaries and deter rivals. This is not straightforward. Alliances come with their own sets of rivalries, and the Kingdom will not be content to be a junior partner. Riyadh knows what it does not want – a victory for Iran and the Axis of Resistance or to become a junior partner of the UAE and Israel – but it is struggling to create a vision of the power it wants to be and the order it wants in the region. Any such vision will first be tested in Yemen, where Saudi Arabia will either emerge as an effective regional power, or be forced to make concessions and accommodations to its enemies.

This analysis is part of a series of publications produced by the Sana’a Center and funded by the government of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The series explores issues within economic, political, and environmental themes, aiming to inform discussion and policymaking related to Yemen that foster sustainable peace.