Western powers want Saudi Arabia to pump more oil to ease surging prices driven by the Ukraine war, but the kingdom has its own demand: support for its war in Yemen.
Seven years after a Saudi-led coalition launched its first air strikes against Yemen's Huthi rebels, the conflict in the Arab world's poorest country shows no signs of abating.
Washington, a close Riyadh ally, withdrew its support for the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen in early 2021 and signalled a strategic "pivot to Asia". Saudi Arabia turned up the heat this week, warning it "will not incur any responsibility" for global crude shortages in light of recent attacks by the Yemeni insurgents on its oil facilities.
The intervention has stopped the Huthis' advances in the south and east of the country but has been unable to push them out of the north, including the capital Sanaa, which the insurgents seized in 2014. According to Abdulghani al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, the coalition's intervention has "exhausted the military capability of all parties to the conflict, including its allies, by turning it into a war of attrition".The Huthis have often launched missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia and, more recently, has begun to do so against the United Arab Emirates.