Riyadh is seeking to avoid getting dragged back into a bloody clash with the Yemeni militia, which has sowed chaos by attacking shipping and firing missiles at Israel.
After Iran-backed rebels took over the capital of Yemen in 2014, a 30-year-old Saudi prince named Mohammed bin Salman spearheaded a military intervention to rout them.
With American assistance and weapons, Saudi pilots embarked on a bombing campaign called Operation Decisive Storm inside Yemen, the mountainous nation on their southern border. Officials expected to swiftly defeat the rebels, a ragtag tribal militia known as the Houthis.
Instead, the prince’s forces spent years mired in a conflict that splintered into fighting between multiple armed groups, drained billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s coffers and helped plunge Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Hundreds of thousands of people died from violence, hunger and unchecked disease.
Saudi Arabia and its main partner, the United Arab Emirates, eventually scaled back their military involvement — partly because of American pressure — and Saudi officials entered peace talks with the Houthis, who secured control of northern Yemen.
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