AhlulBayt News Agency: U.S. aggressive pursuits show no signs of relenting. Following Yemen’s steadfast resistance and its direct naval confrontations with the United States, Britain, and the Zionist entity throughout Operation Al-Aqsa Flood (October 2023 – October 2025) — a confrontation that ended with Yemen holding its ground and its enemies failing to halt its support operations or weaken its armed forces — Washington appears to have reverted to its familiar yet ever-renewed approach: the “civil war strategy,” or what has been described as the “policy of internal destabilization.”
This renewed campaign seeks to ignite an internal Yemeni conflict, pitting Yemenis against one another by mobilizing anti-Sana’a factions aligned with Saudi Arabia and the UAE — all in service of an American–Zionist–British agenda that bears no relation to Yemen’s own causes, interests, or disputes.
Complementing this policy of engineered division is a tight blockade targeting Yemeni society in areas governed by the Supreme Political Council, with the aim of provoking social unrest.
The use of starvation as a weapon and the attempt to implode Yemen militarily from within have become an alternative strategy to direct aggression — one deemed less costly and less risky than external warfare or outright invasion. The materials analyzed in this report offer a clear and revealing picture of this ongoing hostile policy.
Preface:
This report is based on an analytical reading of two articles published on October 8 and October 17, 2025: the first in The National Interest under the headline “How to Secure the Red Sea,” and the second in the Middle East Forum, authored by Fernando Carvajal. Both were written by researchers affiliated with right-wing, pro-Zionist pressure groups known for their hostility to Sanaa — notably the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Middle East Forum.
The two articles offer an operational playbook aimed at dismantling Yemen’s deterrent capabilities at sea and on land. Their prescriptions include assembling networks of local agents and mercenaries, providing funding and armaments, and extracting international legitimacy under the banners of “maritime security” and “counter-smuggling.”
The language of both articles reveals a U.S.–Western strategic conception that treats the Red Sea as a primary theater for encircling Sanaa and degrading its missile and drone capabilities, while activating secondary theaters (Aden, al-Mokha, and the Sudanese coast — cited as a smuggling route) to disperse and dilute Yemen’s concentration of force.
Discursive Framing and Legitimacy Construction
The two articles depict the national authority in Sanaa through two interconnected labels: a “terrorist group” and an “Iranian proxy.” This framing functions as a political tool, enabling international actors to justify what they call “security measures” — ranging from arming and training to maritime interception operations — under the pretext of countering cross-border threats.
This framing is practical rather than epistemological; it legitimizes empowering local actors and endorses interventions that could reshape Yemen’s internal political landscape without addressing the root causes of the conflict, such as the aggression and blockade.
The core discourse — which the two articles claim to be legal — hinges on invoking terms like “freedom of navigation” and “combating smuggling and piracy” as a cover for hostile and unlawful military and economic measures. This narrative facilitates the funding of military activities by marketing them to donors and the international community as “projects to protect navigation and combat organized crime.”
The strikes and naval operations carried out by Sanaa are portrayed as “threats to global navigation.” This portrayal ignores the interconnected rationale behind Yemen’s deterrence, rooted in the context of the aggression on Gaza and the defense of Yemeni sovereignty. It delegitimizes any Yemeni right to self-defense by rebranding it as aggression, thereby paving the way for the reinterpretation of international law to serve policies of pressure and hostility against Yemen.
Overall, the two articles reflect a practical consensus among Western research and political circles on unifying a discourse with an aggressive function. Its official façade is “protecting commerce,” while its practical core aims at dismantling Yemen’s deterrent capabilities through empowering mercenaries and managing donor resources.
The Underlying Objective
The primary declared and practical objective is to strike Sanaa’s ability to use the sea as a deterrent by targeting maritime commerce bound for Sanaa through the ports of Hodeidah and Aden. The goal is to increase the cost of Sanaa’s defensive operations by turning military steadfastness into social suffering, thereby generating social resentment against the national authority.
The strategy aims to create local alternatives composed of mercenaries capable of action and influence, reshaping what they call the “internal balance”: supporting Aden’s coast guard, amplifying the role of the Southern Transitional Council, and expanding the authority of units led by Tariq Saleh along the western coast.
