Yemen's peace plan boosts Houthis' regional influence

2024 heralds a good chapter for war-torn Yemen, hopes Hans Grundberg, the United Nations special envoy for the  country.

"Thirty million Yemenis are watching and waiting for this new opportunity to provide for tangible results and progress towards lasting peace," he said in a statement this week. 

Yemen has been at war since 2014, when Iran-backed Houthi rebels ousted the Yemeni government. In 2015, the situation escalated when a Saudi-led coalition of nine countries intervened in an effort to restore the internationally recognized government, which has meanwhile turned into the Presidential Leadership Council. The conflict is widely seen as proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

The reason for Grundberg's present optimism is the outcome of the UN-led negotiations with Saudi Arabia, the Presidential Leadership Council and the Houthi militia over provisions for a nationwide ceasefire, improved living conditions for the suffering population and an inclusive political process under UN auspices.

However, a precise timeline has yet to be published. 

Houthis' power has grown over last decade

Observers, however, are much less enthusiastic.

"It is not a peace process, and it will not lead to peace, development and stabilization in Yemen," Thomas Juneau, associate professor at the University of Ottawa in Canada, told DW.

For him, the latest talks resemble instead a "political process whereby the Houthis and Saudi Arabia are negotiating Saudi Arabia's defeat and its eventual withdrawal from Yemen," he said. 

When Saudi Arabia launched its military intervention in Yemen, the objective was to roll back the Houthis, Juneau said. "Almost nine years later, what we see is that not only have the Houthis not been rolled back, they are far more powerful than they were almost nine years ago," he added. 

Today, the Houthis control much of the country's north and west, they have the capability to significantly disrupt maritime shipping in the Red Sea. They have been able to target Israel, almost 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles) away, with missiles and drones, which were intercepted by the Israeli army.

'Saudi Arabia is in an awkward position'

After nine years of fighting, Saudi Arabia's level of commitment has changed.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been open about his wish to exit the costly war, even more after Houthi attacks on Saudi oil facilities in 2019 exposed the kingdom's vulnerability.

In 2023, Saudi Arabia and its former archenemy Iran also improved their ties. 

"The Saudis are using the umbrella of the internationally recognized government to negotiate an exclusively bilateral agreement in which the Houthis will stop firing missiles at Saudi Arabia," Sami Hamdi, managing director of the London-based consulting company International Interest, told DW. 

In addition, Saudi Arabia and Israel had been on a fast track to normalize relations, until the October 7 attacks by the terror group Hamas on Israel and the resulting war in Gaza put that rapprochement on ice.

Saudi Arabia has even intercepted Houthi missiles en route to Israel.

"Saudi Arabia is in an awkward position whereby it is seeking warmer ties with the Israelis, in the hope that it can convince the US to offer a NATO-style security agreement through which Saudi Arabia will seek to resist Iran and its proxies in Iraq and in Yemen," Hamdi said. "At the same time, Saudi Arabia is trying not to be seen to be too closely associated with Israel."

US forms international naval coalition in Red Sea

However, in December, Saudi Arabia's political tightrope walk became even more delicate. The United States called on the international community to form a naval coalition, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, to protect civilian cargo ships in the Red Sea from Houthi missile and drone attacks.

Saudi Arabia didn't join the naval coalition, despite being a close US ally and also a direct neighbor of the escalation.

"Saudi Arabia neither wants to give up the negotiation process with the Houthis nor jeopardize security on the Saudi-Yemeni border," said Sebastian Sons, senior researcher for the German think tank CARPO and author of the recently published book "Die neuen Herrscher am Golf" ("The New Rulers in the Gulf").

"The abstinence from the US-led alliance in the Red Sea has to be seen in this context," he told DW.

However, for Fabian Hinz, defense and military analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Saudi Arabia's role in Operation Prosperity Guardian would not have been a game changer anyway from a military point of view.

"The systems deployed by the Americans in particular are designed to deal with anti-ship missiles or ballistic missiles such as the Houthis use," he said.

"The real threat is the asymmetric warfare by the Houthis in the Red Sea, as they exert much more pressure on Israel and Western states through disruption rather than defeating or destroying Western navies," he said.

 

On Sunday, a Telegram channel affiliated with the Houthis also shared a map of submarine communication cables, including those in the Red Sea, implying that these cables could be a future target for the Houthi militia. 

For Sami Hamdi, all of this points to a boost of self-esteem. "The Houthis will act with a sense that there will be no consequences on the [Yemeni] peace talks, even if they further escalate in the Red Sea," he said. 

Houthis aim to be 'aggressive regional power'

For Yemen's population, which has been plunged into one the world's worst humanitarian crises by the war and is close to a famine, none of this spells good news.

"It is more likely that there will be a new phase in Yemen's war in which the Houthis will be more powerful and in which they will seek to extend their rule inside the country and in the region beyond Yemen," said Thomas Juneau. 

"It is now very clear that their ambition is to be an aggressive regional power," he added. 

For Juneau, the direct link between the Houthis' political process with Saudi Arabia and the militia's expansionist agenda in the Red Sea and against Israel has become very clear this month.

"The common denominator here is that the Houthis have won the war in Yemen," he said. 

Edited by: Timothy Jones

Update, December 30, 2023: The article was updated to clarify that while the Houthis have targeted Israel with missiles and drones, they have yet to strike Israeli territory.