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The confrontation between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis has escalated in recent days to levels unprecedented since it began. Houthi missile attacks have reached deep into the kingdom, striking critical economic infrastructure, from oil facilities to airports. This has raised growing fears about the potential repercussions for the Saudi economy and the future of its development plans, at what appears to be one of the most sensitive and critical moments the kingdom has faced in decades.
The attacks on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh over the past three days, which have left dozens of people dead or wounded, marked a turning point in the confrontation. The threats are no longer confined to the border or conventional military battlefields. They have reached the Saudi interior, targeting highly sensitive infrastructure and economic and civilian centres. This shift leaves the kingdom facing difficult choices about how to contain the escalation and prevent it from spreading, while avoiding an open confrontation whose scope and consequences are difficult to predict.
With the security and economic costs rising, Riyadh is seeking to reassess its options and strengthen its ability to counter Houthi attacks. It is also seeking regional backing and international support for its actions, while expressing some reproach over what it sees as a decline in the support it expected, given the scale of the threats facing the kingdom.
Amid this uncertainty, Israel is one of the countries that could gain a role in new arrangements to confront the Houthis. It could draw on its experience of dealing with the Houthi threat, its intelligence, military and technological capabilities, and its security and defence cooperation with several regional actors involved in Yemen. This raises the central question: to what extent could Israel become involved in Saudi Arabia’s confrontation with the Houthis?
Saudi Arabia’s predicament: A major intelligence failure
The latest escalation, both in Yemen and deep inside Saudi Arabia, reveals clear shortcomings in Saudi intelligence capabilities against the Houthis. These have become more apparent with recent battlefield developments, as Reuters noted in an assessment based on setbacks suffered by Riyadh-backed Yemeni forces on the western coast, alongside Houthi advances around Bab al-Mandab and nearby islands.
The signs of weakness were not confined to the Yemeni front. Recent attacks inside Saudi Arabia exposed major gaps in its defence and early warning systems. These were preceded by limited intelligence capacity to anticipate Houthi movements, assess the scale of their military capabilities and identify their strengths and weaknesses. Together, these shortcomings amplified the impact of the attacks and contributed to heavy losses in a short period.
Riyadh now has a growing need for more advanced and effective intelligence capabilities, including a deeper presence inside Yemen. It needs to build a more accurate picture of Houthi movements, military structures, command-and-control networks, and missile and drone launch sites. The US and Israel stand out as two key actors with advanced intelligence and technological capabilities, as well as experience accumulated over recent years in monitoring Yemen and the Houthi threat. This opens up the possibility of Saudi Arabia making greater use of those capabilities.
Saudi-Israeli contacts through US mediation
In mid-September, as Saudi Arabia’s confrontation with the Houthis escalated, the Hebrew-language newspaper The Jerusalem Post reported Saudi-Israeli talks mediated by US Central Command, or CENTCOM. The talks concerned intelligence support for Riyadh to help it confront escalating Houthi threats in Yemen. A regional diplomat described them as positive.
The contacts followed a meeting between US Central Command commander Admiral Brad Cooper and Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman, attended by several senior Saudi officials. They reflected Washington’s role as a potential intermediary between Riyadh and Tel Aviv on this sensitive issue.
Sources indicate that Saudi Arabia was primarily seeking intelligence support to build a more comprehensive and accurate picture of Houthi deployments and military capabilities, track their movements and positions, and anticipate their possible operational plans. This would give Riyadh greater early warning capacity and allow it to respond more proactively to threats from Yemen.
The newspaper highlighted the intelligence and operational capabilities Israel has demonstrated, particularly at sea and around the Strait of Hormuz, as well as its role in helping the US build a more detailed intelligence picture of Iranian force locations and deployments. These areas of expertise are particularly important to Riyadh given the Houthi threat’s broader connections to security dynamics in the Red Sea, the Gulf and Iran.
From intelligence to special operations: Israel’s presence in Yemen
Israel’s presence in Yemen has grown markedly over the past decade, alongside shifts in the war and the increasing strategic importance of Yemeni sites and islands overlooking the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab. According to reports and studies examining the subject, this presence has developed along two main lines: intelligence and logistical activity, and more direct security and operational activity on Yemeni territory.
