larry johnson tells us about the houthis and their successes; 

 

After more than a decade of war, the Houthis have achieved what a superpower-backed coalition spent ten years and tens of billions of dollars trying to prevent. They now sit astride the Bab al-Mandeb strait, one of the world’s critical maritime chokepoints, and they are once again raining missiles and drones on Saudi cities. And when Riyadh picked up the phone this week to ask Washington for help, the answer was no.

The advance to the strait

The fighting that reignited across Yemen in late August and early September 2026 is the most serious since the United Nations truce of April 2022 froze the front lines. The Iran-aligned Houthis, who have controlled the capital Sanaa and most of Yemen’s populous north for years, launched a large-scale offensive against the Saudi-backed forces of the internationally recognized government — the Presidential Leadership Council — reportedly killing hundreds in the opening days.

The government has not been passive. The PLC declared its own counteroffensive with the stated aim of retaking Sanaa, and claimed advances in Taiz, the capture of Yatma in Al-Jawf, and gains in Al-Bayda. But the strategically decisive movement has run the other way. Along the Red Sea coast, government forces withdrew from Hays and Al Khawkhah in Hodeidah and from the port of Mocha in western Taiz, falling back toward Dhubab at the mouth of the Bab al-Mandeb. The Houthis struck Mocha directly, and then — by their own account and early reporting — seized Mayyun (Perim) island in the middle of the strait together with Dhubab, effectively placing themselves in a position to threaten the waterway through which a growing share of Saudi oil now sails..........more.............