On Sept. 8, the Houthis launched a major offensive against Saudi-backed forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, seizing key points across the country’s west coast and suddenly establishing a commanding position on the Bab el-Mandeb. That same week, Algeria declared that it was severing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and subsequently closed its airspace to Emirati planes. These two events, in countries almost as geographically distant as possible within the bounds of the Middle East and with dramatically different geopolitical stakes, may seem to have little in common. But developments in Yemen and Algeria are bound together by three powerful processes shaping regional order at this moment: the failure of the United States to defeat Iran or protect its Arab allies, the Saudi-Emirati conflict, and the rapid erosion of the artificial divides between the Middle East and Africa.
The escalation in Yemen has received the most attention, for good reason. The Houthi seizure of the port town of Mokha, most of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, and several key islands in the Red Sea allow the group to disrupt and deny shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb. That entryway to the Red Sea has always been one of the most important maritime chokepoints for global trade, with transit through the Suez Canal connecting Asia to the West (with associated toll revenues keeping the Egyptian economy afloat). It took on even greater importance after Saudi Arabia sought to circumvent Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz by redirecting oil shipments through its East-West pipeline to its Red Sea outlet. The Houthi offensive, combined with drone strikes on the pipeline attributed to Iraqi militias, has suddenly and dramatically closed that outlet, putting unprecedented pressure on Saudi Arabia and the global economy.
On Sept. 8, the Houthis launched a major offensive against Saudi-backed forces aligned with Yemen’s internationally recognized government, seizing key points across the country’s west coast and suddenly establishing a commanding position on the Bab el-Mandeb. That same week, Algeria declared that it was severing diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates and subsequently closed its airspace to Emirati planes. These two events, in countries almost as geographically distant as possible within the bounds of the Middle East and with dramatically different geopolitical stakes, may seem to have little in common. But developments in Yemen and Algeria are bound together by three powerful processes shaping regional order at this moment: the failure of the United States to defeat Iran or protect its Arab allies, the Saudi-Emirati conflict, and the rapid erosion of the artificial divides between the Middle East and Africa.
The escalation in Yemen has received the most attention, for good reason. The Houthi seizure of the port town of Mokha, most of Yemen’s Red Sea coastline, and several key islands in the Red Sea allow the group to disrupt and deny shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb. That entryway to the Red Sea has always been one of the most important maritime chokepoints for global trade, with transit through the Suez Canal connecting Asia to the West (with associated toll revenues keeping the Egyptian economy afloat). It took on even greater importance after Saudi Arabia sought to circumvent Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz by redirecting oil shipments through its East-West pipeline to its Red Sea outlet. The Houthi offensive, combined with drone strikes on the pipeline attributed to Iraqi militias, has suddenly and dramatically closed that outlet, putting unprecedented pressure on Saudi Arabia and the global economy.
While the impact of the Houthi offensive has been felt most profoundly on the Iran front, Yemen’s war has its own dynamics. Saudi Arabia triggered the most recent round of fighting in July by bombing Sanaa’s airport, and fighting had escalated for several months. But as with everything in the Middle East these days, there was a Saudi-Emirati angle as well. Last December, Saudi forces suddenly and unceremoniously drove Emirati-aligned forces out of Yemen, pushing back against a Southern independence movement that it viewed as part of a broader Emirati campaign to promote secessionist groups across the region. It had been particularly concerned about potential Emirati support for Israel’s recognition of the breakaway Somali province of Somaliland. The prospect of Israel gaining a strategic foothold on the other side of the Bab el-Mandeb, particularly if that facilitated Emirati encirclement of Saudi Arabia, struck Riyadh as a major strategic threat. Riyadh followed its Yemen moves with a bid to assemble a regional coalition, including states such as Turkey, Egypt, and Qatar, that would become a third pole competing with Iran’s Axis of Resistance and the Emirati-Israeli-led Abraham Accords project.
Pushing the UAE out of Yemen was the easy part, though. The quick defeat of the UAE’s allies left the Saudis responsible for supporting and leading the remaining forces defending the territories under the control of the internationally recognized government. While Riyadh made a show of pouring support and reorganizing those forces and pledging air cover (while reportedly quietly paying off the Houthis), much of that aid proved short-lived. Saudi strategy did not seem much improved from decades of previous failures and underperformance, with the influx of cash, episodic airstrikes, continued blockade, and ample propaganda failing to substitute for the absence of human capacity or strategic competence on the ground. Reporting suggests that as many as 80 percent of the Saudi-backed forces were ghost fighters, drawing salaries and little else. Saudi communications seem to have been thoroughly compromised by the Houthis, while promised air cover largely failed to materialize. In the fever swamps of Arab social media, rumors run rampant about the UAE covertly activating its former allies to undermine the government forces—payback for Riyadh’s December humiliation and in support of Israel’s concerns about the new Saudi-led coalition.
