Saudi Arabia Is Running Out of Options

S ometimes, disasters can be clarifying .

Not so long ago, the Houthi warriors who have ruled northern Yemen for the past decade seemed more like a nuisance to Saudi Arabia than a threat.

The Saudi leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was busy glad-handing with tech bros and AI executives, talking up the kingdom’s future as a tourism destination.

Then, on Saturday, a Houthi missile struck two terminals in the Saudi capital’s main airport, sending fire and smoke through the halls and causing ceiling tiles to collapse on terrified passengers.

Pilgrims making their way to Mecca rolled their suitcases through trails of blood.

Although Houthi strikes are not new in the kingdom, Saturday’s attack on the Riyadh airport, which killed 13 people and wounded hundreds, signaled something different.

The Houthis apparently have the ability to evade the kingdom’s dwindling supply of missile interceptors by launching coordinated waves of drone swarms, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.

Saudi Arabia is now a country where the ruler must shuttle among palaces equipped with underground bunkers.

“Total disbelief,” a friend in Riyadh told me.

“I don’t think people thought this could happen to them.” Saudi Arabia cannot realize the crown prince’s dreams of economic and social transformation—or even continue luring foreign investors—if this kind of mayhem becomes routine.

But the Houthis have become ever more intransigent, and the limits of Saudi Arabia’s ability to contain them ever more apparent. [ Read: The Houthis have a rich sense of irony and timing ] “It is starting to look as if there is no diplomatic third way,” Adam Baron, a fellow at the New America Foundation, in Washington, who specializes in Yemen and the Gulf, told me.

“The Saudis will have to try to push the Houthis back militarily or accept a settlement that essentially leaves the Houthis in control of Yemen.” Both of those possibilities are risky.

Experience has taught the Saudis that only a sustained ground offensive will make real headway against the Houthis, who have survived multiple bombing campaigns over the past decade, including last year’s seven-week air war by the United States.

But the Saudis don’t have a ground force equal to the task.