Houthis Sweep Yemen's Red Sea Coast in a Week of Rapid Gains

The Yemeni militant group Ansar Allah has scored several significant victories in recent days. After fighting resumed with the pro-Saudi Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) earlier this week, by Thursday it had already seized nearly a dozen islands in the Red Sea, along with the well-known port of Mocha.

According to some maps, the coastal city, after which a type of coffee is named, lies within the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which the Houthis had already blockaded amid the Israeli-Palestinian war. Its capture therefore raises the prospect of a renewed blockade, although the militants initially denied this.

The movement's supreme leader, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, who has been at the helm since 2004, also deployed naval forces to seize the Hanish Islands, a move that revealed the true extent of his military capabilities. According to other reports, Mocha lies less than 50 miles from the strait. In the last few hours, however, the Houthis have also captured the southern city of Dhubab, a fact confirmed by forces allied with the PLC.

A few hours later, they also seized the island of Perim, which lies within the strait. This advance may signal that the militants are pushing southward along the coast toward the PLC headquarters in Aden, the capital of the former South Yemen. They had already captured the capital, Sana'a, in 2014.

A Fledgling Alliance Faces Its First Test

Just as the Houthis enjoy Tehran's protection, the PLC has the backing of neighboring Saudi Arabia. Riyadh's own skirmishes with Yemen are what triggered the present crisis. Over the past week, Shiite militants have struck border oil depots in Jizan, Najran and Abha. Satellite imagery also pointed to a fire on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, which carries crude to the export terminal at Yanbu. Riyadh, however, attributed the drones involved to Iraq rather than confirming Houthi responsibility.

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Through Yanbu and the adjacent East-West Petroline pipeline system, the Saudis have rerouted most of their oil exports, previously shipped through the Strait of Hormuz on the far side of the Arabian Peninsula, which has been blockaded amid the US-Iran conflict. As valued allies and members of the self-proclaimed "Axis of Resistance", the Houthis have proven themselves to be Tehran's most effective supporters.

Ansar Allah began shifting the focus of the war toward the Saudis early this week, firing ballistic missiles at the Jizan refinery and at fuel depots in neighboring Najran and the city of Abha, after a six-week lull in strikes on Saudi facilities. Less than 630 km from Najran lies Islam's holiest city, Mecca.

It was in the capital of the historic Kingdom of Hejaz that the Saudi royal family concluded a strategic defense agreement unofficially dubbed the "Muslim NATO". The Mecca Agreement has also been signed by Turkey and nuclear-armed Pakistan. Riyadh, however, has not yet reached out to its new partners.

The British daily The Guardian also flagged this as one of the scenarios the Houthis should anticipate. Ankara and Islamabad, however, have so far responded to the attacks only with diplomatic condemnations, earning the pact a reputation as an alliance that exists only on paper.

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A Reluctant Ally and a Fracturing Coalition

Instead, Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman turned to Donald Trump, a non-Muslim ally alongside whom he had secretly joined the war against Iran. According to Axios, the US president received at least two requests to join the fighting, and rejected both.

While Saudi airstrikes were destroying roads and weapons depots in western Yemen, bin Salman called the White House twice, according to Axios journalist Barak Ravid, pressuring the president to repeat the scenario of last year's "Signalgate" scandal: an extensive bombing campaign across the same part of the country.

Paradoxically, as the anti-Houthi opposition was weakening, internal conflicts flared up once more, conflicts that had never fully subsided even after the PLC's decisive defeat of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) in January. The PLC itself is linked by its opponents to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, owing to the movement's membership in Al-Islah, while remnants of the UAE-backed STC continue to vie for influence in Aden.

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The remnants of the Southern Council, whose involvement in the war has revived visions of a People's Democratic Republic of Yemen (i.e., South Yemen) as a kind of secular counterweight to the PLC, have long been backed by Abu Dhabi. Their skirmishes at the turn of 2025 and 2026 were widely regarded as one of many proxy wars between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi.

STC founder Aidarus al-Zoubaidi even adopted the flag of the former socialist republic as his movement's banner, a move that has signalled separatist tendencies ever since the STC split from the Hadi government in 2017. Those tendencies flared up again under pressure from the Houthi advances, despite minor gains made on Friday by the PLC, which pushed the front line forward near the central city of Al-Bayda.

Meanwhile, supporters of the now-dissolved Southern Transitional Council blocked the convoy of PLC Defense Minister Taher al-Aqili in Dhale province on 9 September, setting several vehicles on fire before security forces dispersed them, according to the Associated Press.

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The incident points to a broader problem: the formal integration of pro-Emirati forces, launched in January, apparently never got off the ground, and Riyadh's distrust of these domestic armed groups likely contributed to bin Salman's request for Trump's help. Despite these behind-the-scenes moves, Ansar Allah continues to advance, and shows no sign of intending to return to the positions it held before the 2022 ceasefire.