Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman wanted to make his kingdom a magnet for investment, tourism and the world’s biggest sporting events. Now, drones and missiles launched from Yemen are hitting Saudi cities, drawing the Saudis deeper into chaos in a region they wanted to leave behind.
Yemen’s civil war erupted again this summer and escalated significantly last month, upending years of relative calm. For 11 years, Saudi Arabia has tried to contain the conflict on its southern border through military force and diplomacy. First, it went to war with the Houthis, who are allied with Iran, then pursued peace negotiations with the group, and restored diplomatic relations with its backer, Iran.
Despite these efforts, a series of miscalculations left Riyadh exposed to further conflict in Yemen, experts said. Saudi Arabia is struggling to organize the fractured armed group fighting the Houthis in Yemen, ending a long-standing partnership with the UAE late last year over support for Yemen’s rival faction and misjudging President Donald Trump’s willingness to provide aid if needed.
Now, Riyadh is trying to regain its footing by supporting its Yemeni partners in yet another operation against the Houthis, dubbed “Yemen Dawn.”
Crown Prince Mohammed’s ambitions to transform the kingdom have already faced several challenges since coming to power more than a decade ago. Now, a multi-pronged attack on oil infrastructure has reduced exports, canceled major projects and placed Saudi Arabia under further strain as it is drawn into a war with no clear exit.
Saudi Arabia says the Houthis attacked several Saudi airports this week, killing at least three people, including a Saudi pilot. This year, regional turmoil has forced the cancellation of star-studded film festivals, award ceremonies and music concerts. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s main financial conference, scheduled to gather prominent business leaders at the end of October, is under pressure amid strikes.
“We needed to keep the conflict as far away as possible without allowing the Houthis to disrupt their plans for change,” Michael Ratney, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, told CNN. “Now they find themselves in the middle of it.”
A decade-long alliance between the two countries fighting Iranian influence in Yemen collapsed last year when a Saudi warplane hit a military vehicle the UAE had sent to Yemen, leaving Saudi Arabia to tackle the crisis alone after Abu Dhabi withdrew its troops. The severance with the UAE shocked the region. Saudi Arabia has launched an unprecedented media campaign against its neighbors, accusing them of stirring up instability in Sudan and Yemen. Saudi commentators have publicly described the UAE as the younger brother who rebels against the wise.
Saudi Arabia is the “head and body” of regional stability, prominent Saudi journalist Dawood al-Shiryan wrote in January. “If[Saudi Arabia]stumbles, the entire system will be disrupted and the Gulf will be scattered.”
As Riyadh seeks dominance in the Gulf, the ground in Yemen has shifted. A four-year ceasefire with the Houthis was already fragile, and the rapid UAE withdrawal requested by Riyadh has left thousands of fighters, who spent a decade under Abu Dhabi’s command, confused by Riyadh’s strategy.
Militants allied with the UAE say Abu Dhabi’s withdrawal has created a power vacuum that Saudi Arabia has failed to fill.
“When the Emirates left, there was no proper transition,” a southern Yemeni official, who requested anonymity to speak freely, told CNN. “It was scary how different things turned out to be. Emirati command and control was very efficient, but the Saudis were not going to replace this efficiency.”
CNN has asked the Saudi government for comment on whether the forces fighting the Houthis on the ground are receiving adequate support and whether there has been a proper transition of power.
Eight weeks after the UAE left, the United States and Israel launched a war against Iran, killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. The move has sparked a conflict, plunged the region into unprecedented turmoil and made Iran’s allies, including Saudi Arabia, a target of Iran.
Experts say the timing was unfortunate for Saudi Arabia. After battling UAE-backed separatist pressure in Yemen, the US and Israel sparked a regional war. And despite years of efforts to prevent war from erupting in Yemen, the pressure President Trump imposed on Iran was expected to eventually trigger Houthi pressure on Saudi Arabia.
“Saudi Arabia has had to respond after being attacked by enemy forces on its territory…so the response was always there,” said Latney, a former U.S. ambassador.
