Houthi Escalation Reshapes Yemen’s Political and Military Landscape

The current escalation by the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) in Yemen began with the arrival of an Iranian civilian aircraft. The plane, operated by Mahan Air, entered Yemeni airspace and landed at Sana’a International Airport on July 3, without authorization from Saudi Arabia or the internationally recognized government. The Houthis said their air defenses had repelled Saudi aircraft attempting to prevent the plane from landing, and declared their military readiness to end what they called the “Saudi-American blockade,” affirming that flights between Tehran and Sana’a would continue. Abdelwahid Abu Ras, the group’s deputy foreign minister, later appeared alongside the Iranian ambassador to Sana’a, Ali Mohammad Rezaei, indicating that the aircraft may have carried figures beyond the Yemeni patients and stranded travelers the group had said were aboard.

The stated justification for the aircraft’s arrival was to transport Houthi figures to Iran to offer condolences at the funeral of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The Houthi delegation’s arrival in Tehran was publicly announced, although it included no senior figures whose presence would warrant sending an Iranian aircraft to transport them. Yet indications soon emerged from Sana’a, Tehran, and Moscow of an impending maneuver, concerning both Yemen and the region. After returning from Tehran, Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, said Iran possessed the equivalent of a “thermonuclear weapon” in its arsenal, referring to its ability to threaten the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi announced that his country was prepared to use “all its diplomatic capabilities to lift the blockade on Yemen.” The escalation thus developed into organized action involving multiple parties.

In response to the flight, the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) held an extraordinary meeting on July 3 and issued a statement condemning Tehran’s violation of Yemeni sovereignty. Iran and the Houthis nevertheless continued their attempts to impose a new status quo on the government and Riyadh. On July 13, a second Iranian aircraft attempted to land at Sana’a, but was prevented by airstrikes on the airport claimed by the government, and was diverted to Hudaydah. The strikes followed a diplomatic standoff: Tehran and the Houthis had insisted that the delegation return aboard an Iranian aircraft, despite the government’s offer to charter another aircraft to bring it back to Sana’a. This raised suspicions about the insistence on using Mahan Air, which has been linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and sanctioned by the US.

The aircraft in question was an Airbus A340-313, capable of carrying a maximum load of 275 tonnes, 280 passengers, and flying more than 13,000 kilometers (8,000 miles). It could therefore make a round trip between Tehran and Sana’a without stopping and transport significant military cargo even with a full passenger load. Subsequent reports revealed that Iranian military advisers and drone and missile equipment had been transported aboard the aircraft to the Houthi group.

In response to the strike on Sana’a airport, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea subsequently announced a retaliatory blockade of Saudi air and sea ports—the same ports that were still supplying Houthi-held areas. The coalition reported that more than 300 commercial ships had entered the Houthi-controlled ports of Hudaydah, Al-Salif, and Ras Issa during the first half of 2026, carrying food, fuel, and other goods and materials. Reports in July indicated that Iran had asked the Houthis to prepare to close the Bab al-Mandab if the US attacked Iran’s energy infrastructure.

Houthi rhetoric remained consistently and explicitly escalatory. In a lengthy speech, Abdelmalek al-Houthi threatened “escalation in response to escalation.” Shams al-Din Sharaf al-Din, the mufti of the republic in Houthi-controlled areas, delivered a speech in Al-Sabaeen Square in Sana’a declaring that “confronting the House of Saud is a duty incumbent on the entire Muslim community.” The mufti’s address amounted to a religious injunction to wage jihad.

The Iranian aircraft’s passage through Omani airspace also provoked anger toward Muscat, which has hosted the group’s negotiating delegation for years and serves as a channel of communication with Tehran. Muscat subsequently summoned the Yemeni ambassador to protest a statement released by Yemen’s parliament condemning alleged Omani facilitation of smuggled shipments to the Houthis.

The Houthis say their vision for a political settlement in Yemen involves two separate dialogues: one between themselves and Saudi Arabia, and another between themselves and the Yemeni government. Their escalation inside Yemen may therefore be a means of exerting pressure in negotiations with Saudi Arabia. As they attack the Kingdom with increasing frequency, they also warn that the cost of peace will only be higher in the future.

The trust that Riyadh has sought to build with the Houthis in recent years has now been lost entirely. But the Houthis’ belligerence is a concern to a number of actors. The United States refuses to offer the Houthis any concession that would strengthen Iran’s position; for the first time, the IRGC has added ending the blockade on Yemen as a new condition for resolving the current regional situation. This is most likely a preemptive Iranian message, intended to keep the Houthis aligned with Tehran. It comes amid repeated reports of Iranian military experts participating in, and being killed during, the group’s battles in Yemen. There have also been reports of arrangements within the group to position Jibril, Abdelmalek al-Houthi’s 28-year-old son, who has reportedly undergone training with Hezbollah, to succeed his father should he be killed.

