Washington Examiner
Two alliances just failed Saudi Arabia. Then they called Trump
By Emzari Gelashvili
Published September 15, 2026 6:00 am ET
Five weeks ago, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Turkey signed the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement. An armed attack on one, the text says, is an attack on all. Commentators called it an Islamic NATO.
This week it was tested. On Sept. 8, Houthi missiles and drones hit four Saudi cities, wounding 73 civilians and halting operations at energy facilities. Two days later, the Houthis took Mokha, their largest territorial gain since the 2022 truce. On Friday, they took Dhubab and crossed to Perim, the island splitting the Bab el-Mandeb at its narrowest point. A military official told AFP they also took Greater and Lesser Hanish, leaving all four of the strait’s strategic islands in their hands, and that the takeover of the Bab el-Mandeb was complete. Tareq Saleh, deputy chairman of Yemen’s Presidential Leadership Council, acknowledged losing Mokha and said Iran had planned and backed the attack. The United Nations counted at least 46,000 people displaced.
Roughly a tenth of the world’s seaborne trade and a third of Europe’s imports cross that strait, and Saudi Arabia has leaned on it as traffic through Hormuz has collapsed — IMF PortWatch counted six transits there on Sept. 6 against a pre-crisis norm of near 85 a day. Brent settled near $108 on Thursday; American diesel passed $6 a gallon.
STOP CALLING IT SUNNI NATO: THE SAUDIS AREN’T DITCHING AMERICA — THEY’RE JUST BUYING INSURANCE
I started drafting this when Mokha had fallen, and Perim had not, and wrote that at that pace the Houthis would need two more days and nights to reach the strait. That was wrong; it took about one. The rest of what I wrote that morning held — only the clock was off, and in the direction that flatters nobody. I record the error rather than the forecast, because the direction of travel was easy to read off a map. Harder to read was the rest of the page. In the same 48 hours, the American and European press were consumed by Trump’s Dallas promise of a $5,000 dividend to every adult citizen if Republicans hold both chambers of Congress, and by a joint statement from eight governments welcoming Britain’s ban on imports from Israeli settlements. Three of those signatories were the Mecca partners. One had been under missile fire the day before, would lose a port the day after, and the strait the day after that.
So what did the pact produce?
The night the missiles landed, Pakistan’s defense minister said a spillover from Yemen would mean “definitely the Mecca agreement will become operational.” Two days later, his foreign ministry said no military response was under discussion: “When time comes (we) will act under the agreement.” Turkey condemned the attacks in the strongest terms. Pakistani sources told Reuters their country would not enter Yemen at all.
What the pact delivered was a courier. Pakistan carried Riyadh’s message to Tehran, asking it to rein in the Houthis. Tehran’s reply: “Iran does not control the Houthis.” Then, on Friday, Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, posted on X: “Congratulations on this resounding victory, Ansar Allah.” Iran’s first vice president welcomed “the victories of the heroic nation of Yemen.” Reuters, citing five Yemeni military sources and intercepted communications, reported that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards directed the coastal campaign; Tehran denies it.
A government that says it does not control the Houthis does not usually congratulate them by name.
Note what Riyadh did once the pact had answered. On Thursday, as Mokha fell, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called President Trump twice — the second time to ask for American strikes, Axios first reported, with Reuters citing three sources and CBS two of its own. Trump declined. His directive is to keep American forces on Iran and Hormuz rather than open a second front; Washington offered intelligence sharing and targeting support instead, and Adm. Brad Cooper, who leads U.S. Central Command, flew to the kingdom for what Axios called urgent meetings. In July, Riyadh had said it could handle the Houthis alone.
The same day, the kingdom was hit from the other direction. Its foreign ministry said the East-West oil pipeline — built to carry crude to the Red Sea and bypass Hormuz — was struck by drones launched from Iraq and shut as a precaution. Riyadh said it would not respond “at this stage,” at the request of Iraq’s prime minister, who confirmed the launches came from Iraqi territory. Trump said Saturday that Iran was “probably” behind it.
Count the week. Saudi Arabia answered the two fronts differently. It bombed Yemen hard — by the Houthis’ own count roughly 40 strikes in a day across four provinces as Mokha fell, then 129 more over the following 48 hours across seven provinces, flown by F-15s and Typhoons. It hit Mokha’s airport, struck the Houthi stronghold at Saada, and ordered reinforcements up from Aden. None of it stopped the advance. On Friday another projectile hit Jazan, and the Houthis said they had struck the Sharurah base in southern Saudi Arabia. Against the Iraqi launchers it did nothing at all. And from its treaty allies it got a courier.
