Are the Saudis Pushing Back on the Houthis?

Yemen’s government forces have spent the past two weeks doing something they had not managed in this round of the war: attacking. On September 20, army units backed by warplanes and drones repelled a Houthi push south of Marib, killing more than eighty Houthi fighters and forcing the rest to retreat from positions outside the city. By September 27, government forces had widened the fight into Taiz, conducting air and ground operations against Houthi positions and claiming to have retaken a strategic point in the ash-Shamaytayn district. The World Health Organization reported 838 deaths and 4,481 total casualties from the latest escalation through September 26 in a situation report issued two days later.

Those operations matter, but they should not be confused with a reversal of the strategic situation. The Houthis have spent September transforming the western coast and the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb from a contested theater into a new source of leverage over both Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Saudi-backed forces are now pushing back inland while Riyadh is simultaneously trying to protect the infrastructure that allows the kingdom to keep exporting oil and maintaining access to global markets. Saudi Arabia has begun assembling a loose, mostly defensive network involving France, Britain, Greece, Pakistan and potentially Turkey. The assistance is real. What remains uncertain is whether it is enough to convert containment into reversal.

Marib Holds — But the Coast Has Changed the War

Marib remains the pivotal inland position in the war. It is the government’s principal northern stronghold and contains Yemen’s most important remaining oil and gas infrastructure. Before the Houthi attacks halted most government oil exports in 2022, hydrocarbon revenue was a critical source of foreign currency and government income. The loss of those exports left the internationally recognized government heavily dependent on Saudi financial support and other external assistance.

That makes Marib more than another battlefield. For the Yemeni government, it is an economic lifeline. A Houthi capture of the governorate would not automatically restore Yemen’s oil exports, but it would give the movement control over the country’s most important remaining energy-producing region and further undermine the government’s already weak fiscal base. Marib therefore represents something close to the government’s internal economic survival.

The western coast presents a different problem. The Houthi capture of Mokha and Perim Island has brought the movement much closer to effective control of the approaches to the Bab el-Mandeb, one of the world’s most important maritime chokepoints. Reuters reported that the Houthis had declared their shipping restrictions target-specific, with Saudi vessels specifically excluded from the protection offered to other international shipping.

For Saudi Arabia, Bab el-Mandeb is an economic lifeline. It is the southern entrance to the Red Sea and the normal maritime connection between the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. If Saudi-linked vessels cannot safely use it, Riyadh loses an important route for moving oil, refined products and other cargoes between its western ports and the wider global economy.

The distinction is important: Marib is the Yemeni government’s economic lifeline; Bab el-Mandeb is one of Saudi Arabia’s economic lifelines. The two battles therefore have different strategic meanings even though they are unfolding in the same war. The result is an unusual situation. Saudi-backed forces may be making progress on the inland battlefield while Saudi Arabia is still absorbing a major strategic setback on the coast.

Why Yanbu Still Matters

At first glance, the importance of Yanbu is less obvious. If the Bab el-Mandeb is effectively blocked to Saudi shipping, why defend a Red Sea oil terminal at all? Because Yanbu is not dependent on the Bab el-Mandeb for its most important strategic function. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline carries crude approximately 1,200 kilometers from the kingdom’s eastern oil-producing region to Yanbu on the Red Sea. From Yanbu, Saudi crude can move north through the Red Sea toward Egypt and then reach Mediterranean and European markets through the Suez Canal or Egypt’s SUMED pipeline. Saudi Aramco describes the East-West system explicitly as an alternative export route using SUMED and the Suez Canal, and the company owns a 15 percent stake in SUMED. That makes Yanbu strategically more important when Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb are both under threat, not less.

The route is not risk-free. Tankers leaving Yanbu still have to travel through the Red Sea, where Houthi attacks and the resulting war-risk premiums have sharply increased the cost of shipping. Reuters reported that insurance premiums for Saudi-linked tankers had risen dramatically and that Saudi oil transport through the Red Sea was facing substantially higher costs. But the distinction is crucial. The East-West Pipeline allows Saudi Arabia to bypass Hormuz; Yanbu allows the oil to reach the northern Red Sea without passing through the Houthi-controlled Bab el-Mandeb. Protecting Yanbu therefore preserves a partial escape route from the two chokepoints threatening Saudi exports.

That is also why France’s decision to protect Yanbu has significance beyond the bilateral Saudi-French relationship. French President Emmanuel Macron said Paris would send soldiers, radar systems and defensive systems specifically to protect the site and emphasized that the mission was defensive rather than participation in the Yemen war.

