Yemeni civil war (2014–present)

Overview

The Yemeni civil war is an ongoing conflict over political authority and territory in Yemen. Its central turning point came in late September 2014, when the Houthi movement and army units loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh seized Sanaa. Their offensive followed the breakdown of a political transition intended to replace Saleh’s long rule with a new constitutional order. In 2015, Houthi and Saleh-aligned forces advanced south, took Aden and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee the country. Saudi Arabia then led a military coalition against the Houthis, with the United Arab Emirates playing a central role. Saudi-backed Yemeni factions retook Aden that year, but neither coalition advances nor negotiations restored a single government’s authority across Yemen.

The war joined domestic disputes to a wider confrontation involving the Iranian regime. The Houthis, an Iran-backed terrorist organization rooted in northern Yemen, pursued power at home while advancing the regime’s regional interests. Iranian military support grew substantially in the mid-2010s. Houthi missiles and drones later struck Saudi oil facilities, threatened targets in the United Arab Emirates and created risks for Israel. Control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast also gave the group a position from which to threaten shipping near Bab-el-Mandeb, the passage between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. A fragile truce reduced fighting between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia from early 2022, but attacks and a Saudi-focused maritime blockade in 2026 damaged it.

Yemen’s divided political and military landscape prevents the conflict from being reduced to a contest between two unified camps. Anti-Houthi forces have cooperated on battlefields while disagreeing sharply over the country’s political future. The Southern Transitional Council, backed by the United Arab Emirates, became a significant force in the south and gained control of Aden after clashes with government forces in 2019. Saleh loyalists, southern secessionists and other factions brought separate histories and goals to the war. Saudi withdrawal alone would leave those rival claims unresolved and could open another phase of fighting.

Background

Modern Yemen became formally unified in May 1990, but unification did not erase divisions between its north and south. A north–south civil war followed in 1994, and the country experienced repeated unrest in the north during the 2000s. Tribal, sectarian, ideological and regional loyalties intersected with scarce resources and weak national institutions. The Houthi movement emerged in Saada Governorate in northern Yemen and had developed into an armed insurrection by 2004. Government campaigns against it from 2004 to 2010 used tactics that strengthened the movement rather than ending the rebellion. Those conflicts preceded both the 2014 seizure of Sanaa and the Saudi-led intervention of 2015.

The Arab Spring reached Yemen in 2011 as popular and elite support for President Saleh weakened. Protests and divisions within the ruling establishment broke apart a political order that had governed for decades. A transition placed Hadi at the head of a government charged with addressing the country’s political problems and preparing a new constitution. The transition had to accommodate competing demands from former regime figures, northern insurgents, southern movements and other armed groups. It did not settle who would control national institutions or how power would be distributed across Yemen.

Hadi’s government convened the National Dialogue Conference in March 2013. Participants considered a new political framework and constitutional arrangements, but the conference ended in January 2014 without its recommendations becoming a constitution. A commission appointed by Hadi proposed replacing Yemen’s 21 governorates with six provinces. The Houthis rejected that plan. Saleh loyalists, southern secessionists and the Houthis opposed the dialogue process for differing reasons, leaving its proposed settlement without the support needed to secure political order. The ensuing crisis gave way to the Houthi offensive later in 2014. The war therefore arose from a failed transition and an armed takeover of the capital, before foreign coalition forces entered the conflict.

Course of the war

Houthi forces captured Sanaa in late September 2014 with support from military units loyal to Saleh. The alliance joined a movement that had fought Saleh’s government to forces still loyal to the former president. Their occupation of the capital ignited war against the Republic of Yemen Government and gave the Houthis a central bargaining asset in later UN-sponsored negotiations. Having secured Sanaa, the Houthis sought to extend their control across the country in 2015. In March, Houthi and Saleh-aligned forces overran Aden, forcing Hadi to leave Yemen. Their advance transformed a crisis over the transition into a struggle for national authority fought across multiple regions.

Saudi Defense Minister Mohammed bin Salman decided to enter the war against the Houthis. Saudi Arabia led a coalition that intervened after the fall of Sanaa and the advance on Aden, while the United Arab Emirates took a major military role. The Saudi-led intervention supported Yemeni forces opposed to Houthi rule. Those factions cooperated to retake Aden in 2015, a significant reversal of the Houthi southern advance. Cooperation did not make them a single political movement. The government, southern secessionists and other anti-Houthi forces retained distinct claims to power, which later produced conflict within the coalition’s Yemeni camp.