A third goal is to surround Sanaa with a regional ring by involving Horn of Africa countries and the Sudanese coast in establishing a monitoring and logistics network that blocks the long-flank routes of the Yemeni armed forces. This strategy transforms the confrontation with the Israeli entity and hostile Western fleets into a regional battle with the Red Sea littoral states. It increases economic and logistical pressures on Sanaa and prolongs the campaign of attrition.
Proposed Tools
The plan is grounded in the outcomes of the British-backed “Maritime Conference” held in Riyadh on 19 September 2025 and rests on a package of operational measures: funding, training, and arming local naval units; equipping them with intelligence systems; and linking them to regional logistical platforms. The approach grants a “security–service” mantle to these units, enabling them to conduct interception operations without the need for a large-scale Western force presence.
The first phase of implementing the conference’s outputs began in Aden on 19 October 2025 with training on maritime law — a precursor to the broader program for training and preparing mercenaries across the required operational areas.
The toolkit includes building real‑time information‑sharing networks among mercenary forces, supplying them with surveillance and monitoring equipment, and establishing a joint target database that allows those forces to cover Yemen’s coastline from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea. This integration reduces the need for intensive air interventions and increases the mercenaries’ ability to maintain continuous maritime control.
Targeted Operational Geography
Al‑Mokha — Hodeidah — Aden
This coastal corridor is being converted into a tactical axis to sever Sanaa’s maritime lines of communication: inspections and interceptions along supply routes, diversion of shipping lanes, and the use of Aden port as a central “filtering” hub for goods and cargo. The practical objective is to make the delivery of supplies to Sanaa‑controlled areas more complex and hazardous.
Gateway to the Horn of Africa
The security narrative that “Houthi activity is expanding to the Sudanese coast” is being used to justify involving East African states in monitoring and interception efforts, thereby creating a geographic network that encircles Yemen and pulls Horn of Africa countries into the axis hostile to Sanaa — mirroring the role the Gulf states play on the opposite shore.
Security Assessment of the Proposed Tactics
Having concluded that U.S., British, and Zionist air strikes yielded limited results, the priority has shifted toward disrupting Yemeni trade and denying the transfer of military technology to Yemen — at least from their perspective. For these actors, draining resources, degrading command-and-control, and severing supply lines prove more effective than aerial bombardment: they curtail Sanaa’s capacity to sustain maritime operations and trigger an internal economic crisis. This tactic is less costly but produces long-term strategic effects.
Central to the plan is integrating mercenary forces into a unified intelligence architecture: establishing a joint intelligence operations room among local actors to overcome fragmentation and rivalry, converting isolated enforcement into coordinated operations capable of covering vast maritime areas with rapid response — exactly the capability its architects seek.
They also intend to tighten the siege under a veneer of legality by recasting so-called “counter-smuggling” measures as legal mechanisms (which, in practice, they are not). This pretext enables expanding the list of inspected goods and grants mercenary actors spurious legitimacy to regulate trade into areas under the national authority — effectively instituting a new commercial blockade that disproportionately harms civilians and the national economy.
Implications for Yemen’s National Security
The expansion of interception and inspection operations will disrupt civilian supply chains—including food, medicine, and industrial imports—driving up living costs and increasing pressure on public services. This, in turn, diminishes the state’s capacity to withstand ongoing challenges and heightens popular discontent.
Establishing an operational “ring” from the south and north forces Sanaa to disperse its forces over a wider area, reducing the concentration of protection around sensitive sites and complicating the security of critical launch and storage platforms.
The involvement of European and Western donors in funding and arming operations internationalizes the Yemeni file, turning it into a managed global affair.
Involving Sudan and the Somaliland region expands the conflict’s geographic scope and risks spilling the war into new regional arenas, effectively encircling Yemen and Sanaa with hostile neighbors.
Conclusion
In short, the two articles reveal a clear, coordinated plan to dismantle Yemen’s maritime deterrent by empowering local mercenaries within highly capable funding–arming–intelligence systems, expanding the theatre to the Horn of Africa and Sudan, and securing a legal–media cover to justify aggression under the banner of “protecting navigation.”
We are facing a multi‑layered siege strategy that bets on time to wear down Yemen’s defensive capacity—exacerbating humanitarian and economic strain—and carries the attendant risks of wider escalation across the Red Sea and its littoral coasts.
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