Saudi-backed Yemeni forces said Monday they had expelled the Houthis from key areas surrounding the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on the Red Sea following a major counteroffensive.
Reclaiming coastal areas seized during the Houthis’ lightning advance last month curtails the rebels’ ability to significantly disrupt energy flows, but the counteroffensive — a hoped-for “zero hour” — among some Saudi and Yemeni pundits, could widen the Iran war, further upending energy markets: Saudi Aramco’s chief told the Financial Times that global oil stockpiles are now “scarily thin.”
The kingdom’s previous war against the Houthis resulted in a yearslong quagmire and devastating humanitarian crisis, but former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal told Arab Views that restraint “is no longer operable.”