As British Ambassador from 2015 to 2017 I saw up close and was involved in negotiating the international response to the Houthi takeover of large parts of Yemen that began in earnest in 2014. I then continued to observe Yemen from a counterterrorism perspective with the United Nations after 2017. The story that has not been adequately told is how the international community got its response right in 2014; but then progressively lost its way over the following four years, ending in the shameful Stockholm Agreement of December 2018.
U.N. Security Council Resolution 2140 of November 2014 accurately apportioned blame for what was happening in Yemen (“threatening peace and stability”), imposing sanctions on former President Saleh and two commanders of the Houthi movement, which was then allied with Saleh. President Hadi had previously served as Saleh’s deputy but had taken over as a result of so-called “Arab Spring” unrest and was actively supporting the National Dialogue that aimed at political progress through consultation with Yemen’s diverse constituencies, including the Houthis. The international community, with a few rogue exceptions like Iran, understood that Hadi was both legitimate and benign and that Saleh had forged an alliance of convenience with the Houthis because both were greedy for absolute power and neither wished to see the National Dialogue process succeed.
In another four months, with the Houthis pursuing Hadi, who had fled from Sanaa to Aden, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia responded to a self-defense request from the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG), which invoked Article 51 of the U.N. Charter. With clear legal justification, they entered the Yemeni civil war on the side of the IRG. The Houthis and Saleh were both illegally seeking to take power in Yemen and were morally beyond the pale, in representing only a small proportion of the population (the Houthis are a cultish group within the Zaidi sect and they despise and brutalize the majority Sunni population). When I took over as Ambassador, there was no question who were the good guys and bad guys in this conflict. We were on the side of Hadi and the Saudis.
The Stockholm Agreement handed the Houthis the foothold they needed to launch their campaign of international blackmail.
So what went wrong? Essentially the international community was swayed by a number of prejudices and misconceptions, including about the moral sanctity of humanitarian activity. Unless you are a Saudi or an Omani, Yemen can seem a long way away, a marginal concern to the West compared with more politically and strategically pressing conflict zones like Iraq, Syria, even Libya. In those circumstances, and particularly before Donald Trump challenged the thinking, Western countries would default to seeing crises like that in Yemen through an almost exclusively humanitarian lens. For me, the Department for International Development had more resource and more influence to bring to bear on London’s Yemen policy than did the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Anything that interfered with humanitarian delivery was by definition a bad thing and the Saudi and Emirati-backed efforts of the IRG to retake its territory from the Houthis fell into that category.
The international community of do-gooders is more cohesive and effective at lobbying than many people realize. I later watched them chip away at the Security Council until it introduced a humanitarian exemption to all of its sanctions regimes, including the one against ISIS. This community also has a number of overwhelming prejudices, which are broadly anti-Western and specifically hostile to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Pressure groups like Oxfam and Amnesty teamed up with the human rights community and reinforced the humanitarian lobby, which was led by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). Every time the Houthis succeeded in drawing Saudi airstrikes onto a civilian target (much like Hamas in Gaza now), I and my government and other Western officials were subjected to ever shriller lobbying about the iniquities of the Saudis. None of these groups seemed to care about the Houthis arresting, torturing and murdering ordinary Yemenis (any more than they do about Hamas doing the same to ordinary Palestinians).
The Western Europeans became increasingly skeptical about Saudi involvement in Yemen. The U.K. and U.S. found it harder and harder to hold their original line on why we should back the Saudis and the IRG, and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, influenced by the Omanis, took an increasingly anti-Saudi line, seeking peace at any price. By the time of the Kuwait peace talks in 2016, only just over a year after the Saudis entered the war, the international consensus was that the Houthis should be given whatever they demanded to stop the war. The Saudis, worried about their reputation and other international equities, were ready to sign up to almost any agreement, but the Houthis decided to hold out for total victory and they abandoned the Kuwait talks.
Saudi Arabia was given some respite by the change of U.S. Administration in January 2017 and, with its Arab allies, stepped up its support of IRG forces and pushed the Houthis back, especially on the Red Sea coast. The advance north from Mokha to Hodeida was painfully slow but Hodeida was about to fall in late 2018, when the Saudis made the catastrophic mis-step of killing Jamal Khashoggi. This caused international outrage, playing into existing Western hostility, and making it impossible for President Trump to shield the Saudis from international opposition to their campaign in Yemen. The U.N. led demands that nothing be done that might interrupt the passage of humanitarian supplies through Hodeida and the Stockholm Agreement was signed in December 2018. In theory, this was supposed to ensure that the Houthis did not control Hodeida but no attempt was made to monitor or enforce it and the Houthis ignored it from day one.
