For residents of Saudi cities, the return of war is no longer an abstraction. Drones and missiles launched from Yemen are striking populated areas. Airports have been hit. At least three people, including a Saudi pilot, were killed this week, according to Saudi Arabia. The kingdom, which spent years trying to insulate ordinary life from the conflict on its southern border, is once again living with the daily consequences of a war it had hoped to contain.
The civil war in Yemen reignited this summer and intensified sharply last month, ending years of relative calm. For 11 years, Saudi Arabia tried to keep the fighting from spilling over through military force and diplomacy, first battling the Iran-allied Houthi group, then pursuing peace talks with it and restoring diplomatic channels with its backer, Iran. Experts say a series of miscalculations has instead left Riyadh exposed to deeper conflict, with consequences that now reach well beyond the battlefield.
The toll is visible in everyday life. Houthi strikes on oil infrastructure have cut into exports and disrupted crude supplies, sending prices sharply higher. Regional turmoil has forced the suspension of star-studded film festivals, award shows and music concerts this year. The kingdom’s flagship financial conference, expected to draw high-profile business leaders at the end of October, is coming under pressure amid the strikes. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitions to make Saudi Arabia a magnet for investment, tourism and major sporting events, already tested during his more than a decade in power, are now under further strain as major projects are canceled and the kingdom is pulled into a war with no clear way out.
“They just needed the conflict to stay (as) far away from them as possible without the Houthis disrupting their transformation plans,” Michael Ratney, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told CNN. “Now they find themselves in the middle of it.”
A turning point came late last year, when Saudi warplanes struck a shipment of military vehicles sent to Yemen by the United Arab Emirates. The strike shattered a decade-old alliance between two nations that had fought Iran’s influence in Yemen, and Abu Dhabi withdrew its forces, leaving the kingdom to contend with the crisis largely alone. The break shocked the region. Saudi Arabia launched a rare media campaign against its neighbor, accusing it of fueling instability in Sudan and Yemen, while Saudi commentators cast the UAE as a younger sibling rebelling against a wiser one. Prominent Saudi journalist Dawood Al-Shirian wrote in January that Saudi Arabia is the “head and body” on which regional stability rests, adding, “If (Saudi Arabia) stumbles, the entire system is disrupted and the Gulf scatters.”
The rapid UAE withdrawal, demanded by Riyadh, left thousands of fighters who had spent a decade under Abu Dhabi’s command disoriented by the kingdom’s strategy. Fighters allied with the UAE say the departure created a power vacuum the Saudis did not fill. “There wasn’t a proper transition when the Emiratis left,” a southern Yemeni official, who asked to remain anonymous to speak freely to CNN, said. “It was frightening how different things became. The Emiratis’ command and control was very efficient, and the Saudis did not replace this efficiency.” CNN reached out to the Saudi government for comment on whether forces fighting the Houthis received enough support and whether there was a proper transition.
Timing compounded the trouble. Eight weeks after the UAE withdrawal, the US and Israel launched a war on Iran, killing supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and plunging the region into unprecedented turmoil that placed Washington’s allies, including Saudi Arabia, in Iran’s crosshairs. Even as Iranian missiles struck the kingdom from the east, Saudi attention stayed fixed on the south. The Houthis, still formally in a four-year truce with Riyadh, appeared unwilling to aid their Iranian partners, so Tehran drew the Saudis in itself. In July, Iran sent a commercial plane to carry a Houthi delegation to Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran, defying a Saudi air blockade of Yemen. Riyadh struck the Houthi-held airport in Sanaa to prevent the landing. The group retaliated by declaring the truce dead, announcing a naval blockade on Saudi ships, and launching a lightning offensive down Yemen’s coast that seized strategic territory at the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in the largest escalation since 2022. Saudi forces answered with hundreds of airstrikes.
“The Saudis have made several mistakes and failures,” Ahmed Nagi, a senior analyst for Yemen with the International Crisis Group, told CNN, noting that Riyadh had not prepared for a Houthi offensive and lacked coordination with allied Yemeni forces inherited from the UAE. “The areas they’ve lost created morale issues with their allies and now it’s a big challenge for the Saudis as the Houthis have more advanced weaponry which managed to reach several cities in Saudi Arabia.”
Another miscalculation, experts say, was reliance on continued American support. Despite signing a new defense pact with Washington last year and being designated a Major Non-NATO Ally, Riyadh has been disappointed by what it sees as waning US commitment. Prince Mohammed spoke twice with Trump last month, urging him to strike the Houthis, sources told CNN, but Trump declined. Washington instead met the Houthis in Oman to protect its own ceasefire, with the group making clear its war was with Saudi Arabia alone, allowing US vessels to traverse the Red Sea freely. “It was never their concept or the structure of their military to fight these wars by themselves,” Ratney said. “Now we don’t have that process, and it ultimately comes down to: what does Trump think? And the Saudis probably feel exposed as a result.”
Riyadh has since looked elsewhere. Prince Mohammed flew to Egypt to meet President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, then invited UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed to Riyadh. France agreed to deploy defense assets, Britain will send an aircraft to refuel Saudi jets, and more than 100 American military advisers are providing intelligence and targeting support under a new joint forces command. On Monday, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed to “activate collective deterrence measures” under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement after an emergency meeting in Riyadh. Forces loyal to the UAE also appear to be taking part in the latest Saudi-backed campaign against the Houthis, named “Yemen’s Dawn,” a sign of at least a partial thaw.
Yet experts warn that outside support and early gains will not settle the conflict. Infighting remains common among the factions, and there is no clear political end state. “They need to unify their command centers, they need to resolve the issues they have between the various factions within the group,” Hisham Al Omeisy, a senior Yemen adviser for the European Institute of Peace, told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “Territorial gains they’ve made would mean nothing if the (Saudi-backed) Yemeni government cannot maintain control over those areas.”
Many experts say the fighting is tied to the US war in Iran, and that as long as that conflict continues, Tehran will have a powerful incentive to watch the Houthis disrupt Saudi Arabia. Gulf states could pursue a separate diplomatic solution with Iran or escalate strikes to eliminate Houthi leadership, analysts say, but “neither of those scenarios fix the conflict in Yemen in any near term,” Ratney said. “The Saudis will have to just figure out an imperfect path ahead.”