Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, have repeatedly attacked the Saudi capital of Riyadh in recent days. On Saturday, a missile strike on the airport in Riyadh killed at least 12 and injured over 300 in the deadliest attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. President Trump is now weighing whether to join the Saudi fight against the Houthis in Yemen.

This latest escalation comes after Ansar Allah captured key areas along Yemen’s Red Sea coastline in recent weeks, driving back the Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government and taking control of the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait.

“Yes, the Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia with airstrikes, but there is now, actively, a real ground war going on within Yemen, and that is a far more relevant and important issue for the Yemenis on a day-to-day basis because they are now back into a full-scale civil war,” says Middle East scholar Helen Lackner.

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Houthi fighters from Yemen have targeted the Saudi capital of Riyadh for the third time in recent days. On Saturday, a Houthi missile strike on a Riyadh airport killed 13 people and injured over 300 in the deadliest single attack on Saudi soil in over a decade. The Houthis have hit the airport at least four times. All flights out of the airport are currently suspended.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has not been seen publicly in a week, is reportedly shuttling between palaces with heavy security and bunkers. Riyadh is 500 or so miles from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen.

This is Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea speaking Monday.

YAHYA SAREA: [translated] With the help of Almighty God, the armed forces carried out four qualitative operations over the past 24 hours, using a number of ballistic and wing missiles, as well as drones. The first operation targeted King Khalid Airport in Riyadh in three phases, starting the evening before yesterday, resulting in the disruption of air navigation at the airport and its complete closure.

AMY GOODMAN: In Yemen, a leader of the Houthis, also known as the Ansar Allah movement, warned the U.S. it would face a swift and painful response if it joined Saudi Arabia’s attacks on Houthi-controlled territory. The warning came after President Trump said he’s going to look at joining the Saudi-led counteroffensive aimed at ousting Houthi fighters from Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait.

In September, Reuters reported Houthi leaders met secretly with U.S. officials in Oman and assured them U.S. ships in the Red Sea would not be targeted, even as a blockade was underway on Saudi-linked ships.

Yemen’s Saudi-backed, internationally recognized government says Houthi strikes over the past 24 hours within Yemen killed at least five civilians and left over a dozen wounded. That includes an attack on a hospital in Yemen’s third-largest city of Taiz, which is encircled by Houthi fighters. Residents there are reportedly rationing food and essential goods amidst growing warnings of a growing humanitarian disaster.

Meanwhile, the Yemen Data Project reported more than 250 Saudi air raids on Yemen last month, the highest number since 2022, killing at least 66 civilians and injuring 90.

For more, we’re joined by Helen Lackner, author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict. She’s been involved with Yemen for over 50 years and lived there for a total of more than 15 years between the '70s and the 2010s. Her next book on Yemen will be out next year. She's joining us from Oxford, England.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Helen Lackner. Thanks so much for being with us. Do you see what’s going on here? Saudi Arabia has been at war with Yemen for over a decade. It’s kind of Saudi Arabia’s, you know, U.S. war in Vietnam. And talk about who the parties are in Yemen. Who is the internationally recognized government in Yemen that’s supported by Saudi Arabia? And who are the Houthis?

HELEN LACKNER: Well, thank you for inviting me. Do you want me to start with the Houthis or with the government?

AMY GOODMAN: Your choice.

HELEN LACKNER: Right. Well, the internationally recognized government is the descendant of what was the government of Yemen until 2014, when the Houthis took over the capital Sana’a. And since then, the government has been based mainly, in principle, in Aden, which is the major city on the southern coast. And also, some of its main leaders, and usually the presidents, have been based in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, and various other people have been all over the place.

The basic issues to do with the internationally recognized government is its failure to operate as a functioning, operational government, and in particular of having a united and effective military. Its military are composed of different groups, which are largely rival to each other and have different commands, and they have been unable to operate as a single unit. And that is really one of the main reasons why the Houthi offensive last month, that took over Mokha and the Bab al-Mandab, succeeded so quickly, basically because the people opposing them were far too disorganized. And it’s also true that the Houthis are, and were, still the stronger military element throughout Yemen.