This outrageous agreement to prevent the IRG from regaining control of its own territory ushered in five years of military stasis, during which the Saudis grew ever more anxious to disengage from Yemen at any cost. the Houthis played on this anxiety and persuaded the Saudis to move towards an understanding that the price of their being left in peace on their southern border and free from drone attacks on their infrastructure would be to support a dominant role for the Houthis in Yemen-Yemen peace talks; and the payment of a large amount of protection money that would be dressed up as reconstruction funds. Imagine if the international community had held its nerve and backed the IRG’s retaking of the whole Red Sea coast of Yemen. We would not be in the dilemma we face today.
Of course, Houthi recklessness and aggression in the Red Sea throughout 2024, and now directly against Israel right up to the present, has shown how foolish it was to imagine that they could ever be trusted to settle into a responsible, governing role in Yemen. And how the Stockholm Agreement handed them the foothold that they needed to launch their campaign of international blackmail. But the Middle East conflict since 10/7 has also re-opened an array of opportunities to correct misguided appeasement policies towards Iran, the Houthis and the rest of the “Axis of Resistance”.
Israel’s military successes against Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran, and the consequent collapse of Assad’s Syria, invites us to re-examine the opportunity to secure a more acceptable outcome in the region. Israeli and, even more, U.S. strikes on the Houthis have shown their vulnerability to superior military force, especially when we refuse to be dictated to by OCHA and others who regard the Red Sea ports and Sanaa airport as sacrosanct sites which cannot be targeted because of their importance to humanitarian delivery. Even the U.N. has lost its appetite for defending the Houthis, whose arrogance and brutality is such that they have been kidnapping and abusing humanitarians, including U.N. staff, as well as making the Red Sea unsafe for humanitarian delivery operations.
There appears to be uncertainty in the Trump Administration about how to harmonize the various strands of Middle East policy: is it possible to be pro-Israeli and pro-Qatari at the same time? Can you pursue a kinetic policy to re-establish deterrence with the Houthis whilst seeking a deal with Iran on its nuclear and missile programs and its pursuit of asymmetric warfare against Israel and Saudi Arabia? The seven-week bombing campaign that the U.S. waged against the Houthis certainly had an impact on the group, inflicting damage on its leadership, revenue, infrastructure, military installations and weaponry.
It is less clear that the ceasefire agreement that ended the campaign has resolved anything for the longer term. The Houthis claim to be triumphant, unrepentant and still committed to attacking Israeli interests. Even the Omani official announcement of the ceasefire contains a glaring contradiction, saying that all commercial shipping will now be safe but acknowledging that it is only the Americans and the Houthis who have agreed to stop attacking each other. Best case, the respite in the Red Sea will be extended by some months, but even then shipping and insurance companies will not believe operations can safely resume. Meawhile, the Houthis will continue to attack Israel with missiles and drones, and Israel will respond kinetically, including with attempts to kill the leader, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi.
It is essential for the U.S. to look at its policy options ahead of when a new round of escalation occurs, be it between Israel and the Houthis only, or directly involving Iran.
What appears to be missing from the plans of the Houthis’ various enemies is meaningful engagement with the IRG and the Southern Transitional Council in Aden and the determination and resource allocation required to reinvigorate their military campaign against the Houthis. The surest guarantee of an end to the Houthi threat to freedom of navigation of international waters is to drive them back from the Red Sea coast altogether. In other words, to tear up the Stockholm Agreement, which they violated from day one, and take Hodeida and the coast between there and the Saudi border as should have been done in 2019. What is unclear is whether the Saudis have the appetite for this, given their desire to extricate themselves from the Yemeni civil war. Only the U.S., and specifically President Trump, can reassure them of the need for this and the reliability of U.S. support for them against the Houthis. Only the U.S. can assemble the necessary international coalition to underpin this overhaul of international policy towards the Houthis.
It is therefore essential for the U.S. to look at its policy options ahead of when a new round of escalation occurs, be it between Israel and the Houthis only, or directly involving Iran. To reach conclusions, given that Iran is the senior partner in the Axis of Resistance and Iran poses the strategic threat to world peace through its nuclear program, the U.S. needs to decide exactly what are the objectives of its Iran policy and then harmonize its Yemen policy with those. The Iranians will happily spin out talks with the U.S. in order to buy time and to get past this moment of existential danger when the Trump Administration is not distracted with the U.S. electoral timetable. If the objective is to achieve some kind of JCPOA-plus, an international agreement that delays but does not terminate the evolution of the Iranian threat, then threats to hold Iran accountable for Houthi misbehaviour do not make sense.
In my view this is a unique opportunity to coerce a change in Iran. If not regime change (which is possible, given the current weakness of the Islamic Republic) then the abandoning or destruction of all of Iran’s aggressive programs: nuclear enrichment, ballistic missile development, asymmetric warfare via the Houthis, Hezbollah, the Iraqi proxy militias and the other components of the Axis. This will require determination and probably force. If that is where we are headed - and make no mistake, the Islamic Republic and the Houthis will not change their nature and will only change their behaviour if forced to do so - then we must be prepared to confront both Iran and the Houthis, with the Houthis only likely to give up their aggressive agenda if they face defeat in the Yemeni civil war.