Intelligence and surveillance
The first involves intelligence and surveillance activity, especially in the Socotra archipelago and on islands and at strategic sites near the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab. Yemeni and regional reports and studies have described Israeli-Emirati arrangements to establish a surveillance and intelligence-gathering base in the Socotra archipelago. This would take advantage of the island’s geostrategic location to monitor extensive shipping routes between the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, Bab al-Mandab and the Red Sea.
According to these reports, the efforts intensified after a delegation said to include Israeli and Emirati intelligence officers visited the island in August 2020. The visit aimed to inspect proposed sites for surveillance and intelligence-gathering facilities, including locations in the Momi area east of the island and others in its western mountains.
Security companies and special operations
The second, more sensitive aspect involves using private security and military companies to conduct operations on the ground in Yemen. A prominent example is Spear Operations Group, led by Israeli-Hungarian businessman Abraham Golan and staffed by former US military personnel, including some who had served in special forces units.
Its involvement dates back to 2015, when the UAE contracted the group to carry out special security missions in Yemen. According to published investigations and accounts of the programme, the contract was intended to involve targeted killings of Yemeni figures. Golan himself confirmed this in previous statements, saying he had run an assassination programme in Yemen.
According to published information, the contract was worth about $1.5 million a month, with additional bonuses tied to the success of particular operations. The tasks attributed to the group included reconnaissance, surveillance, tracking targets’ movements, targeted killings, the use of light weapons and explosives, the use of target lists and information supplied by the Emiratis, and training Emirati personnel in some special operations and commando tactics.
One of the group’s most prominent known operations was an attempt to target Ansaf Ali Mayo, an Islah party leader in Aden, in December 2015. The operation later shed light on the assassination programme and Abu Dhabi’s use of foreign contractors for highly sensitive missions in Yemen.
This precedent is significant amid the current escalation because it shows that relying on expertise or security networks linked to Israel in Yemen is not an entirely new prospect. There are operational precedents dating back to the early years of the war. The question today is therefore not only whether Israel could directly enter the confrontation with the Houthis, but whether the use of security companies and military contractors could be replicated in a more advanced and less visible form, adapted to the current confrontation and its intelligence and technological needs.
The UAE: A gateway for Israel’s presence in Yemen
The UAE has been one of the main gateways for Israel’s expanding presence in Yemen. It could also serve indirectly as a link in broader security and intelligence arrangements between Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Its security ties with Israel and extensive influence in Yemen make it a background player that is difficult to ignore.
This cooperation strengthened after the Abraham Accords were signed in 2020, then gained further momentum following the Houthi attacks on the UAE in 2022. Since then, defence and security cooperation between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv has expanded noticeably. This includes Israeli systems and technologies for air defence, early warning and countering missile and drone threats, which have become one of the foremost security challenges facing Gulf states.
The UAE’s extensive influence in southern Yemen and on islands and at sites overlooking strategic maritime routes has also created opportunities for Israel to deploy some of its technological and intelligence capabilities. These include electronic intelligence, drones, radar, anti-drone systems, maritime security, data and image analysis, and the protection of critical facilities. In turn, these capabilities serve Emirati interests in Yemen and support Abu Dhabi’s efforts to strengthen its regional influence along maritime routes stretching from the Gulf of Aden and Bab al-Mandab to the Red Sea.
This has created a relationship of mutual interests. The UAE gives Israel access to, and influence over, areas of great importance to Red Sea security and the monitoring of Iranian and Houthi movements. In return, Abu Dhabi gains advanced security, intelligence and technological capabilities that help it protect its interests and consolidate its influence in strategically important areas of Yemen and surrounding waters.
Palestinian leader Mohammed Dahlan, a close adviser to the Emirati leadership, is one of the figures at the heart of this network and has historically been associated with communication channels and security arrangements between Abu Dhabi and Tel Aviv. Published reports and investigations indicate that he played a role in Emirati arrangements to contract Spear Operations Group for a programme of operations and targeted assassinations in Yemen.
