Saudi-Led Coalition Threatens Force as Houthis Reopen Yemen's Skies to Iran

A Saudi-led coalition pledged what it called "unprecedented" force in response to escalating threats from Yemen's Houthi movement, Al Jazeera reported. The warning followed incidents in which Houthi forces blocked Saudi warplanes and allowed an Iranian aircraft to land in the capital, Sanaa, which the report said was the first such landing in a decade.

The confrontation runs counter to the recent regional calm. Much of the drop in oil prices over the past month has been based on an assumption that Middle East supply risk is receding, from the US-Iran understanding to renewed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. A renewed conflict in Yemen, next to the Bab al-Mandeb strait and the southern approach to the Red Sea, reintroduces the possibility of disruption to one of the world's key shipping corridors.

The "unprecedented" characterization is the coalition's own, and the sequence of events is contested between the parties. What is clear is that the actors who fought a long war in Yemen are again exchanging threats, and that Iran's influence in Sanaa is expanding at a moment when Tehran itself is in transition.