Even as Iranian missiles attacked Saudi Arabia from the east, Saudi Arabia’s attention remained focused on the south. The Houthis remain under a formal truce with Riyadh, but appear unwilling to support their Iranian partner. Iran brought in Saudi Arabia instead.
In July, Iran sent a passenger plane carrying a Houthi delegation to Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran, ignoring a Saudi air blockade of Yemen. Riyadh attacked the Houthi-held airport in Sanaa to prevent the plane from landing. The rebels retaliated by declaring the truce invalid and announcing a naval blockade against Saudi shipping. It also launched a surprise offensive on the coast of Yemen, seizing strategic territory in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait in its largest expansion since 2022.
The Houthis attacked Saudi oil facilities and pipelines, disrupting oil supplies and causing prices to soar. Saudi forces responded with hundreds of airstrikes.
“Saudi Arabia has made some mistakes and failures,” Ahmed Nagi, senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group think tank, told CNN, noting that Riyadh was unprepared for a Houthi attack and lacked coordination with Yemen’s allied forces inherited from the UAE.
“The areas they have lost have caused morale problems with their allies, and the Houthis now represent a major challenge for Saudi Arabia as they have more advanced weaponry that has been able to reach some cities in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Another miscalculation by Saudi Arabia was its dependence on continued support from the United States, experts said. Despite signing a new defense deal with the US last year and being designated by the US as a major non-NATO ally, Riyadh is disappointed in what it sees as a weakening of US security commitments.
Officials told CNN at the time that Prince Mohammed met twice with President Trump last month and urged him to attack the Houthis, but Trump refused to intervene. The U.S. government instead met with the Houthis in Oman and sought to honor a ceasefire with the group. This made it clear that the war was only with Saudi Arabia and allowed American ships to freely navigate the Red Sea.
For a military that has built its “whole worldview” around its partnership with the United States, the Saudis recognize how unpredictable Trump is, Latney said.
“It was never their concept or military structure to fight these wars on their own,” he said. “In a normal American president, if something like this happened, we would have supported our partners in a rational and considered process.
“We don’t have that process right now. It comes down to what President Trump thinks. And Saudi Arabia probably feels exposed as a result of that,” he added.
Since then, Saudi Arabia has looked elsewhere. Last month, Prince Mohammed flew to Egypt to meet President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi, and a few weeks later hosted UAE Vice President Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed in Riyadh to discuss regional developments. France agreed to deploy defense assets, including military personnel. Britain announced it would send aircraft to help refuel Saudi aircraft. More than 100 U.S. military advisors are on the ground providing intelligence and targeting support under the newly established Joint Forces Command.
Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan agreed on Monday to “invoke collective deterrence measures” under the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement after an emergency meeting in Riyadh. The agreement, established earlier this year, aims to coordinate defense and security cooperation between the three countries. Forces loyal to the UAE also appear to be taking part in the attack, a sign of at least a partial thaw between Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
But experts warn that the conflict will not be resolved by the Yemeni government’s early acquisition of external aid or Saudi support. Infighting between factions remains common, with no clear political end in sight.
Analysts say a sustained attack on Iranian-backed forces would require organization, regional support, funding and logistics, but the current coalition has not yet shown it can sustain itself.
“They need to unify the command, and they need to resolve the issues they have between the different factions within the group,” Hisham al-Omeisy, a senior adviser on Yemen at the European Institute of Peace, told CNN’s Becky Anderson. “The territorial gains they have made will mean nothing if the[Saudi-backed]Yemeni government cannot maintain control of those areas.”
However, many experts said the fighting in Yemen is linked to the US war on Iran and that as long as the US-Tehran conflict continues, Iranians will continue to have strong incentives to monitor the Houthis’ disruption in Saudi Arabia.
Analysts said the Gulf state could manage to secure a separate diplomatic solution with Iran or could escalate its military offensive to remove the Houthi leadership.
“Neither scenario provides a short-term solution to the conflict in Yemen,” Rutney said. “Saudi Arabia will have to find an imperfect path forward.”
