The Houthis Finally Open a Second Front in the Iran War

By Noah Rothman

Friday, September 11, 2026

 

The Iranians seem to have finally, after many unsuccessful attempts, dragged Yemen’s Houthis into the fight. Sort of.

 

From the outset of Operation Epic Fury, the Iranian regime lobbied the Houthis both publicly and in private to open a second maritime front — complementing Tehran’s efforts to block traffic in the Strait of Hormuz with a Houthi-led assault on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula.

 

For months, the Houthis balked at the requests from their Iranian sponsors. Back in March, in a reflection of the internal disagreement over whether to reignite the war that the Houthis prosecuted in the Biden years, the Houthis fired a perfunctory drone and missile barrage at Israel. Analysts believe this was likely the compromise on which all sides of the debate could agree.

 

Months of relative quiet followed that exhibition, which revealed the Houthis’ diminished appetite for war. Even when the Houthis acquiesced to pressure and, in July, announced their intention to close the strait that leads to the Red Sea and toward the Suez Canal, the traffic continued to flow. It seemed that Sana’a was not eager for the fight.

 

That changed in early August, but it wasn’t the Iranians who changed it.

 

“The Houthis, increasingly frustrated with what they say is a blockade by Saudi Arabia, launched strikes on the Saudi state oil company and announced a blockade of Saudi ships passing through the Red Sea,” the Washington Post reported on August 2. An ongoing exchange of missiles and drones between the Houthis and the neighboring Saudi Kingdom intensified after August 20, when the Yemeni militia attacked a “sensitive target at ​Najran airport and an Aramco facility in Najran” as well as Saudi ships at sea. Riyadh pledged in the wake of that attack to do whatever it could to support the internationally recognized Yemeni government in Aden, possibly including direct intervention.

 

Meanwhile, pro-government forces launched a multifront offensive against Houthi positions. At the beginning of the month, government-aligned forces appeared to be holding their own. In the last 48 hours, however, a Houthi offensive has made significant strategic gains.

 

On Friday, regional sources confirmed that the Houthis had captured the port city of Mokha, which is situated on the coast of the Red Sea at the mouth of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. In addition, the militia mounted a maritime assault on Perim Island in the Red Sea, giving its forces greater control over commercial traffic flowing north toward the Mediterranean.

 

“The Houthi advance further threatens Saudi oil exports just as Iran is constraining shipments through the Strait of Hormuz on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula,” the Wall Street Journal reported. Consequently, global energy markets reeled at the prospect of a united Iranian-Houthi front designed to throttle all maritime traffic from the Indian Ocean.

 

Most disconcertingly, some militant group — the Houthis, perhaps, or an Iran-aligned militia in Iraq — has reportedly managed to strike a crucial overland oil pipeline inside Saudi Arabia. CNN confirms:

 

The pipeline has become key to Saudi Arabia since the outbreak of the US-Iran war. The kingdom has rerouted about 5 million barrels of oil per day that would have been destined for awaiting oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, as Iran effectively shuttered the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, that oil has traveled through its East-West pipeline to its port of Yanbu on the Red Sea.

 

According to Axios, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman telephoned Donald Trump twice on Thursday “urging him to launch strikes against the Houthis.” Trump reportedly declined, but the U.S. is providing intelligence and targeting support to the Kingdom in its military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, and hundreds of U.S. military personnel are already on the ground in Saudi Arabia. That may not prove sufficient given the effect of the Houthi offensive on the price of Brent Crude, but it’s not nothing.

 

While there are “hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Yemen,” as CNN reported, the full-scale activation of the Houthis seems attributable more to political dynamics within the militia and their long-running fight against the Saudi Kingdom than Iranian coercion. Still, the flare-up doubtlessly advances Iran’s objectives by putting upward pressure on oil prices. This development comes as cracks within the Iranian political class over whether to continue fighting the war at all have begun to spill into the public square.

 

While it has been widely reported that the IRGC favors escalation to force Trump back to the negotiating table, that view is not shared by the Iranian political class. For months, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has been having a prolonged and public nervous breakdown over the strain the U.S. blockade has placed on the Iranian economy.

 

This week, he was joined by two of his predecessors, Hassan Rouhani and Mohammad Khatami, both of whom called on the IRGC to find an “honorable” way to win the war. Other Iranian “moderate” elements fear that Trump’s recent strikes on Iran’s “ghost fleet” of indolent oil tankers idling in the Strait of Hormuz will ensure that the country never financially recovers from the war. “Iran needs realistic governance rather than radical idealism,” said the disillusioned reformer and one-time regime insider Hamidreza Jalaeipour.

 

The stakes in this already high-stakes game of chicken keep rising.