- Middle East
A Houthi missile striking a Saudi oil terminal can reach an American household through the price of gasoline. Attacks on merchant ships can reach American businesses through higher freight bills and delayed deliveries. Washington may choose to look away from Yemen. It cannot choose to escape the consequences.
That is the central danger of treating the Houthis as somebody else’s problem, or assuming an agreement with Iran will solve it. A non-state radical armed movement has acquired the ability to threaten international trade and energy supplies. Allowing that capability to become permanent would give its leaders recurring leverage over American and global economic and security interests.
The price of neglect could be paid repeatedly: by US consumers and US allies whose security Washington needs.
American oil production offers protection against supply shocks, but it does not isolate American consumers from world prices. Oil markets are globally integrated and supply disruptions, or expectations of them, can raise prices. Interruptions to Saudi exports can and have in fact increased costs, for American motorists, airlines, farmers and freight companies. The impact would depend on the scale of disruption, inventories and alternative supplies. It would not depend on whether the damaged facility supplied America directly.
Protecting Saudi energy infrastructure consequently serves a direct American interest. A missile striking a Saudi facility can impose costs across the whole world economy.
The same applies to shipping. Approximately 22 percent of global seaborne container trade passed through the Suez Canal in 2023. Attacks along its southern approach force vessels around Africa, consuming more fuel, tying up shipping capacity and disrupting delivery schedules. A promise to spare American-flagged vessels cannot insulate Americans from those costs.
Washington has already directly confronted the Houthis militarily in 2025 but cut short its attacks before disabling their missile capabilities in a permanent manner. The danger now is mistaking the limited accommodation reached at that time, between the US and the Houthis, for a durable solution. A movement able to threaten commerce selectively, whenever it wants concessions, retains the initiative, even during periods when it chooses not to fire.
A nonstate radical armed movement cannot be allowed to maintain a sophisticated ballistic missile capability with which to intimidate neighboring states and threaten global energy supplies. Degrading and ultimately dismantling that capability must become an explicit international objective. Protecting ships and intercepting incoming weapons remain essential, but a strategy confined to defense leaves the source of the threat intact.
Understanding the Houthis is necessary to designing that strategy. They are simultaneously a religious and ideological movement, an armed political organization and an operator of coercive revenue networks.
Ansar Allah, as the Houthis describe themselves, emerged from northern Yemen’s Zaydi Shiite revivalism. Its project is not a Salafist state: Salafism belongs to a different, Sunni tradition against whose influence the movement originally mobilized. Houthi ideology combines religious authority, Yemeni nationalism, hostility toward America and Israel, and explicitly antisemitic rhetoric. Its pursuit of political supremacy goes beyond Yemen as its leadership sees itself as a leader of the Muslim world and hence aspires to control the holy places in Saudi Arabia.
The movement does not represent Yemen’s Zaydi community as a whole. Its leaders use a particular interpretation of religion to justify hierarchy and mobilize followers. Economic extraction finances that project and rewards loyalty.
The Sana’a Center’s review of UN investigators’ findings describes coercive taxation, illegal seizures, extortion, smuggling and diversion of humanitarian assistance. Telecommunications and import-related revenues provide further income. The United States designated Ansar Allah a foreign terrorist organization in March 2025.
Ideological conviction and criminal enrichment are therefore compatible explanations. Neither should obscure the other.
The danger is that this coercive model becomes international. Threatening shipping can extract political concessions even without collecting a dollar in protection payments. A wider enterprise involving ransom, illicit trade and payments for safe passage is a risk to prevent; it should not be accepted as an already established system.
The reported expansion of cooperation with al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda’s piracy enriched Somali affiliate, makes that risk even more serious. Carnegie’s research, drawing partly on UN reporting, describes contacts and reported arrangements involving weapons, technical expertise, piracy and ransom collection. Such contacts illustrate how shared enemies and commercial opportunities can overcome profound theological differences.
Iran has substantially increased Houthi military power through weapons, training and technical assistance. But dependence is not obedience. The movement has local origins, its own ambitions and considerable autonomy.
If Iran genuinely ended all support, the Houthis could probably survive as an armed governing movement. They would retain revenue, coercive institutions, experienced fighters and whatever weapons and production capacity remained. Acquired expertise would not disappear, and some procurement could continue through commercial and illicit networks.
Maintaining sophisticated missile operations would be harder. Losing specialized components, technical assistance and intelligence would impose serious constraints. The timing cannot be confidently predicted because stockpiles, production bottlenecks and alternative supply channels remain opaque. An Iranian cutoff would matter greatly. It would not automatically disarm the Houthis or dictate their behavior.
That makes sustained interdiction indispensable. Destroying weapons while permitting their replacement creates an expensive recurring obligation for America and its partners. Procurement networks, financing and transit routes must be disrupted alongside military capabilities.
Small dhows require particular attention. In January 2024, US forces intercepted one carrying Iranian-made ballistic and cruise missile components, including propulsion, guidance and warhead components. Expanded maritime surveillance, boarding and inspection, and regional coast guard cooperation should make such shipments harder to deliver. Legitimate trade and humanitarian supplies must remain protected as they are now. The Houthis claim that Saudi Arabia has imposed a full air and sea blockade against them which is false. The kingdom only works to prevent the shipment of arms through an inspection mechanism coordinated with the UN that the Houthis want to remove. In fact, food, medicines and commercial goods have continued to arrive at Yemeni ports when conditions permit.
Washington must also exert greater pressure on Oman to close smuggling routes exploited by Houthi procurement networks. The UN Panel of Experts’ 2025 report identified crossings between Oman and Yemen as routes for concealed military-use items. It also recorded Oman’s insistence that its borders were strictly guarded.