Europe has a direct interest in keeping that alternative Saudi export route functioning. European refiners were already affected when an attack on the East-West Pipeline temporarily halted Yanbu exports earlier this month.

The pipeline has since been restored. Saudi Arabia resumed Yanbu loadings on September 29 after operations restarted on September 22, although throughput remains below the pipeline’s full capacity while repairs continue.

That recovery is important. The pipeline attack demonstrated the vulnerability of the Saudi bypass; its rapid restoration demonstrated that Riyadh still has the capacity to repair and reopen it. The strategic contest is therefore not simply about whether the Houthis can close routes. It is also about whether Saudi Arabia can keep reopening them faster than the Houthis and their allies can disrupt them.

A Claimed Decapitation Strike, From a Source Worth Naming Carefully

One claim circulating about the Houthi setbacks deserves particular attention because of both its potential importance and its provenance.

On September 26, Nawaf Obaid wrote in Al Jazeera that a Saudi strike on the evening of September 19 had devastated the Iranian-linked Houthi command structure in Sanaa. Obaid described the losses as including two major generals, seven brigadier generals and 32 colonels, along with additional senior figures and foreign personnel whose identities he said were being deliberately withheld. His larger argument is that Russian satellite intelligence and Iranian command integration helped the Houthis exploit weaknesses on the western front, but that the same external intelligence architecture is now being systematically attacked.

If true, the claim could explain much of what has changed on the battlefield. The significance would not simply be the number of senior commanders killed. It would be whether the strike disrupted the chain connecting Iranian intelligence support, Houthi headquarters in Sanaa and commanders operating against Saudi-backed forces in the field.

But Obaid is not an ordinary outside commentator. He has held senior advisory positions within the Saudi state apparatus, including work with former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal and a position inside the Royal Court. He is now a senior fellow at King’s College London’s Department of War Studies. That background gives him unusual proximity to Saudi strategic thinking, but it also means his account should be treated as potentially reflecting Riyadh’s preferred narrative.

The distinction matters because Obaid’s claims have not been independently confirmed in the reporting reviewed for this assessment. His description of the losses should therefore be attributed to him rather than presented as independently established fact.

The real analytic test is what happens next.

If the Houthi command structure has genuinely been damaged at the level Obaid describes, the effects should become visible in the battlefield: slower decision-making, disrupted communications between Sanaa and forward commanders, reduced ability to coordinate simultaneous attacks, increased reliance on improvised local command arrangements and a decline in the tempo or sophistication of Houthi operations. If those indicators do not appear, the decapitation claim becomes considerably less persuasive. That makes the coming weeks more important than the casualty count itself. A destroyed headquarters is significant only if destroying it changes what the enemy can do.

France Answers the Call at Yanbu

Into this gap between Saudi requirements and Saudi capacity has come a small but increasingly concrete network of outside support. France has made the most visible new commitment. Macron announced that Paris would send troops, radar and defense systems to protect Yanbu, while explicitly ruling out participation in the fighting itself. The important point is not the number of French personnel or the specific systems, which Paris has not fully disclosed. It is what the deployment says about the strategic importance of Yanbu. France is helping protect the Saudi alternative to the routes threatened by the wider war.

Britain has made a smaller but useful contribution, deploying a Voyager air-to-air refueling aircraft to support Saudi defensive operations. Greece, meanwhile, has provided something more tangible: its Patriot battery already stationed in Saudi Arabia intercepted a ballistic missile and a drone over the Yanbu region on September 24. That interception matters because it is an observable result rather than a diplomatic promise. Outside assistance has already helped Saudi Arabia defend the infrastructure that keeps its western export route alive. The limitation is equally important. None of these deployments, by themselves, attacks the Houthi forces controlling the coast.

Turkey and Pakistan: A Pact Tested

The other track runs through the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement, the mutual-defense pact Saudi Arabia signed with Turkey and Pakistan on August 7. On September 17, a Pakistani military spokesman said Islamabad would defend Saudi security without qualification. Two days later, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara had no problem meeting Saudi military needs, particularly in technical areas. On September 25, the three countries announced that their chiefs of staff would meet urgently to determine what support would actually look like.

Pakistan’s commitment is the most tangible because Pakistani forces are already in the kingdom in substantial numbers. Reuters reported in May that Pakistan had deployed approximately 8,000 troops, a fighter squadron including roughly 16 JF-17s, two drone squadrons and a Chinese HQ-9 air-defense system under the broader Saudi-Pakistani defense relationship. The important question is not whether Pakistan is committed to Saudi security. It clearly is. The question is whether those forces will be used against the Houthis and, if so, under what circumstances. Pakistan’s military has pushed back against reports that a Houthi attack damaged one of its aircraft at King Abdulaziz Air Base, and there is no independent confirmation that Pakistani assets have conducted offensive operations against Houthi territory.