As fighting escalated in early September, UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg called on all parties to cease hostilities, exercise maximum restraint, and make full use of existing channels, including the UN’s Military Coordination Committee, to prevent further escalation. His remarks, however, drew angry responses from government officials. Legal Affairs Minister Eshraq al-Maqtari said the legal position in Yemen was clear and did not permit equating legitimate state institutions with an armed militia that had forcibly seized the capital. She said UN resolutions could not be disregarded: they explicitly condemned the Houthis’ seizure of state institutions, demanded their withdrawal from all such institutions, including those in Sana’a, and called for the surrender of weapons seized from the military and security institutions. Deputy Foreign Minister Mustafa Noman said the escalation imposed by the Houthis required explicit condemnation from both the UN secretary-general and his special envoy. Their moral and legal responsibilities, he said, required them to identify the party responsible for the latest outbreak of fighting.

The Houthis’ sustained military advances since September 9, and their capture of Al-Makha and the Bab al-Mandab, have shifted the military balance to an extent not seen since 2021. This change naturally has political implications. The PLC was formed to balance and institutionalize existing centers of power. PLC member Tareq Saleh effectively represented Sana’a and its surrounding areas, as well as the supporters of his late uncle, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, in addition to commanding the National Resistance forces and controlling territory on the West Coast. He arrived in Riyadh after his forces were defeated by the Houthis, but his advantage in legitimacy and power was that he had remained on the ground with his troops for years, unlike some other PLC members who spent most of their time outside Yemen. This has now been lost. The fighting against the Houthis in Taiz and on the West Coast exposed the depth of political divisions among government-aligned factions, including Saleh’s forces and forces loyal to the Islah party in Taiz. These divisions played out on the battlefield to the Houthis’ advantage.

Developments in the South

In early July, the General Secretariat of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) issued a statement calling for mass protests in Aden and Hadramawt under the slogan “A Million-Strong Escalation Against Guardianship and Occupation.” Crowds of the council’s supporters gathered in Aden and Mukalla on July 7, the anniversary of the end of the 1994 civil war, when forces loyal to former president Saleh overran Aden. After what appeared to be a period of de-escalation by the STC following its forced dissolution earlier this year, an entity calling itself the “Presidency of the Supreme Military Authority of the Southern Army and Security Forces” issued a call to mobilize in late July. It urged southern military and security personnel from all governorates to assemble outside Aden’s Maashiq Presidential Palace as part of a broader escalation against the government. The demands appeared to draw on accumulated grievances to mobilize opposition rather than raising any new issues. They concerned irregular salary payments, the failure to grant military ranks, and retirement procedures. The call concluded by declaring support for STC leader Aiderous al-Zubaidi as “supreme commander of the southern armed forces” and endorsing the southern political statement and constitutional declaration issued on January 2. This suggests a political escalation exploiting the precarious situation created by the Houthis’ military successes.

The call coincided with Al-Zubaidi appointing figures to the STC’s senior bodies, including former foreign minister Khaled al-Yamani as an adviser to the council’s presidium and as the official responsible for its political engagement with Washington and the United Nations. Al-Zubaidi later held a call with the newly appointed members in his first appearance since fleeing to the UAE in January. Other newly established southern entities have also emerged, including the Supreme Committee for Popular Revolutionary Escalation. It held a meeting in Aden chaired by Wadah al-Halimi, recently appointed STC secretary-general, to discuss “steps to implement the escalation program across the governorates.”

Regionalism also raised its head in Hadramawt. Following PLC head Rashad al-Alimi’s optimistic announcement that oil exports would resume, governorate authorities said any arrangement to resume oil exports “should be based on the principles of partnership and fairness” and preserve the governorate’s established entitlement to 20 percent of locally produced oil revenues. They called on the PLC and the government to announce “the implementation program concerning Hadramawt’s rights before taking any measures to resume exports.” The Shabwa Tribal Alliance also demanded several measures be taken in exchange for allowing exports to resume, most notably allocating 50 percent of local oil revenues to the governorate and establishing a Shabwani oil company.

An Unfulfilled Prisoner Exchange

The planned exchange of prisoners and detainees between Yemen’s two warring sides returned to prominence after it was confirmed that Islah leader Mohammed Qahtan had died in Houthi custody. A sample was taken from his remains for testing abroad. There has been considerable speculation about his fate, including allegations that he had been used as a human shield at military sites targeted by the Saudi-led coalition. The manner of his death, however, has yet to be established. After the remains were examined, the Islah party said the examination did not close the matter or resolve the case. The remains were reportedly missing several parts, even though Qahtan had been a political detainee rather than a combatant.