That evidence does not establish official Omani complicity. It does justify demands for stronger inspections, investigations of facilitators and measurable enforcement cooperation. Oman’s valuable mediation should complement enforcement of the arms embargo. Washington should expect both.
Enforcement must also follow changing routes. Research on Houthi supply chains identifies substantial gaps in knowledge about how large missile components arrive. Focusing exclusively on dhows or the Omani border would leave other channels available.
The strategic cost of failure extends beyond Yemen. If armed groups conclude that threatening a chokepoint can secure concessions and immunity, others may attempt variations of the model. Geography and capabilities differ, but successful coercion supplies its own advertisement.
There is a limited analogy with al-Qaeda before September 11. Washington did not ignore its Afghan sanctuary: it pursued diplomacy, sanctions and strikes, including in 1998, as the 9/11 Commission documented. Those efforts nevertheless failed to prevent the organization from consolidating its capacity to inflict harm abroad.
The Houthis have different objectives and methods. This is neither a prediction of another September 11 nor an argument for invading Yemen. The relevant warning is that the cost of confronting an entrenched armed movement can grow substantially while policymakers classify it as a manageable regional problem.
A focused strategy should separate protecting navigation and energy infrastructure from determining Yemen’s political future. The first cannot wait for the second. But the separation is necessarily imperfect: intelligence, coastal security and enforcement depend on conditions ashore. Capturing coastline would not eliminate missiles launched inland, and indiscriminate destruction could strengthen Houthi recruitment.
The objective should be a sustained reduction in the movement’s ability to threaten others, supported by interdiction, military pressure and verifiable agreements. Governing Yemen must remain a Yemeni responsibility pursued through a separate political process.
A realistic coalition would distribute tasks according to capability and political willingness.
The United States should provide the critical leadership, intelligence coordination and, when necessary, force against military targets threatening shipping and energy infrastructure.
American fighter aircraft can make a particularly valuable contribution against the Houthis’ mobile missile launchers. Their close integration with US intelligence, surveillance and command networks can shorten the interval between identifying a mobile missile threat and acting on it. US Air Force doctrine emphasizes how compressed that window can be. Where allied aircraft, particularly the Saudi Airforce, depend on the same intelligence being cleared for release, transferred and approved through separate national channels, these additional steps can introduce consequential delays, if only minutes. Coalition experience documents these differences in intelligence access and approval procedures. Against a missile launcher that can move and conceal itself, speed can determine whether an opportunity survives. This provides a concrete argument for a focused American combat role: sharing intelligence is valuable, but retaining the ability to act promptly on it can be decisive.
Partners must commit actual assets and funding. Europe provides an existing foundation. The EU’s Operation ASPIDES protects shipping under a defensive mandate, excluding strikes on land. Its mandate runs through February 2027.
France, Italy, Greece and other European partners should expand escort, surveillance and logistical contributions. Britain could contribute through its own arrangements. Separate commands can coordinate without identical mandates.
Saudi Arabia would be the central partner, contributing surveillance, regional air defense and full support for Yemeni government forces in their war. Its territory and infrastructure are directly exposed, as reporting on renewed fighting demonstrates.
Washington should recognize the strategic consequence of leaving Riyadh vulnerable. A partner forced to accommodate an armed movement capable of striking its economic lifelines has less freedom to cooperate with America. Helping protect Saudi infrastructure therefore safeguards both energy supplies and the resilience of an important American relationship.
Yemen’s recognized government can provide the legitimate framework for cooperation ashore. Its coast guard and local forces could secure ports, disrupt trafficking and hold recovered territory. Yet recognition does not create military cohesion: Congressional Research Service reporting describes competing authorities within the anti-Houthi camp. US involvement, however, would contribute to increased cohesion and better morale among the Yemeni government forces.
Turkey could contribute through its established presence in Somalia. Confirmed aircraft deployments and a naval task group demonstrate a capability to fight the Houthis. Maritime training, surveillance and disruption of trafficking are plausible proposed roles.
Djibouti’s most useful contribution would be logistics, port access and maritime cooperation. China, whose Djibouti base supports naval escort operations, should be asked for deconfliction and diplomatic pressure on Tehran and the Houthis. Planning around Chinese participation in a US-led combat coalition would be unrealistic; making action dependent on Beijing would be worse.
Israel’s intelligence and offensive capabilities could help address a movement that has attacked it. But inserting Israel into the coalition could impede Arab and Turkish participation.
Diplomacy should support this effort but not by exclusive bilateral arrangements with the Houthis. Reuters reported September 2026 US contacts concerning assurances for American vessels. An arrangement that leaves the Houthis choosing whose commerce is protected not only preserves but in fact strengthens their claim to control the waterway and hence is a dangerous road for the US to take.
Americans weary of foreign commitments deserve an honest accounting of the alternatives. A limited collective effort carries costs and risks. So does leaving an expanding arsenal in the hands of a movement that can repeatedly threaten global fuel prices and trade and American partners.
Ignoring that threat would transfer decisions about when Americans pay, and how much, to Houthi leaders. America could then, at any time in the near future, face a larger arsenal, a more entrenched adversary and an emergency demanding action on far worse terms.
America need not attempt in any way to govern Yemen. It does need to prevent an armed movement there from acquiring a permanent ability to impose economic pain on Americans and the world. An agreement with Iran may help. Leaving the Houthis armed and able to rebuild would leave the bill unpaid and accumulating.
Ali Shihabi is a Saudi author and political commentator.
