Alwaght- Like the series of developments that preceded the Saudi war against Yemen in 2015, these days Riyadh's moves, especially the political and military coalition making, indicate the kingdom's play with the old pieces. This is while the game theater has changed in Yemen and now the main issue is no longer who wins, but who dictates the new rules of engagement.
After years of costly conflict, Saudi rulers have come to conclusion that return to a full-scale scale war with Ansarullah resistance movement that has been holding the capital Sana'a and much of the north since 2014 can undo the economic and political gains of the recent years. On the other side, Ansarullah has shown it does not necessarily favor a lengthy ground war, but tries to maintain its capability to impose costs on Riyadh inside the Saudi strategic depth and the Red Sea.
From this perspective, the current situation is neither a sustainable ceasefire nor a return to full-scale war. Rather, it is a mutual fragile deterrence, where negotiations, political pressure, limited operations, ground assaults, and sea threats take place simultaneously.
Saudi Arabia, from victory strategy to defeat management strategy
The most significant shift in Riyadh’s policy is a change in objective. 2015 marks the moment Yemen became a laboratory for the failure of Saudi war strategies.
In the war’s early years, Saudi Arabia tried to leverage air superiority and support for Yemen’s internationally recognized government, which fled Sana'a and dweled in Aden in the south, to tilt both the political and military equation in its favor. But the war’s persistence proved that military power alone could not eliminate the powerful Ansarullah.
Today, Riyadh’s priority is increasingly focused on reducing security costs, preventing the war from expanding, and preserving a minimum of political influence in Yemen. This does not mean abandoning the military option; it means downgrading it from the primary tool to one of pressure and deterrence.
That is why the Arab monarchy is trying to strike a balance between two contradictory goals: on one hand, it does not want to get bogged down in a war of attrition with Ansarullah; on the other, it cannot afford to let Yemen’s political and military balance become permanently cemented in the Ansarullah's favor without any cost.
In effect, Riyadh is now less preoccupied with the unattainable goal of defeating Ansarullah and more focused on constraining their room to maneuver.
Ansarullah and transferring the war's center of gravity to the sea from land
The leading strategic advantage of Ansarullah at present is not its capability to continue ground battles, but to transfer the crisis from inside Yemen to the Red Sea, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, and the regional trade network.
This shift is critical. A war that was initially defined largely within Yemen's borders can now reshape calculations around shipping, insurance, trade routes, and energy security. In this way, Ansarullah have gained the ability to transfer a significant portion of the war's costs from Yemen's internal battlefield to Saudi Arabia's economic and security backyard.
That is precisely where the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait comes into play. For Ansarullah, this chokepoint is not merely a military asset, but it is a geopolitical lever. The higher the risk to Saudi maritime commerce, particularly its oil exports, the more the balance of power tilts in Sanaa's favor when it comes to redrawing the region's political map.
Viewed this way, the maritime threats should be understood as part of a broader strategy aimed at delivering a clear message: no political settlement in Yemen can take shape without accounting for Ansarullah's ability to project influence beyond Yemen's borders.
Hudaydah is not just a military front
In this equation, Hudaydah's significance goes beyond just being a land passage. Control and security of this province directly relates to Yemen's access to the Red Sea and it acts as the most important route of Sana'a's imports. To put it differently, it is regarded as the economic breathing room for the north. So, any serious change in its balance can carry regional impacts.
The escalated clashes in southern Hudaydah should be analyzed within this framework. For Ansarullah, the issue is not just saving a geographically significant region, but saving marine depth and the power to pressure the connection routes when the need arises.
On the other side, any push by Ansarullah's adversaries to introduce a change to the status quo of Hudaydah comes under this calculation. That is why Hudaydah can, in the next stage of war, turn into one of the most important points where ground pressure and sea deterrence meet.
The southern Yemen war, a hidden war between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi
One analytical mistake is reducing Yemen's crisis to a binary confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Ansarullah. The reality on the ground in southern Yemen is far more intricate.
The rivalry between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi over the political and security future of the south forms a crucial part of this equation. The recent developments in Aden and the weakening of the Southern Transitional Council's position suggest that Riyadh, even as it contends with Ansarullah, is also seeking to redefine the power structure in the southern regions.
This matters greatly, because Saudi Arabia cannot achieve its goals simply by weakening Ansarullah. If southern Yemen also becomes a stage of competition among local factions and their external backers, any national settlement in Yemen will face even greater obstacles.
In effect, Yemen is now gripped by three simultaneous layers of conflict: the Saudi-Ansarullah rivalry, the contest among southern Yemeni actors (with Saudi and Emirati backing), and the broader regional competition.
Weak spot of Saudi strategy
Riyadh’s main challenge is that it needs a big and inclusive war to turn the tide in its favor. But this exactly brings about what Saudi Arabia is trying to escape: Return of war of attrition
This is an essential paradox. If Saudi Arabia substantially retreats, it can lose its military and political foothold and if it progresses excessively, it risks stirring reactions from Ansarullah and possibly inflamed war.
That is why the Saudi policy in the short run will likely be limited pressure, negotiations, support for local forces, and pushing to avoid fundamental change to the balance of power.
Ansarullah, the winner of resilience competition: Turning economic weakness into security lever
Ansarullah, despite economic and military constraints it faces, possess one crucial advantage: their economic resilience and mobilizing ideology are structured in a way that allows them to sustain war at a cost structure entirely different from that of a classic state actor like Saudi Arabia.
For Riyadh, each new round of fighting carries a steep financial, security, and political price tag. For Ansarullah, however, maintaining their capacity to resist and injecting uncertainty into the regional environment is itself a core part of their survival and bargaining strategy.
This is why the equation between the two sides is far from symmetrical. Saudi Arabia is pursuing stability and the reduction of uncertainty, while Ansarullah can weaponize prolonged uncertainty as pressure leverage.
This fundamental misalignment of objectives is one of the primary reasons a final agreement remains so elusive.
Outlook between ceasefire and full-scale
Under these conditions, the most likely scenario is a continuation of the gray zone: neither a final political settlement takes shape, nor does the war return to the intensity of its early years.
In this scenario, negotiations will continue, but alongside them, limited military operations, ground pressure, and maritime threats will persist as bargaining tools.
The real danger emerges if Saudi leaders convince themselves that a short but sweeping offensive can fundamentally reset the balance. In that event, a tactical move in Hudaydah, Aden, or the Red Sea could trigger a chain reaction and turn today's fragile equilibrium into a wider conflict.
Conclusion
Yemen's crisis has now entered a phase where the winner is the side that can offload the costs of war onto the other.
Riyadh is looking for a gradual exit and a manageable status quo; Ansarullah, in turn, is trying to preserve its capacity to impose costs on the enemy without getting dragged into a war of attrition.
The future of Yemen's equation, therefore, will be defined less by the repeat of coalition-building and aerial or ground campaigns, and more by the interplay of resilience, the ability to wield geopolitical levers, like Hudaydah, Bab-el-Mandeb, and the Red Sea, and making the other side pay a heavier price.
