Saudi Arabia is facing pressure from two directions. To the east , the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has blocked off Saudi’s primary export route through the Gulf; to the west, the Houthis’ Red Sea blockage has limited Riyadh’s increasing reliance on the Red Sea route. These disruptions create significant consequences. According to Reuters, as much as 670,000 barrels a day were anticipated to depart at Egyptian port Sidi Kerir by August, in comparison with the estimated 4 million barrels per day which had previously been exported for international markets via the port of Yanbu. The Houthis have also attacked Saudi-linked shipping and claimed attacks against Saudi energy infrastructure and Najran airport. Thus, Saudi Arabia has a clear national security issue with regard to marine access, energy infrastructure, and territorial defense.
Riyadh should base its calculations on the lessons from 2015-2022. Saudi Arabia had an initial rational security interest in blocking the expansion of the Houthis. However, the intervention evolved into a long-term war involving a large international coalition and did not result in achieving its primary political objective. Juneau describes Saudi Arabia as “stuck in a costly quagmire”; the Houthis survived and improved their military strength and also deepened their relationship with Iran (Juneau, 2024). Therefore, this was an example of overbalancing, where the military commitment has become disproportionate to the original security objective, and generated further counter-balancing by the Houthis and Iranians. Therefore, Riyadh needs a solution that restores security, but does not replicate the previous scenario.
A significant Saudi ground operation might initially appear more effective for achieving Saudi Arabia’s immediate security objectives; however, it would also change the nature of the military problem. Given the asymmetric form of warfare, Houthis have chosen to attack vulnerabilities in Saudi Arabia’s military and thus, do not have to compete with its conventional power. The Houthis’ missiles, drones and their maritime attacks provide for a stand-off warfare that allows them to impose great costs on a superior adversary without having to engage conventionally, what Sobelman describes with the concept of Houthi “deterrent equations.” (Sobelman, 2023).
In this scenario, understanding guerrilla warfare becomes especially important. Pischedda, Mauro Gilli and Andrea Gilli find that guerrillas generally avoid decisive engagements in which a stronger force can exploit conventional superiority, instead using “hit-and-run attacks” to impose costs while limiting their own exposure (Pischedda et al., 2025). Yemen’s terrain and local operating environment could allow Houthi forces to add guerrilla operations against advancing forces, supply routes and fixed positions if Saudi troops entered the country. The United States’ experience in Afghanistan shows the resulting strategic problem. American and allied forces achieved conventional superiority and repeated tactical victories, yet the Taliban’s ability to regenerate and sustain guerrilla warfare prevented them from producing durable strategic success. Saudi Arabia’s own Yemen experience serves as the closest example of what might be at stake. Thus, it is not an issue of whether or not Saudi forces can achieve tactical victories in conventional battles, but rather if those victories will survive the transition from military engagement into control of territory and counterinsurgency.
The stronger middle course would be limited, Yemeni-led coercion. This way, Saudi Arabia would directly attack the immediate sources of the threat to its territory, energy infrastructure and shipping. Especially when it comes to missile and drone capabilities, launch infrastructure and maritime systems. At the same time it could focus on financinhg, arming and enabling Yemeni forces to conduct the principal ground campaign against Houthi control. This provides two distinct advantages. First, it limits Saudi involvement in further escalation. Riyadh is already deeply involved in the wider confrontation surrounding Iran; deploying large Saudi ground formations into Yemen could make that confrontation more direct by creating additional incentives for Iranian attacks against Saudi territory, energy infrastructure and military assets. Saudi Arabia can therefore respond forcefully to the immediate threat without making a large Saudi ground presence the centre of the conflict. Second, Yemeni forces are better suited to the ground campaign. They possess greater knowledge of Yemen’s terrain, communities and local operating environment. This matters particularly against guerrilla warfare, because guerrillas can exploit terrain and local knowledge to offset an external force’s conventional advantages. Yemeni forces can consequently bear the principal ground burden while Saudi Arabia supplies intelligence, financing, airpower, precision strike and logistics.
The timing of the wider campaign is then determined by the weakening of Iran. Khatib describes Iran’s proxy model as undergoing “structural degradation,” reflecting pressure on the military, financial and organisational foundations of Tehran’s regional network (Khatib, 2026). The strategic opportunity for Riyadh is to exploit this deterioration rather than commit its principal ground forces before the regional balance becomes more favourable.
Saudi Arabia is already deeply exposed to the U.S.–Iran confrontation. The calculation is therefore not to avoid that confrontation, but to avoid making Saudi involvement deeper and more direct through a prolonged ground war in Yemen. Such a campaign could give Tehran additional incentives to attack Saudi interests while tying down Saudi military resources and further threatening Gulf energy flows.
The Houthis should nevertheless be treated as an autonomous actor. Heistein describes Sanaa as an “independent, self-confident node” within the Iranian-aligned axis (Heistein, 2026). Weakening Iran therefore does not automatically eliminate the Houthi movement, but it reduces the external support available to it. That makes the timing of decisive action crucial.
Saudi Arabia should therefore prepare for the most favourable moment rather than seek complete elimination immediately. The present phase should weaken Houthi territory and military capacity through Yemeni forces while Saudi Arabia suppresses the immediate threats to its own security. The decisive phase should come when the Iranian regime reaches the weakest point of its regional power, leaving the Houthis with substantially less external support and strategic depth. At that point, a comprehensive Saudi campaign against the remaining Houthi military structure would carry a more favourable cost-benefit calculation. The Turkish experience following Assad’s fall in Syria provides a useful analogy for this timing principle. The collapse of the previous Syrian order altered the regional balance and gave Türkiye greater room to pressure armed groups that had previously been more difficult to confront. Syria remains unsettled, so this does not demonstrate that Türkiye has eliminated every armed group. Its relevance is in the fact that when the external structure sustaining an armed opponent weakens, the conditions for decisive action can become more reasonable.
To conclude, the strategy of restraint would preserve Saudi military capacity but leave the current coercive threat intact. Major Saudi ground intervention offers greater potential for immediate territorial gains but risks asymmetric and stand-off warfare developing into guerrilla warfare, counterinsurgency and strategic overextension. Yemeni-led coercion allows Saudi Arabia to address the immediate threat while keeping the principal ground burden with forces better positioned to exploit Yemen’s terrain and reducing the risk of deeper direct escalation with Iran. This gives Saudi Arabia a clear calculation: act now against the immediate threat, use Yemeni forces for the ground war, avoid unnecessarily deepening direct confrontation with Iran, and strike decisively when t the eventual elimination becomes strategically achievable at the lowest relative cost.
