Over the past week, Houthi militants who control northwestern Yemen launched air attacks on Riyadh International Airport and the headquarters of Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil company, highlighting the Kingdom's vulnerability to threats from its adversaries in the neighboring country.
The attacks undermine Saudi Arabia's image as a safe hub for international investment, at a time when it is seeking to attract foreign money and diversify its economy away from oil. Experts in weapons and regional affairs believe that this nightmare scenario for a major ally of the United States in the Gulf has been taking shape for years.
These experts attribute Saudi Arabia's exposure to an irregular Yemeni fighting group to a combination of factors, including Iran's assistance to the Houthis in achieving a level approaching self-sufficiency in the production and use of advanced weapons, and the impact of the American war on Iran, which has depleted stocks of interceptor missiles.
Iranian training leads to self-sufficiency
Iran has been providing weapons, money and training to the Houthis for more than a decade, but Tehran officially denies arming the Houthis in violation of a UN arms embargo.
Experts said that despite the financial and military pressure on Iran due to the war and sanctions, the Houthis have learned, with Iranian help, to assemble their own weapons, including drones and missiles.
Andreas Krieg, a senior lecturer in security studies at King's College London, said the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and members of the Hezbollah group in Lebanon, which is also an ally of Iran, initially provided the Houthis with knowledge.
Knowledge related to missile systems and their operation
“Former Yemeni military engineers and a growing generation of qualified local cadres helped institutionalize these capabilities,” Craig added. He continued, "Tehran not only provided the Houthis with weapons, but also contributed to creating a local military and industrial learning process, which will gradually become more difficult to dismantle, even if direct Iranian supply routes are disrupted."
Iranian analysts said that in this way, the Houthis have become among Iran's most valuable and least expensive military agents.
“The Revolutionary Guard was far-sighted,” said Hamid Nico, a former political advisor to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. “Think about what would happen if the Houthis could not receive equipment or weapons directly from Iran, or if they were confiscated by forces allied with the United States.”
Nico added that this strategy included teaching the Houthis how to assemble dual-use parts to make drones and even ballistic missiles. "Iran basically taught the Houthis how to hunt," he added.
The Saudi-led military coalition fighting the Houthis in Yemen says it intercepted a number of missiles fired by the Houthis at Saudi cities, and that it destroyed 127 weapons storage facilities and launching platforms belonging to the Houthis.
Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki said in a press conference that the Houthis obtained advanced military technology with the help of "regional parties," including ballistic missiles, drones, and speedboats loaded with explosives.
Diversifying arms and technology imports
One of the Houthis' main strengths in building their weapons is that they do not rely solely on Iranian-made equipment or imports coming from Iran.
The Conflict Armament Research Organization said in a report this week that the Houthis are trying to manufacture advanced medium-range ballistic missiles using parts shipped from China, after the internationally recognized Yemeni government confiscated one of those shipments.
“China has emerged as a critical trade source, while Iran continues to provide specialized military technology, technical expertise, and components that are difficult to obtain commercially,” Craig said. The Houthis have also experimented with using artificial intelligence in efforts to improve the effectiveness of their weapons.
Anthropic said last month that a “cell of threat actors based in northern Yemen” used its AI assistant Claude to help develop software for a guided missile, a ballistic missile project with a range of more than 2,000 kilometers, and a version of the missile that includes a hypersonic glide vehicle.
War fatigue and running out of ammunition
While the Houthis have developed their weapons production, US allies in the region have seen increasing pressure on their air defenses since the war that began when the US and Israel attacked Iran in late February.
The United States used large quantities of interceptor missiles that it deployed in the region to protect its bases and allies, including Israel and the Gulf states, making some of them vulnerable, especially Saudi Arabia.
Farzan Thabet, an expert on Middle East affairs at the Geneva Institute for Graduate Studies, said: “Saudi Arabia, in terms of developing its army and building an integrated air defense network, has not yet truly reached the level of Israel or Ukraine, and faces an extremely difficult task.”
He added that the expansion of Saudi Arabia makes defending against air attacks more difficult than defending Israel or an American base.
War experience
Thabet said the Houthis have learned from the increasing levels of violence in the region in the past few years. The Yemeni civil war, in which the Houthis have fought Saudi-backed forces since 2014, ended in a fragile truce in 2022.
But after the Israeli attack in Gaza in 2023, which followed bloody attacks led by the Hamas movement, classified by several countries as a terrorist organization, on Israel, the Houthis began firing missiles at Israel and targeting shipping traffic through the Red Sea.