Turkey’s options are narrower. Ankara has defensive systems and significant military-industrial capacity, but its Russian S-400 system is not an immediately available solution to Saudi Arabia’s ballistic-missile problem. Turkey’s own Siper air-defense family is still developing. What Ankara can plausibly provide in the short term is technical assistance, shorter-range air defense, electronic warfare and potentially aircraft or other supporting capabilities. That does not point toward Turkish participation in a Saudi offensive into Yemen. It points toward helping Riyadh strengthen the defensive architecture surrounding the kingdom.

Is It Enough?

The answer depends on what “enough” means. If the objective is to prevent the Houthis from turning their coastal gains into an immediate Saudi military crisis, the emerging support network is already doing something useful. Greece has intercepted missiles and drones. Britain is extending Saudi fighter endurance. France is protecting Yanbu. Pakistan has substantial forces and air-defense capabilities already in the kingdom. Turkey is signaling a willingness to provide technical support. If the objective is to restore Saudi control of the maritime approaches or dislodge the Houthis from the Red Sea coast, the picture is very different.

None of the outside powers has offered to do what Saudi air power alone could not accomplish between 2015 and 2022: defeat and dislodge the Houthis from their core territory. The assistance being assembled is overwhelmingly defensive. It protects Saudi infrastructure and airspace rather than degrading Houthi military power at its source. That is a rational limit for each contributor. France, Britain, Turkey and Pakistan have reasons to help Riyadh absorb the crisis and protect regional energy infrastructure. None has an obvious interest in inheriting the Yemen war. The deeper problem is what those allies are compensating for.

Saudi Arabia’s air-defense inventory was already strained by the Iran war, while the kingdom’s experience in Yemen exposed persistent problems involving manpower, command integration, ground-force effectiveness and the ability of Saudi airpower to translate battlefield superiority into durable territorial control.

The problem, therefore, is not that Saudi Arabia failed to spend money on its military. It has spent enormous amounts. The problem is whether decades of investment produced the particular capabilities this war demands: ground forces capable of clearing and holding difficult terrain without depending on partner formations, resilient command-and-control networks, and layered air defenses capable of sustaining a prolonged missile-and-drone campaign.

Washington has expanded intelligence and targeting support but has declined the one request that would have fundamentally altered the equation. According to reporting on the Saudi-American discussions, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman asked President Trump to resume direct American strikes against the Houthis; Trump declined. The result is that Riyadh is assembling a patchwork of Patriot batteries, refueling aircraft, technical assistance and partner deployments rather than relying on direct American offensive power.

That does not mean the United States has abandoned Saudi Arabia. It means Washington has drawn a line between helping Riyadh defend itself and returning to an American-led offensive against the Houthis. The distinction is now visible on the battlefield.

Saudi-backed Yemeni forces are pushing back around Marib and Taiz. Saudi Arabia is repairing the East-West Pipeline and restoring Yanbu exports. Foreign partners are strengthening Saudi air defense. But the Houthis still possess the strategic advantage created by their coastal advance and their ability to threaten the Red Sea approaches.

The two economic lifelines therefore remain under pressure simultaneously.

Marib is the economic lifeline of the Yemeni government. Bab el-Mandeb is the maritime lifeline that connects Saudi Arabia’s western economic system to the wider world. Yanbu is the Saudi insurance policy against losing access to that system through Hormuz—but that insurance policy itself now requires protection.

That is why the battle for Marib and the defense of Yanbu should not be viewed as separate stories. One determines whether the Yemeni government retains the resources to remain a viable political and military actor. The other determines whether Saudi Arabia can continue to use its western infrastructure to bypass the strategic chokepoints that have been closing around it.

The honest assessment is therefore that Saudi Arabia is pushing back—but primarily by stabilizing the positions that remain and protecting the infrastructure that makes further resistance possible. Whether that becomes a genuine reversal will depend on two questions.

First, can Saudi-backed Yemeni forces hold Marib and turn their counterattacks in Taiz into sustained territorial gains? Second, is Nawaf Obaid correct that the Houthi command structure has been seriously degraded, or has it merely been bent? The first question determines whether the Yemeni government retains its economic lifeline. The second may determine whether the Houthis retain the operational momentum that produced their breakthrough on the coast.

The outside assistance is buying Riyadh time. What happens with that time will determine whether Saudi Arabia has begun reversing the Houthi advance—or merely learned how to survive it.