Riyadh weighs a Bab el-Mandeb push or a four-governorate assault on the Houthis

Saudi Arabia is planning an offensive against the Houthis to take back the Bab el-Mandeb strait, with a launch expected in the coming weeks, regional and Western officials told Reuters on Friday. The ground force would be Yemeni units overseen by Riyadh, backed by Saudi air strikes. The United States is providing intelligence, including targeting information, and is not expected to bomb.

Six people with knowledge of the preparations described two options. One is a narrow attack on the coast around Bab el-Mandeb. The other is a wider assault, synchronised across Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz and Al-Jawf. The strait is the southern gate of the Red Sea, the passage between the Mediterranean and Asia that has carried more traffic since tankers started avoiding the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis advanced down the coast last month and took control of it. Reuters said the planned offensive had not been reported before.

Timing is loose. Estimates given to Reuters run from inside a week to a start after the US midterm elections in early November. No precise date was given. More than 100,000 Yemeni troops have been mobilised, the same accounts said. Allied governments are not expected to fight. Some regional and European states are sending defensive kit. Pakistan has deployed between 30,000 and 40,000 troops to Saudi Arabia to help intercept drones and missiles, two Pakistani officials said, and has sent air-defence systems, light artillery, drones and anti-drone equipment, plus advisers. France will send defensive systems and troops to help protect the Red Sea port of Yanbu. A Gulf official also referred to Turkish drones.

President Donald Trump has turned down requests for direct American strikes, the people told Reuters. Washington's role, as a Western diplomat described it, stays at intelligence and targeting support. That split leaves Riyadh with air power of its own and a ground force it does not fully command. Yemen analyst Mohammed Albasha told Reuters that many anti-Houthi forces are still not organised for the sustained offensive needed to push back a disciplined Houthi army, and that they are being tested now as the Houthis press on several fronts at once.

Michael Ratney, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, put the aim in narrower terms. He said Riyadh wants to vanquish the Houthis and also needs to get back to the position before the Houthis held the Bab el-Mandeb coast, ideally in a limited operation that restores normal maritime traffic. Saudi political analyst Ali Shihabi said the priority so far has been to hold ground and steady the front, and that an offensive is coming. Success, he said, depends on how the local forces perform.

The fighting this week is already ahead of that plan. The New York Times reported that airstrikes hit Sanaa overnight into Friday, and that some of the fiercest fighting in years had broken out in Taiz, Yemen's third-largest city. Al-Masirah, the Houthi channel, said strikes hit the capital and at least three provinces, including Taiz, and blamed the Saudi-led coalition. A spokesman for government-aligned forces said they had struck high-value targets in Sanaa and gave no further detail. The current cycle of cross-border fire began in July, after the Houthis accused Saudi Arabia of bombing Sanaa's airport to stop an Iranian aircraft landing. They answered with drones and ballistic missiles at Saudi bases, ports and airports, and with attacks on tankers they called a naval blockade.

The Saudi-led coalition said on Thursday it had intercepted ballistic missiles and drones aimed at southern Saudi Arabia, and early on Friday it reported intercepting another ballistic missile at the same region. The Houthis have not claimed those attacks. Pakistan's foreign minister, Ishaq Dar, said separately on Friday that Iran has suggested a political approach to the Houthis, to be discussed by the Mecca pact's committee in Riyadh next week. A military plan and a political suggestion are now on the table in the same city, in the same week.

The operational test is the coast. If the narrow option is chosen, the fight is for a strip of shore and the strait. If the wide option is chosen, Riyadh is asking Yemeni units to move in Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz and Al-Jawf at the same time, which is the campaign Albasha said those units are not yet organised to fight. Either way, the people who described the plan said talks are not available while the Houthis hold Bab el-Mandeb. The strait is the condition, and the clock they gave runs from days to early November.