The UAE’s importance at this stage therefore extends beyond its past role in facilitating Israel’s presence in Yemen. It could also become a back channel for Israeli security and intelligence cooperation in the battle against the Houthis, without necessarily requiring direct, public Saudi-Israeli cooperation. This gives Riyadh room to manoeuvre on security while reducing the political cost that could arise from the disclosure of direct cooperation with Tel Aviv.
Normalisation out of necessity
The US, Israel and the UAE may find no better moment than the present to advance Saudi-Israeli rapprochement. Saudi Arabia faces a growing intelligence and security predicament in confronting the Houthis, while Israel has intelligence and technological capabilities and operational experience that could help address some of the shortcomings exposed by the latest confrontation. From this perspective, the crisis could become an opportunity to deepen security cooperation between Riyadh and Tel Aviv and integrate both more fully into a US-led regional security system.
In these circumstances, neither Washington nor Tel Aviv appears compelled, at least initially, to demand full political normalisation from Riyadh, the establishment of publicly declared diplomatic relations or the opening of an Israeli embassy in the Saudi capital. A more realistic path may be a gradual, quiet move towards what could be described as “security normalization,” with military and intelligence necessities preceding political and diplomatic decisions.
The process could begin with the provision of Israeli intelligence to Saudi Arabia on Houthi locations, missile and drone systems, and command-and-control networks, with US Central Command, or CENTCOM, acting as an intermediary in exchanging information. This would allow both sides to cooperate without initially establishing a direct, public Saudi-Israeli channel.
These arrangements could later become more institutionalised by connecting Saudi early warning networks, radar and air defence systems to a broader regional security structure involving Israel. This could then allow Israeli defence, security and intelligence companies, or US companies linked to Israeli systems, to provide technical and intelligence services within the Saudi security system.
As this cooperation builds, the political environment surrounding the relationship could gradually change. From a pragmatic perspective, publicly acknowledging military or intelligence contacts between Saudi Arabia and Israel may become less sensitive at a later stage, once cooperation has become a practical reality imposed by security necessities.
In that case, functional and security normalisation could precede political and diplomatic normalisation. A network of shared interests, contacts and defence arrangements would form first, before developing into an openly political relationship. Diplomatic normalisation would then mark the culmination of cooperation already established on the ground, rather than the beginning of the relationship.
Israel, backed by the US and perhaps the UAE, may therefore seek to use the current moment to establish a new arrangement with Riyadh: directly or indirectly expanding Israeli support for Saudi Arabia against the Houthis in exchange for gradual progress in relations between the two countries. This trade-off need not take the explicit form of “war in exchange for normalization,” nor must it quickly lead to full political normalisation. The more immediate objective may be to entrench undeclared security normalisation that, over time, provides a foundation for closer political and diplomatic relations.
A delicate balance
Riyadh ultimately faces a particularly sensitive and complex dilemma. On one hand, a pragmatic approach calls for finding the fastest and most effective ways to resolve the “Houthi headache” and contain a threat that is no longer confined to the kingdom’s southern border. It has gradually become a challenge to Saudi Arabia’s internal security, economic stability and the future of Vision 2030 projects. It is also severely testing the state’s ability to protect its critical facilities and economic centres.
On the other hand, this pragmatism clashes with more complex political, historical and national considerations concerning relations with Israel. These include the potential cost of moving from limited or undeclared security and intelligence cooperation towards broader rapprochement, with the Palestinian cause still carrying political and popular weight in the kingdom and the region.
Caught between security imperatives and immediate pressures on one side, and political and historical considerations on the other, Riyadh appears to face an extremely delicate balance. How can it use the available capabilities and alliances to contain the Houthi threat without allowing its immediate security needs to reshape its long-term strategic choices, or become a source of pressure to take steps it was not prepared to take on the same terms and timetable?
The real test for Saudi policy in the coming period lies not only in containing the Houthi threat, but also in managing this critical moment without becoming trapped in a trade-off between security and politics, or allowing the need for protection against an existing threat to lead to strategic commitments that would later be difficult to reverse. Will the kingdom manage this delicate balance, or will the pressures of confrontation push it towards arrangements whose scope and limits extend beyond the war with the Houthis?