Saudi Arabia’s Disengagement from Yemen Will Be Messy

By Ari Heistein

Ari Heistein served as chief of staff and a research fellow at Israel's Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). Following that, he worked in business development for a cyber intelligence company. Today, he works to bring innovative Israeli startups into the U.S. federal market.

OPINION — The logic behind Saudi Arabia’s latest diplomatic maneuver was clear. Riyadh faced a major threat from the Iran-led axis, and when the U.S. would not provide the Kingdom with a satisfactory solution to meet this challenge, the Saudis sought to address it at its root by negotiating with Tehran and Sana’a.

Rather than seeking better missile defense or added deterrence from the U.S., the Saudis now hope to reach an understanding with Iran and its proxies to minimize their motivations to target the Kingdom in the first place. In other words, they will opt for prevention rather than a cure.

If the Saudis thought partnering with the U.S. government was difficult, working with Yemen’s Houthis will be hell.

Things are already off to a rocky start after the Saudi Ambassador to Yemen arrived in Sanaa to meet senior Houthi officials and finalize a truce, only to be hit up for additional concessions. The Houthi attempt to raise the price of a Saudi-Houthi ceasefire should come as no surprise, as the Saudis are reportedly asking the Houthis to allow Riyadh to extricate itself from the conflict. Following the latest prisoner swap, another set of peace talks are set to talk place in Saudi Arabia to (re)finalize the agreement between Riyadh and Sana’a.

While no two geopolitical situations are exactly alike, developments in Afghanistan and Gaza may be instructive for thinking about what a Saudi withdrawal and its aftermath could look like.


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The resemblance between the Saudi plan to end its military campaign in Yemen and the U.S. strategy to evacuate its forces from Afghanistan is striking. 

Similar to the U.S. approach to Afghanistan, the Saudis did not involve their local partner, the Government of Yemen (GOY), in the negotiation process with their shared adversary. Instead, like the Taliban, the Houthis are expected to provide a vague commitment to a domestic negotiation process (while, in the backdrop of negotiations, the battle over Marib between GOY and the Houthis continues).  

Like the Ghani-led government in Afghanistan, the GOY’s ability to function is heavily dependent on foreign assistance in the form of fundingair support, and materiel. Therefore, the Houthis, like the Taliban in 2021, are expected to make major battlefield gains following the withdrawal of Saudi forces (and presumably the entirety of the pro-GOY Saudi-led coalition) from the conflict. This prospect will further diminish the Houthi incentive to take seriously the above mentioned negotiations with GOY.

Also, as was the case in Afghanistan, even after it became apparent that the adversarial party did not abide by the terms it agreed to, the withdrawn forces cannot do much to enforce or renege on the deal. Riyadh will have little recourse if it discovers that the Houthis failed to uphold their obligations: Military infrastructure and processes built up over many years of war cannot be instantaneously reconstructed after they are dismantled.

This means that once an agreement is reached, a weakened GOY will face an emboldened Houthi force disinclined to negotiate and difficult to hold to account for violations of the terms. The GOY’s hand will be undeniably weaker after Saudi ends its military involvement in Yemen, though it remains to be seen whether this constitutes a major setback or the trigger of complete collapse.  Unlike the U.S. and Afghanistan, however, Yemen will not be out of sight and out of mind from Saudi Arabia; the two countries are not thousands of miles away from one another, but in fact they share a border that is over 800 miles long.

Following Riyadh’s exit from the Yemen war, Saudi Arabia may not be interested in engaging much with the Houthis but Houthis will remain interested in Saudi Arabia.  The Saudis have already made it clear that they are determined to avoid any entanglement in Yemen, making them an easy target of extortion for the ruthless and calculating Houthi regime. 

While the wording of the agreement may be decided in the coming weeks, the deal’s interpretation and execution will be an ongoing “negotiation process” of its own. The Houthis will seek to maximize their financial and political benefits, while the Saudis will presumably seek to minimize their concessions. The Houthis do not have a wide variety of tools at their disposal to impose their will – their cultural influence, economic power, and diplomatic sway are negligible. To apply pressure on the Saudis to meet their (already) growing demands, the Houthis may resort to periodic military escalation.

The Saudis will seek to avoid getting drawn back into a prolonged conflict due to an acute awareness that they can achieve very limited aims at acceptable cost via military power. But they will also presumably understand that non-kinetic actions, such as reinstating blockades, cannot restore quiet and will at best slow the Houthi effort to restock and upgrade their arsenals.

The Saudi-Houthi dynamic may evolve into something resembling the Israel-Hamas loop following Israel’s disengagement from Gaza. It is reasonable to assume that the Houthis will adopt a similar modus operandi to that of Hamas (and Hezbollah in the years immediately following Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon) since the axis responsible for arming and advising these guerrilla groups fighting against conventional armies is one and the same.

The Desert Kingdom may soon find itself in a position in which it, too, needs to periodically engage in limited military operations in Yemen in order to “mow the grass.”  But because the military balance differs significantly in the Israeli and Saudi cases, Saudi Arabia will face even greater difficulty than Israel in maintaining quiet by instilling deterrence.


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The continued Houthi brinksmanship even as the two parties stand at the cusp of an agreement highlights the lopsided dynamic. 

The Saudis would enjoy considerable benefits from peace, including the opportunities to improve the country’s tarnished image and focus on economic development in accordance with the Crown Prince’s Vision 2030. In contrast, the Houthis will face considerable challenges if the fighting stops. Houthi peacetime dilemmas will include: What to do with the hundreds of thousands of demobilized military personnel who have dismal job prospects? How to justify the Yemenis’ awful living conditions in peacetime while avoiding blame for the incompetent and corrupt governance? It is difficult to believe that the Houthi leadership has good answers to these questions and likely that any truce signed with Saudi Arabia will at best portend the Houthis temporarily refocusing their military efforts away from Saudi Arabia and toward an expansionist campaign to subjugate the remainder of Yemen. 

Even considering the problems likely to accompany a Saudi withdrawal, Riyadh may see it as the lesser of two evils when the alternative is continuing a costly and stalemated military campaign. But it is important to be clear-eyed that any Saudi-Houthi agreement cannot fully end the multidimensional war in Yemen, and excessive Saudi desperation to sign a flimsy deal could solidify the Houthi leadership’s perception of Saudi Arabia as a soft target.

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals.  Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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