In the Arab Gulf caught between open war fronts between Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb, the timing of the war is also dictated by the business agenda: two weeks before the summit of international investors in Riyadh, Crown Prince Mohammed ben Salman is trying to stop the Houthi advance towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and then sit down with Sanaa's forces and snatch a truce that will protect Vision 2030. This is while the kingdom is building on the ground Yemeni alliance with the militias once armed by the Emirates.
First of all, the calendar matters: the window with which the kingdom calls to gather capital and large Western groups opens while the missiles of Sanaa's forces hit the kingdom's airports. With Hormuz closed by the regional war following the American-Israeli aggression against Iran, Bab el-Mandeb remains the gateway to Saudi energy exports. Riyadh must therefore quickly put a stop to a war that it cannot win and cannot afford to widen.
The summit, the tenth edition of the Future Investment Initiative, is held from 26 to 29 October. In recent days, Houthi raids on the airports of Riyadh, Dammam and Abha have killed 15 people and injured more than three hundred, according to Saudi media.
The "Dawn of Yemen" counteroffensive, launched on October 4 by government forces with massive Saudi air support, would have returned the port of Mokha and positions close to the strait to the government. The Houthis dispute these military successes and meanwhile, further east, they claim to have cut the last land route that connected the city of Taiz to the rest of government territory.
In Riyadh, analysts say, it would be enough to contain the advance for now: according to observers in the region, contacts between the Saudis and the Houthis have never been interrupted so much so that, once the Sanaa forces have been repelled from the coast, the kingdom would be ready for a provisional agreement or a ceasefire. Washington, US sources report, provides intelligence and operational assistance but does not participate in the raids.
To get there, the kingdom relies first and foremost on Islamabad. The bilateral defense pact of September 2025 has been operational since April, when Pakistan had deployed fighter jets, anti-aircraft systems and 8,000 soldiers in the kingdom. According to sources cited by the international press, Pakistani military advisors have arrived in recent weeks to support the pro-Saudi Yemeni forces, along with four shipments of weapons. This is on a bilateral level while Mecca's trilateral pact with Turkey remains a work in progress: it has a headquarters in Riyadh and a Pakistani secretary general, but is still awaiting the vote of the Ankara parliament.
The most delicate piece is Yemeni: in January the pro-Saudi forces had expelled the Southerners of the Southern Transitional Council from the areas they controlled, and the last Emirati personnel withdrew. Since then, most of those militias have come under the Saudi umbrella, in the absence of political and economic alternatives.