So, very briefly, to get into who the Houthis are, they are a group that was initially created in the 1990s to oppose the rise of Salafi Muslims in the far north of Yemen. Their heartland is the absolute far north of Yemen, a city called Saada. And they were created, and they are a group of Zaydis. Zaydis are a branch of Shia Muslim, but they are not particularly different from Sunni Muslims in terms of theology. But the Houthis are very much a fundamentalist group, a very extremist group when it comes to their way of ruling and their ambitions. And many people tend to compare them with the Afghani Taliban. And I think that comparison does have some validity. And for people who don’t know Yemen well, it will give them an idea of what kind of group they are. They are extremely repressive. They are also very ideologically motivated. They’ve now, for 15 years or longer, been educating and forcing their ideology onto children throughout their school and education system, as well as adults, but certainly we now have a generation of young adults who have known nothing else but Houthi ideology, and at least many of them must be expected to believe them.

And I think it’s worth pointing out that Houthis now control approximately two-thirds of Yemen’s population, if not more, so at least 20 million people are living under their authority. So, although they only control about a third of the country’s territory geographically, in terms of the population, they control basically two-thirds, approximately.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And —

HELEN LACKNER: So, while, if you look — sorry, yeah.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Helen Lackner, your history in terms of Yemen goes back five decades. Most people are not aware that in the period after Yemen emerged from English protectorate or colonial status, there was actually a socialist government for a period of time in Yemen. Could you talk about that and how it evolved then into a dictatorship and eventually to where we are today?

HELEN LACKNER: Yeah. Well, I’m glad you’re interested in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, because that’s when I first went to live in Yemen, was in order to help build socialism, which certainly sounds a bit, if not comical, certainly sad, when we look at the world as it is today.

So, indeed, you had a socialist regime — I mean, you had two states in Yemen. You had the state that emerged from the British colony, which was the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and you had the Yemen Arab Republic with a capital in Sana’a that was based on — that had previously been the imamate and which was a republic largely in name, but basically was a military dictatorship for the vast majority of its period from 1962 until you had Yemeni unification in 1990, when both states united into the Republic of Yemen.

And after that time, I think one has to say that the socialist element that had been active in the PDRY really vanished. The party, the Socialist Party, the Yemeni Socialist Party, really got very much weakened, but partly by mainly a civil war that happened in Yemen in 1994, but also very much because it was unable to maintain the support it had had, because of the differences between the people who wanted to return to the pre-1990 borders, and who basically wanted to separate Yemen back into two states, and those who believed in Yemen as a single state.

So, I think, you know, in terms of the history of socialism, although I think even today you have people who think or wonder or are interested in what life was like in the days of the socialist period, it’s really very much more of, you know, an imagination or hoping or thinking. And basically, what people are interested in, what people are missing very much, are the basic social welfare and the basic social democratic aspects of that regime, which was the fact that it provided, you know, good health systems, good education systems, basic infrastructure and basic salaries that people could live on — not in luxury, but they could live on them.

And these things basically vanished, largely, very rapidly after 1994 and under the Saleh regime, which was — you know, Saleh had been president of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1978 onwards, then he became and stayed president of the Republic of Yemen until he was ousted after the 2011 uprisings. And that led — that also gradually led to, basically, the civil war that started in 2014. I mean, I don’t know if you want me to spend time discussing the 2011-to-2014 period or if you want to focus more on the current — on the current situation.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, yeah, I’d like to ask specifically in terms of the ability of the Houthis to resist this, the military onslaught of Saudi Arabia. Most people are not aware that Yemen actually has a larger population than Saudi Arabia. What’s been the impact of their ability to strike at the Saudis, and especially in terms of the power of Mohammed bin Salman?

HELEN LACKNER: Yeah, I think it’s important to remember that, you know, yes, the Houthis are attacking Saudi Arabia with airstrikes, but there is now actively a real ground war going on within Yemen, and that is a far more relevant and important issue for the Yemenis on a day-to-day basis because they are now back into a full-scale civil war. And the Saudi intervention is — yes, it is airstrikes, and the Saudis are supporting the government to some extent with material and also, I suppose, you know, all kinds of other elements of technology, etc., but the fundamental war that’s going on now is not a war — in Yemen is not a war with Saudi. It’s a war between Yemenis, between the Houthis and the government, and basically what I would call the non-Houthis or the anti-Houthis. So, the Saudi element is really — for Yemenis, it’s part of the war, but it’s not the war. And, you know, the airstrikes at the moment by most Yemenis are considered airstrikes that are supporting them against the Houthis.