Qahtan was first detained in February 2015 in Dhamar while traveling to Aden to join President Hadi, who had fled there from Sana’a a few days earlier. Qahtan was placed under house arrest at his home until April 5, when armed men in civilian clothing arrived and took him to an unknown location.

According to a source at an international organization familiar with the prisoner negotiations, the wait for the results of tests on samples from Mohammed Qahtan’s remains, together with recent developments in Yemen, delayed the exchange of 1,600 prisoners agreed between the two sides in May. Abdelqader al-Murtada, head of the Houthi negotiating committee on prisoners and detainees, accused the government of delaying the fulfillment of its commitments, saying this was responsible for postponing the exchange.

The possible release of Houthi detainees who had been accused of carrying out assassinations in government-controlled areas also generated considerable controversy. These included one of the best-known assassinations, which killed prominent military commander Thabet Jawas in March 2022. Jawas’s role in killing the Houthi group’s founder Hussein al-Houthi during the first Sa’ada War in September 2004 had earned him a reputation as a national hero. After the dispute between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over Yemen intensified, prominent Saudi newspapers accused the UAE of involvement in the assassination of Jawas and others. Ultimately, no exchange had taken place by late September. Instead, the latest rounds of fighting have increased the number of prisoners on both sides, and hundreds of families continue to await the release of relatives.

Tribes and the Conflict

The Al-Rayyan tribal matareh, the largest such gathering in years, ended after attendees agreed to a government deal for them to support frontline forces. There appeared to be no plan for the gathering: tribal sheikh Hamad bin Fadgham, who issued the original call for assistance, said the “Dignity Encampment” would wait until all participants had arrived before taking a joint, decisive, and final decision on its trajectory. The gathering ultimately saw thousands of participants, representing 128 tribes from across Yemen. The encampments effectively ended after the tribes advanced toward Al-Yatmah to support government forces as part of the latest military escalation. Disagreements arose between Bin Fadgham and Abdellatif al-Qibli Nimran, a sheikh from the Madhhaj tribes, who was appointed to replace him as leader of the tribal gathering.

As part of Riyadh’s preparations to confront Houthi escalation, it has worked through the Yemeni leadership to invite tribal members and leaders, as well as prominent social figures, to the Saudi capital. This appeared intended to cut off the supply of fighters whom the Houthis mobilize through tribal sheikhs and deprive the group of a potential source of leverage. The Houthis had made several missteps by humiliating tribal sheikhs, placing them under surveillance, and restricting their communications. Restrictions imposed on Member of Parliament Yahya al-Matari, one of the most prominent sheikhs of the Bani Matar tribes, prevented him from holding any tribal meetings. Similar measures affected several other sheikhs and tribal leaders in Sana’a and other Houthi-controlled areas.

Other Developments in Houthi-Controlled Areas

The Houthis celebrated the Prophet Mohammed’s birthday, a religious occasion that has become a political demonstration of the group’s ability to mobilize and organize in areas under its control. Each year, the group collects levies from merchants to fund its events. One Houthi leader declared that “Sana’a the Illuminated poses the greatest challenge to, and competition with, the entire Islamic world in celebrating and expressing love for the Messenger of God, Mohammed.” Public responses on social media included satirical appeals to the Prophet on his birthday, complaining about the conduct of a group that claims descent from him.

The Humanitarian Situation

Despite the exceptional wave of displacement, international and local organizations have seen their role in the affected areas diminish. The Houthis seized eight vehicles from the UN humanitarian center in Al-Makha. According to field sources, displaced people have been robbed, including at checkpoints at the entrances to Aden, where even women’s jewelry was taken from them. People seeking to enter Aden were left in open areas exposed to the sun, without food, water, or assistance to ease their suffering, and more than 240 pregnant women reportedly endured severe labor pains without access to doctors or medical equipment. Many fled their homes abruptly as the Houthis advanced.

According to eyewitnesses, after taking control of Al-Khawkhah and Hays districts in southern Hudaydah, the Houthis carried out a wave of raids on the homes of officers and fighters belonging to government forces and the National Resistance forces. The raids also targeted the homes of employees and civilians, particularly those whose owners had fled before or during the group’s takeover. The Houthis detained some families who had been unable to flee, especially fighters’ families, to pressure their relatives into surrendering. Medical clinics and recently equipped hospitals in Al-Khawkhah and Hays were looted, as were the personal belongings of families unable to leave.

By late September, the number of people displaced by the latest military escalation had reportedly reached 145,308.

Other Developments

To fill important vacancies in Yemen’s diplomatic service, Foreign Minister Afrah al-Zouba took the constitutional oath, assuming the position previously held by Prime Minister Shaya al-Zindani. Former prime minister Salem bin Breik filled the vacant position of ambassador to Riyadh.