From Saada to
Bab el-Mandeb

A local religious and political movement that began in Saada in the 1990s has become, over time, a regional actor that controls Yemen’s capital, can strike Saudi energy facilities, and can disrupt international shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

The Houthis, formally the Ansar Allah movement, emerged in the Saada region of northern Yemen. A significant part of the movement’s social base is Zaydi.

Zaydism sits within the Shia family of schools but diverges from the Twelver Shiism dominant in Iran on important points. Zaydis differ from Ja’faris on the infallibility of the imams, the twelve-imam succession, and the doctrine of occultation. Some of their jurisprudential practices are in fact quite close to the Sunni schools.

One distinction matters, though: not every Zaydi in Yemen is a Houthi. The movement came out of a Zaydi milieu, but it has since grown into something broader, built on tribal alliances, military strength, political institutions, and the state bureaucracy.

The roots of the Houthi movement lie in the Zaydi cultural and religious revival that took shape in Saada, in northern Yemen, during the 1990s.

At that stage it was not an armed organisation formed against Saudi Arabia. The friction was with Yemen’s central government. Circles in Saada were uneasy about political representation, the preservation of religious identity, the policies of the central government, and the spread of Saudi-backed Salafi influence.

Describing the Houthi movement as “an organisation set up by Iran” from its inception is therefore historically wrong. Its origins lie in Yemen’s own social and political conditions.

The first major war between the Houthis and the Yemeni government began in 2004. The movement’s leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, was killed by Yemeni security forces. From then on the movement was known by his family name.

Between 2004 and 2010 there were six separate rounds of fighting between the Yemeni government and the Houthis. Over the course of these wars the Houthis stopped being a small local movement and became an organised military force with real experience of fighting in mountainous terrain.

The steep mountains around Saada made the region hard for the central government to control, and gave the Houthis a natural defensive advantage.

The first critical period in which the Houthis and Saudi Arabia faced each other directly was 2009.

The fighting in Saada spilled over to the Yemeni-Saudi border. Houthi forces moved against some Saudi positions and crossing points along the border line. Saudi Arabia responded with air and ground operations.

This is the point at which the issue stopped being solely a Yemeni civil war and became a direct security problem for Saudi Arabia. From Riyadh’s perspective, the core concern was the growing strength of an armed structure operating independently of the central government immediately to its south.

In 2011 the Arab Spring protests reached Yemen. Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had governed the country for many years, left power and was replaced by Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

The political transition did not bring stability. State institutions weakened, the army fragmented, and different armed groups gained ground in their own regions.

The Houthis used that environment to expand beyond Saada. Moving on the capital through Amran, they took control of Sanaa in September 2014. With that, the Houthis were no longer a local insurgency in the north but a national force determining who held central power in Yemen.

The Houthi advance south from Sanaa toward Aden was judged unacceptable in Saudi Arabia. Riyadh was worried about a movement with deepening ties to Iran and a missile capability taking control of the whole of Yemen.

On 26 March 2015 the Saudi-led coalition launched Operation Decisive Storm. The stated aim was to restore the Hadi government and halt the Houthi advance.

The war did not turn out to be short. Despite heavy air strikes and Saudi military superiority, the Houthis held on to Sanaa and to northwestern Yemen.

The Iran-Houthi relationship developed in stages. In the movement’s early years Iranian influence was quite limited. Political ties strengthened particularly after 2011, and military and technological support became far more significant after the Saudi intervention began in 2015.

There is strong evidence that Iran has provided the Houthis with missile and drone technology, components, training, advisers, and political backing. That relationship is assessed to have played an important part in the development of their long-range strike capability.

Even so, it is misleading to treat the Houthis as a fully dependent structure that carries out Iranian orders to the letter. They have their own Yemeni leadership, local objectives, tribal relationships, and political interests. The most accurate description is that the Houthis are a strategic partner within Iran’s regional network who also retain their own decision-making.

On 14 September 2019 Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities came under a major attack. The Houthis claimed it. The United States and Saudi Arabia pointed to an Iranian connection in the systems used.

The attack seriously disrupted Saudi oil output for a period and caused alarm in global energy markets.