So, the fact that the — you know, that the world attention is focusing on a few airstrikes on Saudi Arabia is not something that is the top priority for Yemen and Yemenis. The top priority for Yemenis is dealing with, you know, the Houthi-anti-Houthi war and the fact that if the — you know, after the defeats they suffered in early September, the anti-Houthis have pulled themselves together, to some extent, and now there is a lot of confrontations going on on a daily basis around Taiz, around the Bab al-Mandab, around various other fronts, even in the far north and around Marib and Jawf. And this is — you know, this is an ongoing war — i.e. the war that went on from 2015 to ’22 and was interrupted for the last four years has now basically resumed.

AMY GOODMAN: And where —

HELEN LACKNER: So, for —

AMY GOODMAN: Where, Helen Lackner, do you see this going? We have these reports that last month Houthis secretly negotiated with Washington in Oman, saying they wouldn’t target U.S. or Israeli ships in the Red Sea, only Saudi ships. And where you see this heading in the future, with President Trump saying he’s looking at whether to get involved with this?

HELEN LACKNER: Well, thank you for bringing this up, because, you know, the basic Houthi slogan, which is shouted, and it’s known as “the scream,” you know, is — starts with “Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse upon the Jews.” So, the number one item is death to America. And the fact that the Houthis have made this deal with Washington, you know, demonstrates that the ideology may be an important element for mobilizing people within Yemen, but it certainly doesn’t seem to prevent them from being totally opportunistic when it comes to dealing with the U.S.

The reason they’ve said this, I’m sure, is because, you know, there was a 52-day air — series of airstrikes last year, in 2025, from March ’til May, from the U.S. against Houthi areas, and although this ended with this apparent agreement between them to to cease fire, it certainly did cause quite a lot of damage to the Houthis.

But I think the problem about — you know, you’re asking what happens next. I think — unfortunately, I think the war within Yemen, between Yemenis, is going to go on. I don’t — and I’m very sad to say this, and I hope I’m wrong, but my belief, and that of most other people I’ve heard and spoken to, is that this restarting of the war, renewal of the war, is going to last until one side or the other gets close to winning. And the Saudis are currently supporting the government, and they were — they are really in a very bad dilemma, because they know from previous experience — they did, you know, aerial bombing for seven years, and it got nowhere. Trump did aerial bombing for 52 days, and it didn’t really go anywhere, either. So, it’s quite clear that pure — and it’s been demonstrated elsewhere in the world, that, you know, airstrikes on their own do not win a war.

AMY GOODMAN: Helen Lackner —

HELEN LACKNER: And so, the situation, the future for the Saudis at this point is they have to either decide to make a deal with the Houthis, which I think is increasingly difficult, even though they almost had such a deal in 2023. But I think the situation between then and now has changed, and particularly with the recent attacks. It would be extremely difficult for them to make a deal with the Houthis or to continue with the war. I mean, you know, I haven’t seen anyone who has found a solution for this current situation, other than a continuation of, you know, very considerable disasters at the humanitarian level. I’m really glad you mentioned earlier, you know, the displaced. And you also remember that the humanitarian situation for Yemenis, in general, is absolutely disastrous. And people have now suffered 12 years of war, and things are getting worse by the day. So, you know, the future is, unfortunately, as far as I can tell — and again, I hope I’m wrong — is very bleak.

AMY GOODMAN: Helen Lackner, I want to thank you so much for being with us, author of several books on Yemen, including Yemen in Crisis: The Road to War and Yemen: Poverty and Conflict.

Coming up, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, spends an astonishing $366 million to help Republicans in the midterms. We’ll speak to the Oscar-winning filmmaker Alex Gibney about his new film Musk. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Arauco Has a Sorrow” by Mohawk artist Daniel French.