The United States recently delivered a direct message to Saudi Arabia urging the kingdom to reconcile with the United Arab Emirates regarding the conflict in Yemen, aiming to establish a cohesive regional military coalition capable of halting the advance of the Houthi terror movement, the British newspaper The Guardian reported. According to the report, the White House is privately lobbying both Abu Dhabi and Riyadh to shelve their deep-seated disagreements and permit a unified military command—incorporating southern separatist factions—to counter intensifying Houthi gains.
1+Bilateral relations between the UAE and Saudi Arabia plunged to an unprecedented low earlier this year after Saudi fighter jets conducted airstrikes against forces belonging to the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC). The Saudi strikes were aimed at suppressing the separatists’ drive to partition Yemen and establish an independent southern state. However, recent successful Houthi strikes targeting maritime traffic near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have forced Riyadh to recalibrate its strategy, recognizing that it cannot hold back Houthi advances independently and requires the operational combat support of the very separatists it previously bombed.
Simultaneously, Arab media reports have indicated in recent weeks that Israel has been providing clandestine security and intelligence assistance to Saudi Arabia in its confrontation with the Houthi terror organization. While neither Riyadh nor Jerusalem has formally confirmed or denied these reports, the quiet cooperation offers Israel a strategic avenue to exact payback against the Yemeni terror regime, which has repeatedly targeted Israeli territory with ballistic missiles and long-range suicide drones over recent years.
1+The renewed diplomatic push comes against the backdrop of direct high-level appeals from Riyadh to Washington. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman recently requested that U.S. President Donald Trump order direct American kinetic strikes against Houthi targets across Yemen. However, according to a report by Axios citing a senior U.S. official, President Trump rebuffed the request, saying the administration currently has no intention of intervening directly in active combat operations in Yemen, placing the burden back on regional Gulf partners to secure their own perimeter.