00:00Samuel Romani is Associate Fellow at RUCI, the think tank and CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk.
00:06Samuel, welcome back. Just how significant is this latest escalation with the Houthis launching ballistic missiles and drones at targets
00:15in both Yemen and Saudi Arabia?
00:19Well, it's always important to keep in mind that the Yemeni domestic conflict has been heating up for some time.
00:24Towards the end of last year, we saw increased clashes between the Houthis and various government-aligned forces,
00:31taking advantage of the rift between the Saudis and the UAE, have led to the collapse of the Southern Transitional
00:36Council.
00:37And now, since July, we're seeing a new, intensified phase of this conflict.
00:42The Houthis are attacking Saudi airports and military sites, particularly from Khalid Airport in Riyadh and areas around Jeddah, to
00:50maximize disruption.
00:51And now the Saudis are retaliating by trying to take the Houthis out of the key chokehold of Mocha and
00:59weaken their grip around the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
01:01And that necessity has even led to the Saudis and the Emiratis, mending fences, at least temporarily, to find a
01:08common cause on trying to get the Houthis weakened.
01:11And just explain to us, if you would, I mean, just how important is control of the Bab al-Mandeb
01:17Strait?
01:19Well, it's truly important right now, especially with the Strait of Hormuz being weakened and the Saudis rerouting a lot
01:24of their infrastructure towards the Red Sea region,
01:27particularly with the Anbu Pipeline.
01:29And just in general, it's very important for global trade.
01:32It's right near the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean.
01:35About 12% of global trade passes through it.
01:37When a shatter is disrupted, insurance costs skyrocket because goods and cargo have to go around the Cape of Good
01:43Hope instead.
01:44So it's very significant for the global economy and particularly for the Saudi economy right now.
01:49The Houthis are backed by Iran.
01:52I mean, I wonder to what extent should this latest escalation in Yemen be seen as perhaps another front in
01:58the wider United States-Israel conflict with Iran?
02:04Well, definitely it's part of that conflict.
02:07We saw the Houthis escalations in maritime shipping exactly around three years ago in the aftermath of the October 7th
02:13attacks.
02:14And now we've seen the Houthis escalating in Saudi Arabia once again in the context of an easy standoff between
02:22the U.S., Israel, and Iran.
02:23The Houthis obviously do have their own domestic objectives as well.
02:27They do want to be the dominant force over northern Yemen.
02:30They see themselves as Yemen's true grassroots and popular authority.
02:34And they claim that the internationally recognized government has effectively lost its popular legitimacy.
02:40That's something they've been pushing since 2014 when they launched a coup d'etat and took over SANA.
02:44So they do have their own domestic objectives as well.
02:47But they definitely see leverage that could come out of controlling the Bab al-Mandeep Strait and creating their state
02:55within a state inside Yemen.
02:56But clearly they're also operating at the Iranian direction.
02:59It's interesting that Iran did not really mobilize the Houthis during the early stages of the war,
03:04but now is doing so in response to the apparent collapse of the MOU and the stagnation of any diplomatic
03:10solution.
03:11President Trump says the war with Iran will end either the nice way or the not-so-nice way.
03:18How much will what happens between Washington, Israel, and Tehran determine what happens next in Yemen?
03:26Well, basically Trump is putting on a brave face, right?
03:29He's basically trying to keep a hard-line naval blockade on Hormuz going on.
03:35He's referring it to as a wall of steel.
03:37Even though Trump did acknowledge last week that there was a shortage of key munitions in the U.S. military,
03:43he was vowing that the U.S. military was going to rebuild those munition stocks,
03:48particularly THAADs and other missile defenses and other missiles and ammunition stronger than ever before,
03:54and preparing to strike back after the midterms.
03:56So Trump is definitely trying to keep this military and economic coercive pressure on Iran going.
04:02And as long as that dynamic continues, the Iranians are not going to back down,
04:06and the Iranians are going to escalate asymmetrically.
04:08So that's why I think that they're going to use Yemen to primarily weaken the Saudi energy diversification efforts
04:16and Saudi energy infrastructure and airports, continuing to create instability in the broader Gulf region.
04:23I don't know whether they will escalate against Israel like they did earlier in the conflict back in 2023 and
04:312024
04:31when they struck the Elad port in Israel, but they definitely will keep the pressure on Saudi Arabia going.
04:35Samuel, thank you. Good to see you.
04:37Samuel Romani, the associate fellow at RUSI, the think tank, and CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk.
