Preparation: The major Saudi offensive will give Trump what he wants Saudi Arabia is planning a large-scale operation against the Houthis in Yemen, to contain the attacks and the naval blockade the group imposed in the Red Sea. The Saudi leadership has already approved the operational plans, under study for weeks. What forced Riyadh to move was the escalation. The Houthis stepped up strikes directly on the Saudi capital, hit Aramco complexes in Riyadh, the port of Yanbu and other strategic targets, and cut Saudi exports. The kingdom had to answer. The Saudi-led coalition intensified bombings in Sanaa, Saada and Taiz. It is still carrying a humiliating defeat from weeks ago, when the Houthis took almost the entire Red Sea coast in less than 72 hours. The Saudis have been meeting the Turks and the Pakistanis and sketching a way to deal with the Houthis. The real shift was the rapprochement with the Emirates, built for this operation. Saudi Arabia and the UAE will put the anti-Houthi factions and local militias they trained back into the field. The ground push stands or falls on those forces. The advance on the ground, with the armored vehicles, will be done by the anti-Houthi Yemeni militias, the official government forces and the southern separatists. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi supplied the weapons and the light armor so that more than 100,000 Yemeni fighters do the physical advance. Saudi Arabia will use its fighters and missiles heavily for the opening strikes and fire support. Drones are already over Yemen, watching and striking. The Saudis and advisers from the Mecca pact want a limited coastal assault, stuck to the littoral, to retake Bab el-Mandeb, at the same time as ground attacks through Al-Bayda, Marib, Taiz and Al-Jawf, pushing the Houthis on several fronts at once. The STC forces were politically beaten by the Saudis months ago, but those militias still answer to Abu Dhabi’s money. Riyadh needs the Emirati go-ahead for these Yemeni fighters to march north and take the front line against the Houthis. We are talking about tens of thousands of men. The ports and islands are the other point where the UAE is indispensable. They built and hold the military infrastructure along the islands and ports of southern Yemen, on the Gulf of Aden. Without those bases and runways, the coalition cannot resupply the armor or run the coastal assault on Bab el-Mandeb. A ground campaign on this scale burns billions in fuel, ammunition, armor maintenance and militia pay. Emirati money takes part of that off Riyadh. The Saudis will try to hold the air and the sea. F-15s, Typhoons and missile systems do the bombing of Houthi positions, while regular Saudi troops stay on the border and inside the kingdom, intercepting missiles and drones and covering the critical sites. Nothing new there. It is what they have already been doing, without much result. I expect serious losses in the Saudi asset park in this round. Read more: global21.substack.com/p/prep…