According to The Wall Street Journal, Saudi Arabia is trying to keep Yemen’s Houthis from entering the Middle East conflict.
The newspaper reported that Riyadh is now relying on diplomatic channels to prevent the group from joining the fighting. The United States and Israel, for their part, are also seeking to avoid provocations that could push the Houthis toward direct involvement in the war.
As the publication noted, such a move would sharply raise the stakes. Citing New America fellow Adam Baron, the report said Houthi intervention would pull the Suez Canal and Egypt more directly into the crisis, while also drawing Saudi Arabia closer to the confrontation.
The article also recalled that during the war in Gaza, Houthi missile and drone attacks seriously disrupted shipping through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. As a result, vessels were forced to abandon their usual routes and sail around the Cape of Good Hope instead.
According to the journalists, after the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia still has a way to partially bypass the blockade by redirecting oil to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. But that route also carries major risks: it runs past a coastline controlled by the Houthis and then reaches another strategic chokepoint, the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.