The other choke point

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s Tuesday, the 4th of August. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

First up, Saudi Arabia gets pulled into the Iran war.

As the U.S. and Iran exchange strikes over the Strait of Hormuz, one of Iran’s proxy groups is opening up a second front on another Middle East choke point near the Red Sea.

BROWN: Houthi rebels have controlled parts of Yemen for over a decade. Last week the group launched attacks on Saudi Arabian oil tankers. In response, the Saudis on Thursday announced a defense coalition with nations like Egypt and Turkey to protect shipping in the Red Sea.

REICHARD: What does the conflict mean for the Middle East?

Joining us now to talk about it is Michael Ratney. He was U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2023 to 2025 and has worked in Middle East diplomacy for more than three decades. 

Ambassador, good morning.

RATNEY: Hi, good morning.

REICHARD: Well, this isn't the first time the Saudis and Iran-backed Houthis have gone to blows. Riyadh led a coalition against the group for seven years before a truce quieted things in 2022. So what brought that conflict to an end, and how would you characterize the peace that followed?

RATNEY: The war was long, it was bloody, there were large numbers of civilian casualties, it was inconclusive, and it it created tension with the United States and the Saudis around that time, both because of the inconclusive nature of the war, and also because kind of as a matter of national priorities, they started looking more inward. They embarked on diplomacy with the Houthis. 

It was a complicated thing because, on the one hand, the Saudis recognized a legitimate government of Yemen, most of whom were actually living and operating in exile in Saudi or elsewhere. But they saw no alternative to reaching out directly to the Houthis since their whole priority had become sort of not trying to reach a definitive conclusion of that or any other conflict in the region, but just trying to de-escalate all of the conflicts of the region so that they could focus on their major priority, which had become the internal development of their country.

When this Iran war started, at the beginning, the end of February and early March, the Houthis were sort of in abeyance in a sense. It seemed to me that they were being held in reserve. 

And think of the Houthis, you know, we think of them, certainly the Saudis think of them as a proxy of the Iranians, and they are in some sense that. But the Houthis themselves think of themselves quite differently. They think that they are not a proxy of anybody. They're their own Islamic republic on a par with the Iranians. 

And so while they take support from Iran, in some cases direction from Iran, they do have a bit of an independent streak as well. And there was always this sense that it could get quite dangerous if they became part of it, if they opened another front. And that appears to be where we are now.

REICHARD: So plenty of history to understand there. And then last year the Houthis attacked ships near the Red Sea and the U.S. responded to that, but that seemed to be tied more to the Gaza war, from what I understand. 

Can you explain what is different this time, and how the conflicts in the Red Sea and the Strait are connected?

RATNEY: Sure. When the Gaza War started after October 7th, the Houthis quickly joined in.

At first, the Houthis tried to fire projectiles at Israel with limited success. So they started targeting shipping, commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and also at times U.S. naval vessels. It became quite dangerous. 

The U.S. started a fairly concerted military campaign to put pressure on the Houthis to get them to back off of that, although Trump himself took a different approach, and it's still a little murky, but seemed to have reached some sort of understanding such that the Houthis would stop targeting U.S. ships. Effectively, that front was in abeyance for a while. 

Now they've started again, not related to Gaza or to Israel, but simply related to their effort to join in with the Iranians to pressure the Saudis, others in the Gulf, directly or indirectly the United States, in conjunction with this war that we and Israel launched against Iran at the end of February.

REICHARD: All right. Saudi Arabia now has organized a defense coalition with thirteen other countries to protect shipping in the Red Sea. Do you think Egypt and Turkey will commit resources, or do you think this is more of a symbolic thing?

RATNEY: Yeah, you know, the famous answer is "we'll have to see." I know that's not very satisfying, but you know, they assembled this group, and I think that's part and parcel of their approach, which is they need to figure out a way to do it, to to de-escalate, to end the Houthi threat, to ensure that there's no blockade of the Bab-el-Mandeb and their oil can get out to markets. 

They don't know a hundred percent where the United States is gonna be on that, although the U.S. joined in on these airstrikes against Iranian supported militias in Iraq, it's not clear whether the U.S. is going to be prepared to help police the Red Sea, given all of the other military commitments. 

So they amassed this group, some of which I'm not even sure they have navies, some of which I'm not sure whether they're fully committed to deploying military assets in the Red Sea to do so. 

So we'll have to see. 

It was, I think, a natural diplomatic move for the Saudis, but actually giving it practical meaning is going to be a challenge.

REICHARD: Now, you were ambassador to Saudi Arabia when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th, and at that time I think the Biden administration was encouraging the Saudis to join the Abraham Accords. And now the Trump administration is tying a civilian nuclear deal to normalizing relations with Israel. 

So what signs do you see that this might be more likely to succeed if you do?

RATNEY: [laughs] It doesn't get less complicated, I'm afraid.

In the Biden administration, the negotiation was not just about normalization. It was about this kind of big grand deal that would involve Saudi-Israel normalization. It would involve a U.S. Saudi mutual defense pact. It would involve measures of support for Palestinian statehood. At the core was these two things: this normalization deal between Saudi and Israel, and a U.S.-Saudi mutual defense treaty. 

As you suggest, after October 7th, it became much, much more difficult. The Israeli government was not interested in talking about Palestinian statehood, and although the negotiations continued in one form or another, it didn't get over the finish line by the end of the Biden administration.

President Trump came to office feeling as though he had accomplished the Abraham Accords, which was this set of agreements with Israel and the Emirates and Bahrain and Morocco in his first term. And he felt bringing Saudi Arabia into the mix would be a major achievement. 

The Saudis have not changed their basic price for that, which is, among other things, they need to see an Israeli commitment to a pathway to Palestinian statehood. The Israeli government has not been able to do that for their own political reasons, and for the Saudis, that's just it's impossible for them politically to go ahead. 

So I don't see I don't see it moving ahead, absent some fundamental change in the approach by Israel at this point.

REICHARD: Michael Ratney is a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and now on the board of governors for the Middle East Institute. 

Ambassador, thank you so much.

RATNEY: Thank you.

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