Now read the Houthis’ own guest list. Their declared blockade names one target: shipping linked to Saudi Arabia. Everything else, their spokesman said Friday, can pass. Windward, a maritime intelligence firm, found Chinese-affiliated ships moving under apparent de facto immunity — a pattern that is not new. When Marco Rubio designated the Houthis a foreign terrorist organization in March 2025, his own statement noted the group was sparing Chinese-flagged vessels while targeting American and allied ones.
On Saturday, in Dublin, the president described the arrangement himself. “The Houthis called us, and they don’t want to fight with us,” Trump told reporters. They “would much prefer not having us involved, and they’re letting most ships go through.” Then: “It’s just one country that they’re not too happy with, and we’ll get that straightened out.” His administration, he said, has “had discussions” with the Houthis. He did not say when.
The Houthis have since supplied the other half of the sentence. As Trump spoke, they were warning against outside intervention and threatening to close the Bab el-Mandeb altogether. A senior Houthi figure said they were ready to fight on three fronts — Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni government, and any foreign power that joins them. Stay out and most ships sail; come in and nobody does.
That is the guest list, read back by its beneficiary. A group that fires at everything is a menace. A group that fires at one country and waves the rest through is running a policy — and it does not need to close the strait to make it useful. It only needs to decide who gets through. Someone is making those choices, and Sanaa is not making them alone.
The pact has not dissolved, and Pakistan has troops and air defenses inside the kingdom. Saudi Arabia is not alone at home. It is alone in Yemen. A treaty can promise collective defense; it cannot put soldiers on someone else’s coastline.
NATO owed Riyadh nothing here, and nobody pretended otherwise. But the broader American-led security network faced its own version of the same test, and the answers rhyme. In the opening weeks of the war, Spain closed the Rota and Morón bases to operations against Iran; Britain refused Diego Garcia before relenting, and then only for limited defensive purposes; several allies declined Trump’s call to send warships to help secure Hormuz.
Set the two records side by side. The new Islamic pact produced statements, warnings, and a promise to act later. Some of America’s oldest allies produced restrictions on American access. What has actually fought Iran’s network this year is narrower than either: on July 29, joint U.S. and Saudi strikes on Iran-backed militias in Iraq killed at least 20 fighters, six Iranian advisers, and at least one Houthi official.
Which brings us to a detail worth more than any treaty text. A senior Yemeni military official told the Associated Press his government was stunned that Saudi Arabia never mounted the kind of air campaign that might have stopped the Houthis short of Mokha, a town within 50 miles of the strait. His assessment was that Riyadh had not received an American green light for one. If he is right, Saudi Arabia’s ability to defend its own coastline ran through a decision made in Washington — and Washington had not made it.
Two governments called Washington this week. One was a treaty partner asking for direct U.S. strikes on a group Washington has designated as a terrorist organization, and was told no. The other was that group, asking not to be hit, and heard the president say in public that it would all work out “fine and dandy.”
THE MIDDLE EAST JUST BUILT ITS OWN NATO — AND SIGNED AMERICA’S EXIT TICKET
None of that has to be read as weakness. Declining a second front keeps American forces on Hormuz, keeps the Houthis out of a fight with Washington, and leaves both chokepoints under the protection of the only navy with the global reach to reopen them — with Xi Jinping due in Washington on Sept. 24. That is a case worth making on its own, and I intend to make it.
It changes nothing about this week. Treaties are cheap. Instruments are not. Riyadh now knows which one it bought, and which number it dials when the first one fails — and the rest of the world watched it find out.
Emzari Gelashvili is a San Francisco–based geopolitical analyst and columnist who monitors Russian-language media. From 1996 to 2008, he served as a senior official across Georgia’s Ministry of State Security, Ministry of Defense, and Ministry of Internal Affairs, with a counterintelligence career focused on Russian and Iranian intelligence operations, and he was a member of the Georgian Parliament from 2008 to 2012. His work appears in Newsweek, the Hill, the Washington Examiner, RealClearDefense, and RealClearWorld, and at emzargelashvili.substack.com.
Tag:
Diplomacy
Houthis
Iran
NATO
Pakistan
Saudi Arabia
Trump Administration
Turkey
Yemen
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