Fighting spread through Yemen without a decisive resolution. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fought alongside forces aligned with Hadi in the early years, adding another armed actor with aims separate from the government’s. The Sanaa faction of Saleh’s General People’s Congress opposed the Saudi-led coalition. In the east, Marib Governorate saw intense fighting before a UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022. UN envoy Martin Griffiths visited Marib in March during the war, becoming the first UN envoy to visit the city since fighting began in 2014. By the beginning of 2021, nearly six years after Saudi Arabia’s intervention, the wider conflict remained stalemated and unstable.

Hodeidah, Yemen’s largest port, became a major battleground in 2018. The Houthis controlled the city and its port as UAE-backed Yemeni forces advanced north along the Red Sea coast. Roughly 25,000 advancing Yemeni troops faced about 2,000 Houthi fighters in and around Hodeidah, and UAE-backed forces reached positions eight kilometres outside the city. The approaching battle disrupted commercial food deliveries to the port, although aid agencies continued deliveries. Control of Hodeidah mattered both to Yemen’s civilian supply routes and to the Houthis’ revenue and access to the Red Sea.

UN-led talks in December 2018 produced the Stockholm Agreement, including a ceasefire and redeployment arrangements around Hodeidah. The agreement halted the Yemeni offensive against Houthi positions on the west coast and imposed an immediate ceasefire in Hodeidah governorate. It stopped the advance without transferring control of the port to neutral authorities. The Houthis retained control on the ground, blocked external oversight and kept port profits. The ceasefire reduced the prospect of an immediate battle for the city, but left the contest over its strategic facilities and revenue unresolved.

Divisions within the anti-Houthi camp became particularly visible in Aden. After clashes with government forces in August 2019, Southern Transitional Council forces gained control of the city, which had served as Yemen’s temporary capital. Their position showed why battlefield gains against the Houthis could not by themselves produce a unified postwar state. Oman hosted direct talks between John Kerry and Houthi representatives in November 2016 during an earlier attempt to arrange a ceasefire. Later negotiations likewise faced a conflict in which local factions, the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis sought different outcomes. At its June 2024 meeting, the Gulf Cooperation Council backed a settlement framework based on the GCC Initiative, National Dialogue outcomes and UN Security Council Resolution 2216.

Fighting and planning continued after the April 2022 ceasefire. In April 2025, anti-Houthi factions considered a ground offensive to retake Hodeidah or Sanaa amid daily American airstrikes. Sanaa had then remained under Houthi control for a decade, and the Yemeni military lacked the numbers and cohesion needed for an assault on the capital. Political disagreement among anti-Houthi factions further complicated any campaign. In December 2025, council forces captured Seiyun and key civilian and military sites in Hadramawt Valley after limited clashes, illustrating the continued movement of territorial control outside the main Houthi front.

Israel's conduct and the protection of civilians

Israel was not a leading combatant in Yemen, but the war affected its security. Its interests included preventing advanced Houthi strikes, containing Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and enabling Saudi Arabia to leave a costly conflict without strengthening the Iranian regime. The Yemeni battlefield also served as a testing ground for weapons supplied by that regime. Improvements in Houthi drones and missiles could create threats beyond Yemen even without a direct Houthi attack on Israel. In 2021, Israel deployed missile-defense batteries to Eilat against potential Houthi attacks.

The threat required attention to both demonstrated capability and possible escalation. A Houthi political official identified attacks on Saudi Arabia as a higher immediate priority than attacks on Israel in November 2020. That priority did not remove the risk posed by Iranian-supplied weapons, Houthi rhetoric or changing regional circumstances. Direct strikes on Israel could draw it more deeply into the Yemeni conflict. Threats to Red Sea shipping could also affect Israeli access to maritime routes. These security concerns developed alongside a civilian emergency within Yemen, where people living under Houthi control faced severe poverty, starvation and disease.

