Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to escape an uncomfortable reality: For all its wealth and growing influence, it cannot guarantee its own security.
That reality has returned with a vengeance.
Iran-backed Houthi forces have swept down Yemen’s Red Sea coast, capturing Mokha and strategic positions around the Bab al-Mandab Strait while launching missiles and drones into Saudi Arabia, including attacks on Riyadh. The danger extends far beyond another round in Yemen’s civil war. Bab al-Mandab is one of the world’s most critical shipping arteries. Houthi control there would give Iran and its proxy extraordinary leverage over global commerce and energy supplies.
The crisis also exposes some uncomfortable truths about the region’s evolving security order. Saudi Arabia spent the relative quiet after the 2022 Yemen truce trying to reduce its dependence on Washington. It reached an accommodation with Iran, brokered by China; pursued understandings with the Houthis; deepened relations with Turkey and Pakistan; and allowed its partnership with the United Arab Emirates in Yemen to fracture.
None of that was inherently foolish. Saudi Arabia understandably wants multiple relationships and greater strategic independence. But Riyadh appears not to have used the respite to strengthen the fragmented Yemeni forces confronting the Houthis. The result is that the Houthis are advancing while their opponents remain divided.
More revealing is what Saudi Arabia’s new partnerships have produced when tested. Last month, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan signed an ambitious joint defense agreement. Yet neither Ankara nor Islamabad has entered the Yemen fighting. Last week, Turkey, Pakistan and Egypt joined Saudi Arabia in affirming its right to defend itself and calling for safe navigation and diplomacy. Those are welcome words. They are not a defense system.
Washington faces its own test. President Donald Trump has so far resisted Saudi requests for American strikes against the Houthis, while offering intelligence and targeting assistance. That caution is understandable. The United States has no interest in being drawn into another open-ended Yemen war.
But avoiding another war is not the same as ignoring who controls one of the world’s most important waterways. The American interest is not simply protecting Saudi Arabia. It is preventing an Iranian proxy from threatening international shipping whenever Tehran wants additional leverage.
And then there is Israel.
Saudi Arabia and Israel remain divided over normalization and the Palestinian issue. Yet they share an unmistakable interest in missile and drone defense, intelligence cooperation, Red Sea navigation and containing Iranian proxies. Geography is creating common interests that diplomacy has not yet formalized.
Israel should resist the temptation to treat Saudi vulnerability as leverage for normalization. Cooperation born of desperation would be politically fragile. Quiet security cooperation may accomplish more than demanding a dramatic diplomatic breakthrough.
The larger lesson applies to everyone. Saudi Arabia is learning that partners are not necessarily allies. Washington is learning that disengagement does not make strategic threats disappear. And Israel may be discovering that some of its most important regional relationships can be built quietly before they can be publicly celebrated.
The Houthis have exposed the weaknesses of the Middle East’s existing security order. The opportunity now is not merely to stop their latest offensive. It is to build something stronger in its place.