It showed Saudi Arabia that the Yemen war was not a conflict confined to the border area. Missile and drone attacks could reach the country’s critical energy infrastructure. It also made clear that Saudi air superiority was not enough to stop low-cost, asymmetric attacks.

On 2 April 2022 a ceasefire began under United Nations auspices. It substantially reduced Saudi air strikes, Houthi cross-border attacks, and fighting along the ground fronts.

The formal ceasefire lapsed in October 2022. Even so, large-scale Saudi-Houthi war did not resume for several years.

The period is better described as de facto quiet than as genuine peace. The fundamental questions went unresolved: Yemen’s political order, the division of state revenues, civil service salaries, the ports, the airports, and the future of the armed forces.

After Saudi Arabia and Iran decided to restore diplomatic relations in March 2023, Yemen diplomacy accelerated.

In April 2023 a Saudi delegation travelled to Sanaa and met the Houthis directly. A Houthi delegation held talks in Riyadh the same year.

These meetings signalled a significant shift in Saudi strategy. Riyadh’s priority was no longer to eliminate the Houthis militarily, but to reach an arrangement that would secure its border and let Saudi Arabia exit the Yemen war. A comprehensive peace agreement was not completed.

After the Gaza war the Houthis began attacking ships they described as linked to Israel. Over time the attacks and the threats affected wider maritime traffic.

The United States and the United Kingdom carried out air strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Saudi Arabia, for its part, tried to stay out of this new front. Riyadh did not want to return to a large-scale war with the Houthis.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean. At its narrowest it is roughly 29 kilometres across. A power controlling Yemen’s western coast can therefore exert serious pressure on international shipping.

If ships cannot pass through the area, or if passage becomes risky, use of the Suez Canal route declines and vessels are pushed around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. That drives up transit times, fuel consumption, freight rates, and insurance costs.

In July 2026 tension on the Saudi-Houthi front rose again. The Houthis announced a blockade against shipping linked to Saudi Arabia. Energy facilities around Jizan and Yanbu were reported to have been targeted by missiles and drones.

On 24 August 2026 the Houthis said they had struck the Amzan, a tanker belonging to the Saudi company Bahri, off Yanbu. The company confirmed a maritime incident and reported that the crew was safe. According to Al Jazeera, the attack was part of the pressure directed at Saudi energy exports moving through the Red Sea.

Then, on 10 September 2026, the Houthis were reported to have taken the strategic city of Mocha. Sources speaking to Al Jazeera and Reuters said government forces had withdrawn from the city, while the government side described it as a “tactical withdrawal”. The development at Mocha is critical for the approach to Bab el-Mandeb and for the balance of control along Yemen’s western coast.

That said, front lines in the region can shift quickly. Reporting on the state of control in and around Mocha should be read alongside the military developments that are still unfolding.

There are several basic reasons why Saudi Arabia, for all its technological and economic superiority, has not been able to eliminate the Houthis:

• Yemen’s mountainous geography gave the Houthis a significant defensive advantage.
• The movement rested on local social and tribal networks.
• Air strikes were not enough to establish control on the ground.
• Anti-Houthi forces inside Yemen remained politically and militarily fragmented.
• Low-cost Iranian technology and weapons improved the Houthis’ asymmetric capability.
• The humanitarian, economic, and diplomatic cost of the war kept rising for Saudi Arabia.

In the end Saudi Arabia began looking for a safe exit through negotiation rather than a military victory.

The Houthi-Saudi question can be read in three main periods.

2004–2009. Local wars between the Houthis and Yemen’s central government.

2009–2022. A regional conflict in which Saudi Arabia became an increasingly direct party.

After 2022. Ceasefire, negotiation, and then a new period of tension centred on the Red Sea.

As of September 2026 the most critical question is whether developments around Mocha and Bab el-Mandeb turn into a new, large-scale Saudi-Houthi war.

The Houthis are no longer only an insurgency in northern Yemen. They are a regional power that controls the capital, holds long-range missile and drone systems, and can affect both Saudi energy infrastructure and one of the world’s most important sea lanes.

You can follow the current map of control, the shifts between periods, and the latest verified developments through the Houthi-Saudi Geopolitical Atlas.