The Hodeidah campaign showed how military decisions could affect civilians far from a front line. Commercial shippers stopped food deliveries as the 2018 battle approached, while aid agencies continued to deliver supplies. The Stockholm ceasefire stopped the offensive but preserved Houthi control of the port and its profits. Elsewhere, Houthi attacks carried the war into civilian and economic infrastructure in neighbouring states. In January 2022, the group launched ballistic missiles at a base in the United Arab Emirates that housed American service members; defenses intercepted the missiles. In March 2022, Houthi strikes hit Saudi oil storage and refining facilities, including a refinery at Yanbu port whose output was temporarily reduced. Attacks on such facilities widened the war’s effects beyond Yemen.

Terrorist tactics and propaganda

The Houthis used armed attacks, threats to shipping and international messaging to increase pressure on their opponents. Backed by the Iranian regime, they acquired weapons that could reach targets across borders and threaten activity around the Red Sea. A Saudi strike on Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport sought to prevent an aircraft of the Iranian regime from landing. The Houthis also demonstrated ties to another Iran-backed terrorist organization: in 2019, a Houthi radio station announced that it had raised about $300,000 for Hezbollah in Lebanon. The fundraising occurred while civilians under Houthi rule endured severe deprivation.

Houthi attacks repeatedly targeted Saudi Arabia and its partners. The group struck Saudi oil installations in 2022 and launched the intercepted missiles at the base in the United Arab Emirates that January. In July 2026, Houthi drones and missiles targeted Abha International Airport in southern Saudi Arabia. The Houthis presented renewed confrontation with the kingdom as a defense of Yemeni rights, while their wider campaign also served the Iranian regime’s regional interests. Their ability to threaten energy facilities, airports and maritime routes made the conflict a security concern for states beyond Yemen.

During the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization and the ensuing Red Sea crisis, the Houthis used social media to build international support. Their Arabic-language material celebrated Hamas’s October 7 attack more openly than their English-language material. The difference extended to the presentation of Houthi channels and websites: Arabic material gave greater prominence to the attack and to the movement’s religious leadership, while English material emphasized a military spokesperson. Iranian and pro-Iranian accounts amplified Houthi claims to speak for Yemen. The messaging accompanied attacks and threats that carried the group’s campaign into a wider regional confrontation.

Outcome

The war remained unresolved in 2026. The Houthis retained Sanaa and important territory, while their opponents held other parts of Yemen and remained divided over political authority. The 2018 Stockholm Agreement had halted an offensive at Hodeidah without settling control of the port. The ceasefire brokered in April 2022 reduced fighting after intense battles, including in Marib, and a fragile truce governed Houthi relations with Saudi Arabia from early that year. None of those arrangements established a durable national settlement or reconciled the rival Yemeni factions.

In 2026, the Houthis declared a maritime blockade focused on Saudi Arabia. By threatening Bab-el-Mandeb, the passage from the Indian Ocean toward the Red Sea, they sought to pressure the kingdom leading the anti-Houthi coalition and advanced a maritime objective important to the Iranian regime. The blockade damaged the fragile truce. Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi also claimed that the war had caused more than $57 billion in Yemeni oil-sector losses as the group pressed Saudi Arabia for compensation. That figure was his claim, not a settled measure of the war’s economic cost.

Aftermath and legacy

Yemen’s war reshaped the country’s institutions and connected a domestic struggle for power to regional security. The seizure of Sanaa made Houthi control of the capital a lasting fact in negotiations. The southern contest over Aden and later developments in Hadramawt showed that territory outside Houthi control did not form a single political bloc. A Saudi withdrawal could end one form of foreign military involvement, but would not settle disputes among the Houthis, the government, southern secessionists and other factions. Without a political agreement, a withdrawal could leave a power vacuum and begin another phase of civil war.

The conflict also made Yemen a source of cross-border missile and drone threats and a potential choke point for maritime trade. Houthi strikes on Saudi infrastructure, threats to Israel and operations around Bab-el-Mandeb extended the effects of Yemen’s internal breakdown across the region. The war’s civilian toll is visible in hunger, disease and disrupted access to supplies, while its political outcome remains unsettled. Yemen’s experience demonstrates how failed constitutional transition, armed seizure of state institutions, factional rivalry and outside support can sustain a civil war long after its initial front lines have changed.