Saudi Arabia’s bid to “contain” the Ansarallah in Yemen while doubling down on economic growth at home is collapsing, posing one of the most serious tests for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman since he rose to power, according to analysts and diplomats.

A decade ago, the crown prince led the kingdom into a war aimed at ousting the Ansarallah from power. The conflict turned into a quagmire for Saudi Arabia, sapping its resources and sparking widespread backlash due to its devastating bombing campaign. In the end, Saudi Arabia cut its losses and maintained an uneasy truce with the Ansarallah since 2022.

“This is the collapse of Saudi Arabia’s containment strategy,” Rob Geist Pinfold, an international security expert at King's College London, told Middle East Eye.

“The way Saudi Arabia approached the Houthis (Ansarallah) in the last few years was not dissimilar to how Israel treated Hamas in Gaza before 7 October [2023]. The Saudis felt they had the Houthis where they needed them. They weren’t at the stage to reach a political solution, but they felt they had disincentivized them from escalating again.”

The conflict erupted again after Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa airport in July to prevent a plane carrying Ansarallah officials from landing. 

The Ansarallah declared a blockade against Saudi shipping as a result, and launched a lightning offensive down the Red Sea coast last month, which the kingdom and its Yemeni allies have struggled to counter. 

Unlike the last time a full-scale war raged in Yemen, Saudi Arabia now has more to lose from a widening of the conflict, and the Ansarallah have become more sophisticated adversaries, experts say.

Saudi Arabia faced Ansarallah missile and drone attacks during the last round of fighting, but they were nowhere near as precise as this time.

In the last week alone, the Ansarallah struck Riyadh’s international airport three days in a row. A strike on Oct. 10 killed at least 13 people and injured 300. The group’s targeting capabilities were underscored again on Oct. 13 when they hit the headquarters of Saudi Arabia’s state oil giant, Aramco, in the eastern city of Dhahran.

The strikes have caused some to question the capabilities of Saudi Arabia’s military.

The kingdom is a major buyer of American weaponry, including Patriot and THAAD air defense systems. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the kingdom spends 6.5 percent of its GDP on military gear, one of the highest ratios in the world.

“It’s quite striking, literally, that the Houthis can hit, at will, these incredibly important facilities in Saudi Arabia and the Saudis can’t defend them,” Gregory Gause, an expert on the Persian Gulf at the Middle East Institute, told MEE.

“They clearly have much better missiles and targeting technology than they did before,” he said.

A Western defense official in Riyadh told MEE that Saudi Arabia is absorbing the vast majority of missiles and drones fired at it, saying the number is likely in the low 90 percent range. But the Ansarallah are more skilled at penetrating the kingdom’s air defenses.

“The Houthis are a lot more effective than Iran was back in February. They learned from earlier this year,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is a combination of innovation, rapid speed and the latest intelligence,” the official said.