Ansar Allah (mouvement houthi) — Les États-Unis dans le Golfe

Synthèse

From November 2023 the Houthi movement attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden; the United States led a coalition naval response from December 2023 and conducted strikes in Yemen from January 2024, and a further campaign in March–May 2025 that ended with an Oman-mediated understanding under which the two sides stopped targeting each other. The movement did not renounce action against other parties. Through the 2026 war it engaged selectively against Israel and, from July, opened a campaign against Saudi shipping and territory; the United States Fifth Fleet continues to command the coalition structures whose water the movement now sits beside, and United States officials were reported in September 2026 to have offered Saudi Arabia intelligence support while declining direct strikes on the Houthis. No strike by either party on the other has been recorded since May 2025.

Pourquoi c’est important

Whether the Bab el-Mandeb advance becomes a coalition problem rather than a Saudi one turns on this relationship. The movement has kept Saudi shipping as its declared exception and left everyone else's alone; the United States has kept its war to Iran and left Yemen alone. Either boundary failing would change what the outlet of the Hormuz bypass depends on.

Accords

• Oman-mediated United States–Houthi understanding · signé le 2025-05

  Announced by Oman as a mutual undertaking not to target each other, including United States vessels in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb. No text published; it did not cover the movement's action against other parties.

Événements associés

• Le mouvement houthi impose un blocus à la navigation à destination et en provenance des ports saoudiens Juil. 2026

  Maritime · Energy

• Une alliance multinationale de défense maritime dirigée par l’Arabie saoudite est proclamée à Riyad 30 juil. 2026

  Maritime · Diplomatic

• Le mouvement houthi prend la côte sud de la mer Rouge et atteint Bab el-Mandeb 10 – 11 sept. 2026

  Territorial change · Maritime

Organisations

Structures par lesquelles cette relation s’exerce. Elles n’y sont pas parties — les parties sont les deux acteurs ci-dessus.

Lieux

Repères que ce module publie déjà. Cette fiche n’ajoute aucune précision géographique qui lui soit propre.

Ce qui reste inconnu

• The two parties characterise the 2023–25 campaign incompatibly — the movement as action against shipping linked to Israel and its supporters, the United States (which designated the movement a foreign terrorist organisation in 2025) as attacks on international shipping. Vigil adopts neither characterisation.
• The content of the May 2025 understanding is known only from Oman's announcement and the parties' statements; whether it covers the coalition task forces as such is not established.
• The reported September 2026 United States decision not to strike the Houthis rests on unnamed officials; no government has published it.

Lectures que les éléments permettent aussi

• The absence of a United States strike since May 2025 is consistent with an observed understanding, with a deliberate boundary around the Iran war, and with a lack of occasion; the record does not choose.

Figure ici parce que l’évaluation propre à la fiche n’est pas la seule que ses sources permettent — et non comme une réserve sur l’évaluation ci-dessus.