The Houthis’ Coastal Gambit

For the first time in years, large swaths of Yemeni territory are changing hands. The Houthis’ recent losses in the east of the country were quickly followed by a string of victories along the Red Sea coast that brought the group closer to the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Early readings that the eastern losses marked the beginning of the regime’s collapse have since proved premature. Yet the regime’s latest expansion does not resolve its core problems either, at best it mitigates them.What has emerged over the summer is not a regime in free fall but one that is consolidating. Pulling back from the periphery, concentrating its forces where they matter most, and using battlefield momentum to paper over economic and political weaknesses.The current escalation began in July 2026, when the Houthis tried to break what they call the “Saudi blockade” of Yemen by chartering an Iranian airliner for a roundtrip from Sanaa to Tehran. Riyadh has controlled Yemen’s airspace since 2015, when it launched its campaign to unseat the Houthis, and air traffic to and from Sanaa has been limited ever since. It diminished further in 2025, when Israel put Sanaa Airport and the Houthis’ fleet of airliners out of ...