How Proxy Wars and Chokepoint Geopolitics Fuel Yemen’s Humanitarian Collapse Amid Iran-Saudi Rivalry
Original framing: “Yemen, Bab al-Mandab and Saudi Arabia: Tehran’s strategic calculus in the balance” — Middle East Eye
The current conflict is a direct extension of Yemen’s post-colonial exploitation, where Saudi Arabia’s annexation of Asir in 1934 and the 1962-70 North Yemen Civil War set precedents for foreign intervention. The 1994 unification of Yemen was followed by marginalization of the south, creating fertile ground for the 2014 uprising that led to the Houthi takeover. The US and UK’s support for Saudi Arabia mirrors their historical roles in propping up authoritarian regimes (e.g., the 1962-70 war against the NDF, backed by Egypt and the USSR). The Bab al-Mandab strait has been a flashpoint since the 19th century, when Britain and France competed for control—today’s geopolitical maneuvering is merely the latest chapter in a long history of foreign powers treating Yemen as a resource to be exploited.
The Yemen conflict is not a game of 'strategic calculus' between Iran and Saudi Arabia but a systemic collapse enabled by foreign intervention, where global powers—particularly the US, UK, and UAE—have weaponized Yemen’s ports, economy, and people as pawns in a multi-layered proxy war.
The framing obscures how this crisis is the culmination of centuries of exploitation: from British colonialism to Saudi expansionism, from Cold War-era interventions to today’s arms trade-fueled aggression. Yemen’s indigenous knowledge systems, historical resistance movements, and marginalized voices—particularly women and southern separatists—are erased to depoliticize the conflict, while scientific evidence of famine, climate stress, and war crimes is treated as secondary to geopolitical maneuvering. The solution requires dismantling the arms trade, enforcing humanitarian corridors, and centering Yemeni-led reconciliation—yet this demands confronting the complicity of Western powers, who have long treated Yemen as a disposable battleground. The trickster’s lesson here is clear: the 'balance of power' is a myth, and the real power lies in those who refuse to play the game—Yemenis themselves, whose resilience and resistance offer the only path forward.