Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Yemen’s foreign minister-designate Afrah Al-Zouba said on Monday that the Houthi movement seeks to replicate Iran’s Strait of Hormuz strategy by disrupting shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
She said the group had been encouraged by what she described as an insufficient international response, as cross-border attacks raise concerns over a wider return to conflict in Yemen.
Shipping disruption concerns
Speaking to a small group of journalists at the Yemeni embassy in Riyadh, Zouba said the Houthis wanted to copy the Iranian model, potentially affecting the two main straits serving as gateways to the Gulf and the Red Sea.
“The Houthis want to copy the Iranian model and this will shut down two main straits, the gateways into the Gulf and Red Sea,” she said.
The Houthis have fired missiles and drones at Saudi Arabia and declared a blockade on Saudi shipping, making the Red Sea a new front in the conflict involving Iran.
Saudi response
Saudi Arabia has carried out airstrikes against what it described as Houthi military facilities and said it would protect commercial shipping. Saudi authorities have accused the Houthis of serving foreign agendas.
The escalation has raised the prospect of renewed conflict in Yemen, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed after the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014. Saudi Arabia subsequently intervened at the head of an Arab coalition.
Risk of wider war
Although a truce was reached in 2022, recent cross-border fire has breached it. Saudi officials, Western diplomats and Yemeni officials believe a return to full-scale war is now more likely than at any point since the truce.
Zouba said Yemen’s Saudi-backed government was prepared for an escalation. Firing was taking place along the frontline from the Red Sea across the country’s northwest to the Saudi border, she said, though neither side had launched an offensive.
“We think that this conflict now needs to come to an end, either via peaceful means, or the other way,” Zouba said.