Qualla: Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: Introduction

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. On 26 March 2015, Saudi warplanes began bombing Houthi positions inside Yemen. The operation was named Decisive Storm, then renamed Restoring Hope when it became clear that nothing decisive was happening. Within weeks, Houthi fighters were shelling the Saudi border provinces of Asir, Jizan, and Najran - the same mountain and desert corridor where the Emirate of Asir had once fought the Ottomans a century earlier. Within years, they were firing ballistic missiles at Riyadh airport and drone-striking oil facilities at Abqaiq. A local Yemeni insurgency and a Saudi-led intervention had, together, become one of the defining wars of the 2010s and 2020s - a war that reshaped the Arabian Peninsula's strategic map and cost tens of thousands of lives on both sides of the frontier.

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: Why Saudi Arabia Came In

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. The Houthis took Sana'a in September 2014. By early 2015 they had pushed south, driving President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi from the capital and then from Aden. For Riyadh, a Zaidi-Shia political-military force controlling most of populated Yemen and allegedly backed by Iran was a st...

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: The Border War

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. Saudi Arabia's southern mountains were not meant to be a front line. Jizan, Najran, and Asir are the Kingdom's agricultural south, terraced and green by Saudi standards, populated by tribes with deep cross-border family ties to Yemen. From 2015 onward, Houthi artillery and rocket...

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: Weapons That Reached Further Each Year

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. What began with Katyusha rockets across a border escalated, year over year, into a strategic standoff. Houthi engineers - with intelligence, components, and possibly direct Iranian Revolutionary Guard assistance - adapted older missile designs into long-range systems. In 2017 the...

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: Civilians on Both Sides of a Border That Should Not Be One

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. The stories that escape the headlines belong to people who never wanted to be in a war. In Yemen, a cholera epidemic that infected over a million people after 2016. Children born into malnutrition. Humanitarian aid blocked by Saudi-led coalition blockades or by Houthi port regula...

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0

Houthi–Saudi Arabian conflict: Truce, Drift, and an Uneasy Present

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Felton Davis, CC BY 2.0. In April 2022, a UN-brokered truce took hold between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition. It held imperfectly. Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations in March 2023, in a deal brokered by China - a development that shifted the regional calculus and made continued ...

Image: Felton Davis | CC BY 2.0