Within less than a week, the Houthis have reached Yemen’s southern Red Sea coast at Bab al-Mandab, taking the strategically positioned island of Mayyun. From there, they are within reach of one of the world’s most consequential maritime crossings, through which roughly 12 percent of global trade passes. The advance has given renewed urgency to understanding who the Houthis are and how they have acquired the ability to project power beyond Yemen.
In 2025, Washington and the Houthis reached an Oman-mediated understanding under which the Houthis agreed not to attack US vessels in exchange for an end to American strikes. The latest escalation has led to similar understandings and commitments, while Oman again served as a mediation channel. The Houthis reaffirmed their commitment not to disrupt international navigation, implicitly including Israeli vessels, while singling out Saudi Arabia as an exception. It is clear that the Houthis, now that they made strategic military advances, will have specific demands before extending the same commitment to Saudi ships and interests.
President Trump’s announcement of talks with the Houthis naturally alarmed the Yemeni government. A subsequent call between Trump and Yemen’s President Rashad Al-Alimi on September 20 was intended to reassure the Yemeni leadership that the talks did not represent a change in the U.S. position toward Yemen’s internationally recognized government. Al-Alimi sought U.S. support against the Houthi advance, but Trump made no direct pledge of military support during the call. Beyond these points, few details of the conversation have been publicly disclosed by either the Yemeni or American side.
Yemen was known to the ancient Greeks as Eudaimon Arabia, or “Happy Arabia,” a name the Romans later rendered as Arabia Felix, “fortunate” or “fertile Arabia,” while in Arab culture it is called Al Yaman Al Saeed. These names reflected a land of mountain kingdoms, sophisticated irrigation systems and trading routes carrying frankincense and other goods across Arabia towards the Mediterranean. Yemen is Asian but very close to the Horn of Africa, mountainous but maritime, connected to the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, and historically shaped by powers far beyond its borders.
Its links with Egypt run through both history and geography. The Islamic Fath of Egypt included troops from Yemeni tribes, while for centuries Yemen formed part of the trading routes connecting India and Arabia with Egypt, Alexandria and the Mediterranean. Goods travelled through the Red Sea in a relay of maritime and overland routes that benefited merchants, including Venetians. Portuguese voyages around the Cape of Good Hope gradually weakened this route until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 restored the Red Sea’s centrality and the importance of the port of Aden.
Only 26 km separate Yemen from the Horn of Africa at Bab al-Mandab, and the Gulf of Aden forms part of the Eastern Route, which the International Organization for Migration describes as one of the busiest and most dangerous migration corridors in the world, where migrants face human trafficking and exploitation, detention, violence and death. Ethiopians and Somalis cross into Yemen, often intending to reach Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. In addition to being a country of transit, Yemen is also a country of origin: Yemeni refugees and asylum seekers also make their way westward and farther north, including to Egypt.
The Houthi story begins in the particular history of northern Yemen. Ansar Allah, the movement commonly called the Houthis, emerged from a Zaydi revivalist environment in Saada. Zaydism has a long indigenous Yemeni history and differs doctrinally from the Ithna Ashari, or Twelver, Shi’a tradition predominant in Iran. Both are Shi’a traditions, but they do not share the same doctrine or religious authority. The Houthis’ later relationship with Tehran has sometimes overshadowed the Yemeni roots of their leadership, social fabric and political development.
For centuries, Zaydi religious and political authority was associated with the imamate governing much of northern Yemen. The 1962 revolution ended that political order but not the identities, bonds and historical memories surrounding it. Yemeni society has never been organised around religion alone: family and lineage matter alongside clan, tribe, regional interests, economic relationships and local loyalties, while political allegiance has often been negotiated through ideology, kinship, patronage, money and changing balances of power.
Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi emerged from this Zaydi revivalist environment and transformed it into a political project centred on resisting corruption, marginalisation and foreign influence, expressing solidarity with the Palestinians and defending Yemeni sovereignty. His death in 2004 made him the movement’s defining figure; his brother Abdul-Malik became its principal leader. The family, however, cannot be separated from the clan and tribal structures surrounding it, where alliances shift according to circumstances. The movement could draw upon religious identity without being reducible to it.
Yemen remains one sovereign country under international law, with a recognised government and national armed forces, but effective control over its territory is shared with the Houthis, southern forces, tribal networks and other local actors. Sana’a remains Yemen’s formal capital, but the internationally recognised government is based in Aden, while neither city alone represents the full distribution of political and military power across the country. Authority in Yemen has repeatedly depended on dynamics among tribes, regional elites, military commanders and local power brokers rather than on one institution exercising uncontested control.
Yemen’s historical and political relationship with Saudi Arabia is central to understanding the dynamics of the conflict. Modern borders did not erase older connections between Yemen, particularly the north, and Asir, Jizan and Najran, three areas historically connected to Yemen that were incorporated into Saudi Arabia and whose status was formalised by the 1934 Treaty of Taif. Although the border was formally settled in 2000, the older territorial question continues to resonate in Yemeni politics, including among the Houthis.
