Why Taiz matters

In an interview, Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed placed the current battle in the Yemen civil war far beyond Yemen's borders. Saeed led the government from 2018 to 2024, negotiated with the Houthis in earlier years and now advises President Rashad al-Alimi.

He said the battle around Taiz is not just a battle for the city, but a broader battle involving the whole of the western world and one of the most important maritime straits, and that the Houthi plan is to control all of Yemen. In his account, a fall of Taiz to the Iran-backed Houthis would be catastrophic, because control of the Bab al-Mandab strait in the Red Sea and the road to Aden would be lost.

Saeed also attached a symbolic weight to the city's fate. He described Taiz as a modern democratic city untied to tribal culture, and said its loss would have a very significant impact on the idea of the modern state in Yemen. He claimed the Houthis' goal was to help Iran expand the chaos.

A city under a tightening siege

According to Saeed, the Houthis launched a military campaign last month to take Yemen's Red Sea coast, making Taiz the new frontline and ending four years of relative calm that followed the UN-brokered 2022 ceasefire. He said the government had not been prepared for the loss of the west coast, which allowed the Houthis to attack Taiz from four different axes.

The position of the defenders, as he described it, is stark:

• •Taiz's defenders have only light weapons, and Saudi Arabia did not plan at an early stage for this escalation
• •The Houthis are currently allowing some fuel and commodities into urban Taiz, which houses more than 500,000 people, while expanding their control of rural areas and smaller cities
• •Saeed predicted that in a matter of days there will be a full siege, after which the Houthis will try to enter the city - an outcome he said would be much worse than the 2015 siege

He added that intelligence showed the Houthis were seeking to control parts of the south, including the former Soviet camp at al-Sabiha in Lahij governorate, and eventually Aden.

Missiles that learned to reach

Saeed traced the change in the threat to the growth of Houthi drone and missile technology. In 2017, he said, the Houthis had nothing but blind missiles to fire that missed their targets. Intelligence, he said, showed that by 2020 Iranian experts were operating from Sana'a and training the Houthis.

The record of attacks he set out shows how far the arsenal has come:

• •In December 2020, Houthi ballistic missiles struck Aden airport, killing 28 people and injuring 107, including Saeed himself, who had just been installed as prime minister; the missile had travelled 186 miles
• •In January 2022, using missiles, the Houthis attacked Abu Dhabi oil tanker trucks more than 900 miles away
• •In October 2022, they struck the Nushayma oil terminal and al-Dhabba port inside Yemen, severely damaging government finances
• •By the time the US attacked Yemen in March 2025, Saeed said it was clear the Houthis had dozens of targeted missiles, land-sea missiles and drones, and had become a unified front with Iran

He linked the timing of the current offensive to Iran's own position. It was not a coincidence, he said, that the Houthi attack along the Red Sea coast in September came when Iran was under heavy pressure. He noted that Iran's airplanes and airports cannot operate and that 90% of its oil was coming out of Hormuz, which is why the Saudi east-to-west pipelines were attacked. The Houthis, he said, by talking about a Saudi blockade, found a reason to hit Saudi oil installations.

Divided defenders and a model to copy

Saeed was candid about the failures on his own side. He admitted that the lack of coordination among government-backed troops, competition between Gulf states and a slowness to appreciate the implications of Yemen's long-range drone capability had all contributed to the pressure on his government and on Saudi Arabia.

He said better coordination was needed between the National Shield Forces, the National Resistance Forces and the Giants Brigades, and that not enough happened between the truce of 2022 and the restart of the fighting this year to reorganise the troops.

Politics among the defenders complicates the response. On Tuesday, the southern secessionist leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi called for a mobilisation of southern troops against the Houthis, but coupled this with a demand for a referendum on secession within two years. He then brought tens of thousands of supporters on to the streets in support on Wednesday. Per the report, his return would be a bitter pill for Riyadh.

Saeed framed the wider danger as a new kind of threat: a new era of radical terrorism by semi-state actors using cheap technologies, which he distinguished from the old chaotic era of Isis and al-Qaida. Iran's investment in the Houthis, he warned, could become a model for threatening navigation elsewhere. Gulf countries, he said, have to reshape and rethink their defences in response to this new model of war.

Some Houthi leaders have offered safe passage for armed groups to leave Taiz. For his part, Saeed said he hoped that now the knife has come to the neck, and the Houthis represent a critical threat, the priority for Yemen's forces would be to come together to defeat them before other demands and guarantees are discussed.