Summary

After months largely on the sidelines in the U.S.-led war against Iran, the Houthi rebels mounted a stunning offensive earlier this month along Yemen’s Red Sea coast that sent global oil markets reeling. Now, as the Iranian-backed militia group continues to push for more territory and the military coalition supporting Yemen’s internationally-recognized government increasingly fights back, a brutal civil war has been reignited. A humanitarian disaster is on the horizon.Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. The developments in Yemen, an impoverished country of 35 million at the southwest tip of the Arabian Peninsula, are directly linked to the war in Iran, analysts and officials say, with the Houthis capitalizing on it to make their push for control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. But the Trump administration, which last year launched a brief military campaign against the Houthis because of its attacks on U.S. ships in the Red Sea, so far is avoiding getting involved. Pleas by the Yemeni government to Washington for airstrikes on the Houthis have gone unanswered, according to two Yemeni officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. The administration previously had eliminated the position of special envoy to Yemen and did not appoint a permanent ambassador. Trump also slashed U.S. foreign assistance to about $53,000 last year from $763 million in 2024. “Militarily, diplomatically and in terms of support, the United States put Yemen in the rearview mirror after Operation Rough Rider,” said April Longley Alley, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute, referring to Trump’s bombing campaign against the Houthis, which ended in May 2025 with a truce. She added that the Trump administration hoped to “off-load the problem to Saudi Arabia,” which has backed Yemen’s coalition government in its fight against the Houthis, including in the country’s brutal civil war between 2015 and 2022. But while the U.S. has been “focused on other immediate interests,” she added, the Houthis have been gaining strength. Dozens of U.S. troops are deployed to Saudi Arabia and assisting its military in an expanded effort there to counter the Houthis, said two U.S. officials familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. The U.S. support falls short of launching strikes on the militants, but includes the sharing of targeting information and logistical help, one of the officials said. Both officials said the effort, reported earlier this month by CNN, is overseen at least in part by Marines. U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the region, declined to comment. One of the Yemeni officials said that American diplomats stress the support that Washington is providing in terms of intelligence but that Yemen is seeing little in the way of concrete help. “Talk is easy ... and talk is cheap,” said the official, who added that humanitarian conditions are worsening by the week. “People are suffering, and the government has limited resources to support them.” Abdullah al-Alimi Bawazir, vice president of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, told reporters on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that his government “highly appreciates” the steps the Trump administration has taken against the Houthis, but that more military and security support is needed. The Houthis, which started as a ragtag militia in northern Yemen in the 1990s, have long wanted to oust Saudi Arabia - which they accuse of placing a blockade on their country - from Yemen. Nadwa Al-Dawsari, an associate fellow with the Middle East Institute, said that while the Houthis have their own specific grievances against Saudi Arabia, the timing of their offensive and weight they threw into it were because they wanted to “strengthen Iran’s position against the U.S., as Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz faltered.” Meanwhile, she said, humanitarian assistance to Yemen - including from the United States - has declined so much over the past year that “displaced families are lacking the basics they need to survive this latest wave of violence.” More than 120,000 Yemenis were displaced within three weeks, according to the United Nations, while thousands of others have fled across the Red Sea to Djibouti, Somaliland and Puntland. Malnutrition rates, already high, are spiking further, according to aid groups on the ground, while fragile medical systems are reaching a breaking point. “By any conventional definition, war is back,” said Adam Baron, a fellow with the Future Security Program at New America, a Washington think tank, who studies the Houthis. “The government is aware that this is existential.” The civil war had ended with a fragile truce that left the Houthis in control of Sanaa, the capital, and the government in control of much of the south. This month, following their offensive on the west coast, the Houthis have expanded to push inland. . Yemen’s military coalition, supported by Saudi Arabia, initially seemed paralyzed but is now putting up a fierce defense. Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemeni American risk adviser, said that more than 500 Houthi combatants - including commanders - have been killed in the southwest and northeast in recent weeks during fighting for control of the Kahboub Mountains and resource-rich Marib province. Recent Houthi efforts have seen far more resistance than their initial push on the west coast, he said. “We are back to a Sudan scenario, instead of a Syria scenario,” al-Basha said. “And what it seems like is that we have another Somalia, with islands of stability amid violence.” Hachem Osseiran, a Middle East spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, described Yemen’s health care system as “pushed to the brink, after being weakened by successive shocks.” “Already, more than 40 percent of Yemen’s health facilities were partly or completely nonfunctioning,” Osseiran said. “Now, there are not enough facilities or people to treat the influx of wounded.” Maternity wards are being converted to emergency rooms, he said, while medical workers scramble to address the crisis. Marc Schakal, the head of Doctors Without Borders’ Middle East programs, said that hospitals have been damaged by fighting and medical staff have seen an influx of injuries and fatalities, with the hospital in Aden, the de facto capital of the government, receiving 25 dead bodies in two days. The hospital in Mokha, the city that the Houthis seized on Sept. 10, is still operating but with fewer patients because so many people have fled. “What we are concerned about is civilians, because at the end of the day, they will pay the price,” Schakal said. “No authority in Yemen is focused on them, and both sides are very determined.” The first wave of Yemenis arriving in Djibouti, a country of 1.2 million in East Africa, just across the Bab al-Mandab Strait, were fishermen in small boats, said Sandrine Desamours, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative in Djibouti. They arrived with their families and nothing else, she said, and were followed by more organized waves of refugees. Many of those who have been arriving are women and children, Desamours said, and many are malnourished. “When we ask them why they fled, they just describe indiscriminate bombing, indiscriminate shelling,” she said. About 30 percent are people who had been refugees during the civil war but returned to Yemen after determining that it was safe enough “to rebuild their lives.” “Now,” she said, “they are back again.” Suzan Haidamous in Beirut contributed to this report. Related ContentThis article originally appeared on Washington Post at https://washingtonpost.com/world/2026/09/25/houthis-capitalize-us-led-war-with-iran-fighting-engulfs-yemen/