The future of Middle Eastern security should be managed by regional powers, not external meddling.

Saudi Arabia officially launched its 15-country Red Sea maritime alliance on August 13, marking the latest shift in the Middle East toward regionally-led security frameworks. While the Multinational Maritime Defense Alliance is unlikely to fully prevent the Yemen-based Houthi movement (Ansar Allah) from disrupting Red Sea shipping via the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, it does represent a key moment for a region undergoing substantial geopolitical shifts. The most important aspect of this development is simple: The region, not the United States, should hold primary responsibility for its security.

Reports of the maritime alliance first emerged in late July. Riyadh then released a statement confirming its effort to establish the pact on July 30. The Houthis had announced a blockade of Saudi shipping in the Red Sea just days earlier, on July 21, citing the kingdom’s ongoing land, sea, and air blockade of Yemeni territory under its control. That blockade has lasted since Saudi Arabia entered the Yemeni civil war in 2015, leading a coalition of states against the Houthis as it fought the Internationally Recognized Government of Yemen (IRG) for control of the country. 

That war has gone poorly for Saudi Arabia and its one-time ally in the conflict, the United Arab Emirates, as they backed different factions while failing to dislodge the Houthis. A largely informal 2022 truce helped keep the peace along the frontlines, albeit with factional infighting, with the IRG leading the Saudis to force the Emiratis out of Yemen while sidelining or co-opting their local proxies in late 2025 and early 2026. This recent consolidation, alongside the regional conflict between the United States and Israel, on the one hand, and Iran and its “Axis of Resistance” allies on the other, helped foster conditions in Yemen for today’s renewed fighting. 

Before the truce, the Houthis struck Arab states across the Gulf and broader West Asia, significantly improving their capabilities in recent years with the support of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). That support allowed the Houthis to hit energy infrastructure and other civilian targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, eventually leading to Houthi strikes on Israel in retaliation for its war in Gaza. The latter event involved strikes on Red Sea shipping, meant to pressure Israel economically. In joining what had already become a regional conflict in late 2023, the Houthis took a major step as an interstate actor capable and willing to engage in conflicts beyond Yemen.

Subsequent US military operations to degrade the group, including Operation Rough Rider between March and May 2026, harmed the group but failed to seriously limit their capabilities, instead killing and injuring hundreds of Yemeni civilians and migrants from the Horn of Africa. Still, US President Donald Trump seemed convinced that this operation taught the group a lesson: don’t interfere in US wars.  

Instead, that moment taught the Houthis that they can, and should, use their military capabilities to advance their interests within Yemen and abroad. In this regard, the group hopes to increase its domestic standing by pushing back against the United States and its regional allies in support of Iran and its allies, efforts that will help distract from the economic malaise impacting areas under its control and its inability to govern effectively. In return, Iran will attempt to expand its support for the group, although it faces limitations given its war of survival against the United States and Israel. 

It is within this context that Saudi Arabia established the maritime coalition alongside its tripartite military alliance with Turkey and Pakistan in recent weeks. Both are significant to broader regional security considerations, highlighting important shifts in how regional officials view the Middle East’s long-running US security architecture. That structure long ago traded American security guarantees for preferential agreements on energy products and a generally stable global energy market.

The regional conflict drives this shift, further affirming for Middle Eastern leaders that only regional states can guarantee their security. This notion has always been true, but reluctance to rock the boat in a historically unstable region prevented it. To be sure, US arms sales and other guarantees aimed at keeping regional states firmly in the American sphere of influence have played a significant role in blunting any such indigenous effort. Great power competition has driven this approach, as Washington has refused to cede ground to rivals in Beijing and Moscow. 

Yet, paradoxically, the US security framework fostered today’s shifts. American overreach has long plagued the Middle East, even as West Asian states have used the moral hazard of Washington’s security guarantees to pursue dangerous policies against their neighbors for decades. Now, these same states find themselves stuck in the middle of a regional war of choice on the part of the United States and Israel that they did not ask for and do not want, with no clear end in sight as Iranian missiles and drones rain down on their critical civilian infrastructure. The irony speaks for itself. 

An adapted strategy, therefore, should not surprise anyone. Rather, it should serve as a lesson to officials in Washington: an unabashedly aggressive gunboat diplomacy and massive, indefinite military deployments yield diminishing returns and foster strategic defeats. As such, this regional war is merely a symptom of the broader, failed US strategy backstopping it. Saudi Arabia and other regional states are merely reading the tea leaves and acting accordingly.

An American military pullout from the region has been necessary for decades but did not have to develop in such disastrous fashion for both US credibility and death across the Middle East. While the Gulf monarchies are not immediately dropping the United States as their preferred security partner anytime soon, their shift from full reliance on Washington should serve as a lesson, offering an opportunity to finally step back from adventurism in the Middle East that regularly results in death, destruction, and strategic disaster on the US taxpayer’s dime. Doing so cannot happen soon enough. 

About the Author: Alexander Langlois

Alexander Langlois is a foreign policy analyst, the senior editor at DAWN, and a contributing fellow at Defense Priorities. He is focused on the geopolitics of the Levant and the broader dynamics of West Asia. Langlois holds an MA in International Affairs from American University. He has written for various outlets, including The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Sada, the Atlantic Council’s MENASource, the Lowy Institute, the Gulf International Forum, The New Arab, The Nation, and Inkstick. Follow him on X: @langloisajl.

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