One war from Yemen… to Iraq | Khairallah Khairallah

In light of the Houthis’ capture of the port of Mokha, Iran has taken a major stride toward dominating the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The strait serves as the mandatory chokepoint into the Red Sea and onward to the Suez Canal.

The “Islamic Republic” has masterfully utilized the Houthis in an assignment tied to the war it is waging against the United States and Israel—a conflict it has turned into an offensive against the Gulf Arab states and Jordan. Foremost among these nations is Saudi Arabia, which now finds itself engaged in a conflict along its lengthy frontier with Yemen, while simultaneously enduring attacks originating from Iraq.

We are not merely confronting a test of Yemeni “legitimacy,” whose very viability has been thrown into question; this is also a broader Arab and Gulf reckoning, especially as the “Islamic Republic” has demonstrated zero hesitation in weaponizing Yemen to blackmail every state across the region.

What will the US administration do, and does it recognize that the confrontation with Iran has escalated into an all-out war—a singular conflict stretching from Yemen to Iraq? Does it grasp that the “Islamic Republic” is ready to push this confrontation to its absolute limits, with Iraq now constituting an indispensable pillar of the theater?

Developments in Yemen raise urgent questions about the fate of Yemen’s legitimate authorities and whether they remain viable. What is also in question is the trajectory of Iraq and whether it has fallen entirely under Iranian control.

Without question, Houthi military advances deliver a major strategic victory to Iran in its campaign of coercion. Ultimately, Tehran leverages the Houthis—who are nothing more than regional instruments—to sustain its pressure on regional states. Calling themselves the “Ansar Allah” movement after Lebanon’s Hezbollah, it is no secret that Hezbollah played a central role, particularly through training, building communication networks, and establishing a satellite broadcasting hub in Beirut, in transforming the Houthis into a direct proxy of the “Islamic Republic.” This transformed northern Yemen into an Iranian launching pad for ballistic missiles and drones on the Arabian Peninsula, creating a direct threat to every Arab Gulf state.

The Houthis executed Iranian directives willingly and without reservation, throwing substantial forces into the battle for the port of Mokha—a city they briefly held immediately after overrunning Sanaa on September 21, 2014, when they turned it into another Arab capital under Tehran’s thumb. It is well known who previously drove the Houthis out of Mokha, and before that out of Aden and other southern territories. UAE-backed forces played a pivotal role in rolling back Houthi advances across various sectors of Yemen, particularly throughout the southern governorates.

Houthi prioritization of Mokha was evident from the outset, beginning with their military push through the mountainous terrain of Taiz, where Ansar Allah already maintained footholds. The Houthis targeted specific outposts in the Taiz governorate to encircle Mokha and render it militarily untenable. They succeeded in entering Mokha by exploiting the absence of a unified, cohesive front on the ground to oppose them. Fissures among anti-Houthi factions created a vulnerability that the Houthis exploited to the fullest.

There is no longer widespread appetite to confront the Houthis among some southern factions and other units that participated in liberating Aden and Mokha over a decade ago. While there is no utility in reopening old grievances Yemen can ill afford to revisit, it is worth recalling that at one point, the forces that liberated Mokha stood poised alongside others to drive the Houthis out of Hodeidah. That was in early 2018, before American and British diplomatic interventions halted the offensive to dislodge the Houthis from the city.

The day will come when the motives behind the insistence expressed by certain international circles to keep the Houthis in control of Hodeidah—Yemen’s primary Red Sea port—are fully laid bare. Currently, the situation across Taiz remains an ongoing battle of maneuver. The Houthis secure breakthroughs in specific areas, as seen in Mokha, while suffering setbacks and heavy casualties elsewhere, as occurred in Al-Jawf far from Taiz. What remains clear, however, is that coordination among anti-Houthi forces is more critical than ever—forces that ought to fall under the operational command of the legitimate government led by Dr. Rashad al-Alimi. There is simply no utility today in internal rivalries among factions that failed so catastrophically to block Iran’s advance to Mokha.

Better coordination is needed not just among forces loyal or subordinate to Yemeni legitimacy. An Arab—specifically Gulf—concerted strategy on Yemen is urgently required. The stakes are immense: they extend far beyond the future of Yemen and Iran’s territorial presence there, directly concerning the “Islamic Republic’s” deployment of that presence to imperil comprehensive Gulf security and disrupt the operations of the Suez Canal. What occurred in Yemen stands as a grave escalation, especially as it was swiftly followed by strikes launched from Iraq targeting the Saudi trans-peninsula pipeline that terminates at the Red Sea.

This plays out amid the glaring absence of a coherent American strategy to counter Iran, a state that has demonstrated no hesitation in targeting multiple Gulf nations at various junctures, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Sultanate of Oman. In the absence of decisive American strategic leadership, the imperative falls on developing an autonomous Arab Gulf strategy, anchored alongside the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which likewise contends with persistent Iranian threats.