Saudi Arabia regards the security of its southern border and Yemen’s political stability as major concerns. Riyadh has cultivated Yemeni politicians, tribes and local power brokers through financial and political patronage, while the UAE has built relationships with southern political and military forces and invested in Aden, coastal ports and Socotra, whose position between the Arabian Sea, Gulf of Aden and Red Sea gives it strategic importance. Emirati influence has also extended into Hadramawt and along the southern coast, where ports, maritime access and energy infrastructure intersect. Saudi Arabia has focused particularly on its border region, Yemen’s territorial stability and areas such as Hadramawt and al-Mahra. Money, weapons and political support have repeatedly shaped Yemen’s local balances of power without guaranteeing permanent allegiance.
The Houthis altered this equation after taking Sana’a, expanding towards the Saudi border and developing closer ties with Iran. Saudi Arabia responded by leading the 2015 coalition intervention against them, but the war did not produce the straightforward outcome initially sought. The Houthis survived prolonged military pressure, retained large parts of northern and western Yemen, and acquired and developed increasingly sophisticated missile and drone capabilities, leaving Saudi Arabia facing a movement with both territorial depth and the means to affect its security from across the border.
Despite their shared opposition to the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not pursued identical interests in Yemen. Their different visions of Yemen’s political future and competing interests over territory and local influence have at times outweighed their common opposition to the Houthis, while their support for different Yemeni actors has created additional room for the movement to expand its local alliances and make strategic advances.
The Houthis’ transformation from a Yemeni movement into a regional actor has also been shaped by their relationship with Iran. Iranian political, military and technical support, alongside Hezbollah training and expertise, has strengthened Houthi missile and drone capabilities and helped the movement project power beyond Yemen. Recent reporting has also described Iranian advisers assisting Houthi forces during their rapid Red Sea advance. Yet calling the Houthis simply an Iranian proxy reverses their chronology: their leadership’s priorities remain Yemeni, their interests are not identical to Tehran’s, and their relationship with Iran combines strategic interests with religious affinity without simply reproducing the Iranian state’s religious model or political objectives. The Houthi movement emerged from Yemen’s own political and social history and subsequently acquired regional relationships that have helped transform its reach.
That became particularly clear after the Houthis began attacking maritime navigation following the outbreak of the war in Gaza in 2023. They presented the attacks as support for the Palestinians; shipping companies responded by diverting vessels around the Cape of Good Hope, adding time and cost to Asia-Europe journeys. The United States and Israel subsequently struck Houthi targets during the wider regional conflict. What began as a Yemeni movement’s intervention in a wider regional war consequently became a major international commercial and security challenge.
For Egypt, the consequences are direct and serious. Bab al-Mandab is the southern gateway to the Red Sea, while the Suez Canal lies at its northern end. Sustained disruption or diversion from the Red Sea therefore affects Canal revenues, a major source of Egypt’s hard currency, as well as global logistics, shipping times and insurance costs. The security of the Red Sea is consequently tied directly to Egypt’s economic and strategic interests.
Against this backdrop, President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi received a call from Yemeni President Rashad Al-Alimi on September 25 to discuss developments in Yemen and efforts to restore security and stability. Egypt reaffirmed its support for Yemen’s unity, national institutions, territorial integrity and a comprehensive political settlement. On the same day, in a televised address marking the 64th anniversary of Yemen’s September 26 Revolution, Al-Alimi called on Yemenis to mobilise behind the government’s armed and security forces and pledged to restore state institutions and government sovereignty throughout the country. On September 15, President Al-Sisi received Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Cairo, with the two sides discussing the security of navigation in Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea, as well as a political solution to the Yemen crisis.
The latest Houthi gains at the Red Sea’s southern gate therefore raise questions that extend well beyond their immediate military advance. How were the Houthis able to move so quickly, and will their territorial ambitions stop there? Will their commitment not to disrupt international navigation persist if the United States attacks Iran again? Will others seek similar commitments through direct contacts with the Houthis? And what are Saudi Arabia’s options, politically and militarily, now that the Houthis have reached Bab al-Mandab?
Beyond these immediate calculations lies the larger question of Yemen itself. Can a country with abundant resources and a strategic position on one of the world’s major maritime routes find a formula for national reconciliation and constructive regional cooperation? Can its many centres of power coexist within one state and restore the authority of national institutions without requiring Yemen’s complex political, tribal and regional identities to disappear? Yemen’s history suggests that national unity cannot simply be imposed upon those identities; it must provide a political framework in which they can coexist. For all that has changed, Arabia Felix remains instructive to the story of Yemen: a name born of the country’s prosperity and fertility, attached to a place whose strategic position has repeatedly made its internal politics inseparable from the interests of powers beyond it.
Nadine Loza is a development strategist, opinion columnist, and Founding Director of the Egypt Diaspora Initiative.