Houthi motivations therefore cannot be reduced solely to Iranian grand strategy or even to the opportunity to strike a decisive blow in the ongoing war with Saudi Arabia. Their advance also responded to the potential transregionalization of the conflict. Israel’s recognition of Somaliland, and rumored covert deployments on the ground, could potentially bring Israeli, Emirati, and even U.S. forces directly to the other side of the strait to contest control and serve as a base for counterstrikes into Yemen. That could, in turn, turbocharge Houthi ties with the Somalia-based al-Shabab terrorist group, which has been organically growing for several years, raising the risks of a transregional expansion of the war across the Horn of Africa.
No doubt these East African concerns were on the mind of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dropped in for an unusual visit to Cairo this week. Egypt took Riyadh’s side in the December crisis but has thus far declined to join the Saudi-led Mecca Pact with Pakistan and Turkey. The economic impact of the potential closure of the Bab el-Mandeb on the Suez Canal on top of the effects of the Iran war would be devastating to an Egyptian regime already struggling with profound economic problems. The expansion of the Yemen conflict into the Horn of Africa also intensifies the pressure on Egypt, which is locked in an ongoing struggle with Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Egypt seems no likelier to be willing to join a ground war against the Houthis than it was when Mohammed bin Salman asked a decade ago, but in many ways the stakes are now higher and the choices more fraught. In a region defined by a fierce struggle between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, Cairo can no longer count on financial support from both, since choosing either side could cost it dearly with the other.
Saudi Arabia, frustrated by the refusal of the United States to intervene against the Houthis on its behalf, had hoped to get assistance from its new alliance partners, Pakistan and Turkey. But both countries seem content to offer moral support and stay out of the Yemeni quagmire. Pakistan quickly clarified that its alliance commitments only extended to new conflicts. But such a stance may be untenable as Saudi options rapidly narrow. Pakistani intervention in Yemen in support of Saudi Arabia, though not currently in the cards, would represent a new frontier for transregional security competition and for the necessity of thinking beyond the Middle East.
Which brings us to Algeria. President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s decision to sever diplomatic relations was a response to the surge of Emirati activities across the Sahel and especially its support for Moroccan claims to the Western Sahara. Algeria’s problems with the UAE center on its support for Morocco as part of the Abraham Accords, which manifests in the Western Sahara as well as across the Sahel, where Rabat has sought to increase its influence at Algeria’s expense—with Emirati backing. Algiers accused the UAE of expanding its influence in Chad, Mali, and Niger and perpetuating destabilizing and bloody wars through support for the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Sudan and Khalifa Haftar’s Libyan National Army in Libya. Algerian pro-regime media also accuse the UAE of attempting to manipulate the country’s own 2019 presidential election, though evidence is thus far scarce. Like Riyadh, Algeria sees the UAE’s ambitions in part through the lens of the Emirati alliance with Israel and blames it for the acceleration of Morocco’s diplomatic ties with Israel and American recognition of its sovereignty in Western Sahara.
All this points to a Middle East map that is bigger than the one U.S. policymakers tend to hold in their heads, with countries across North and East Africa advancing their own alliances and interests in ways that stubbornly refuse to follow the traditional lines of Middle Eastern politics. A few days after Algeria’s diplomatic moves, Eritrea accused the UAE of “port imperialism” in collaboration with Israel. Like the Houthis, Eritrea has watched Emirati expansion in the Horn of Africa and Israeli support for Somaliland with concern while keeping an eye on Ethiopian military preparations warily. And all of this unfolds amid growing international and regional condemnation of the UAE’s support for the brutal RSF, credibly accused of massive war crimes.
Houthi gains in Yemen may prove ephemeral. There is a long history of sudden surges and reversals in Yemen’s long internal war, and a new status quo may eventually emerge that avoids the worst-case scenarios. But the bigger lesson is that regional politics today are not a bipolar struggle between Iran and a U.S.-led coalition. The Saudi-Emirati conflict, which is in turn a proxy for a regional argument over Israel’s place in the order, has now entrenched a three-way competition unfolding across regional boundaries.
