Hours after Israel's attacks on several targets in Yemen, including the country's international airport in Sanaa, Oman brokered a ceasefire between the US and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, which raises the question: Is the conflict in the Red Sea and with Israel coming to an end?
Late Tuesday evening, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said on X that "following recent discussions and contacts... with the aim of de-escalation, efforts have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides".
The two sides are the US and the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which is designated a terror organization by the US and others.
"Neither side will target the other... ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping" in the Red Sea, Albusaidi added in his statement.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that the Houthis had "capitulated" and "announced to us … that they don't want to fight anymore," and that the United States would "take their word."
The Houthis commented on the agreement with the US, that their attacks on Israel, which they are going to continue.
The announcement came only hours after Israeli fighter jets had destroyed the country's international airport in Sanaa, and a day after Israel had attacked dozens of targets along the Yemeni coast, in particular facilities in the port of Hodeida, according to the Israeli military's post on X.
“Despite their military superiority, the US and its allies have not seriously degraded the capability of the Houthis to launch attacks, nor their ability to resupply their arsenals," Fabian Hinz, a military analyst from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) wrote in December 2024.
According to Hinz, the Houthis now have extremely powerful missiles at their disposal. They can therefore be fired from deep inside the country. The country's mountainous terrain further helps to conceal the Houthi's operations from enemy surveillance.
Yemen's communications infrastructure is extremely rudimentary. According to an analysis by the Yemeni think tank Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, the Houthi militia is taking advantage of this very fact. It largely refrains from using digital communication. This renders the monitoring of the Houthis' internal communication difficult for their military opponents.
It will be difficult to end the conflict through air strikes, observers agree. Above all, according to many experts, the Houthis are unlikely to be persuaded to end their attacks on Israel and international shipping in the Red Sea in this way.
The question is therefore whether Israel or the US could also launch a ground offensive in Yemen?
In view of the rather unsuccessful military fight of the international coalition, led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis between 2015 and 2023, however, this is hardly an appealing option. At the time, the Saudi-led coalition was "unable to break through the Houthis' defensive positions in the Yemeni mountains in any significant way," according to several observors.
A ground offensive would be a "suicide mission" that could end in a similar way to the international community's involvement in Afghanistan, one observer said adding "of course, people in Washington, Berlin, Brussels and other Western capitals want to avoid such a scenario which is another reason why a ground offensive is out of the question."