The maritime campaign has drawn most of the attention, and it is the smaller half of what is happening. In early August, Houthi forces fired ballistic missiles from al-Jawf into government military camps in Hadramout and Marib, killing around thirty soldiers in a single strike, the deadliest such attack against Yemeni government forces in years. A follow-on barrage hit the same provinces the next day. Separately, the group has been striking al-Makha on the west coast, a government-held port.
These are not blockade-enforcement actions. They are the opening moves of a land campaign.
How the truce came apart
The April 2022 truce never became a settlement. It froze a front line and left every underlying question open. The trigger for the current unravelling was the 13 July Saudi strike on the runway at Sanaa airport, carried out to prevent an Iranian aircraft carrying a Houthi delegation from landing. The Houthis responded against Abha, then declared the maritime blockade on 20 July, then began hitting ground targets inside Yemen. Each step widened the aperture, and none of them was reversed.
The anti-Houthi side is weaker than in 2015
This is the structural point. The coalition that fought the Houthis a decade ago no longer exists in the same form. The Emirates withdrew in 2025. In January 2026, Saudi strikes halted a Southern Transitional Council campaign to assert control across the south, and STC figures were subsequently pushed out of the Presidential Leadership Council. That left the internationally recognised government more dependent on Riyadh and less able to draw on the southern forces that did much of the fighting.
Meanwhile Houthi capability has grown. Longer-range ballistic systems, deeper drone stocks, and years of unimpeded consolidation in the north have produced a force that can strike Marib, Hadramout, the Red Sea coast, and southern Saudi Arabia in the same week. The asymmetry that existed in 2015, where the coalition owned the air and the Houthis owned the ground, has narrowed on both axes.
Marib is the objective that would decide the campaign
Marib holds Yemen’s principal onshore hydrocarbon infrastructure and the government’s most defensible remaining stronghold in the north. Houthi offensives against it in 2020 and 2021 failed at high cost. A successful assault now would give Sanaa energy revenue, remove the government’s northern anchor, and make any future settlement a negotiation over the terms of Houthi consolidation rather than over territory.
The missile strikes on camps in Marib and Hadramout are consistent with shaping operations: degrade command posts and assembly areas before ground movement, and test the response time and willingness of Saudi air power. What has not yet appeared in open sources is the corresponding logistics build, meaning fuel and ammunition forward-staging in al-Jawf and the movement of formations rather than fires. That is the indicator that separates preparation from posturing.
The Saudi problem
Riyadh is reported to be pursuing de-escalation through Omani mediation while evaluating military options, including a ground operation fought by Yemeni forces. It denies the talks. Both tracks can be real at once, and running them simultaneously is standard practice, but they impose contradictory requirements. Serious mediation needs restraint on the Yemeni government side. Serious ground preparation needs those same forces mobilised and confident. The kingdom cannot sustain both postures indefinitely, and which one it abandons will be visible within weeks.