The Last Road to Taiz

The Houthis now hold the junction that fed Taiz City from Aden, taken while Saudi and government aircraft were striking their supply lines and a day after their attacks on the road were reported as failing. Yemen's government answered with a declared offensive on every front, made from Saudi Arabia, and nothing on the ground yet matches it. Whether the war is being lost in the air or on the ground is the question the next two weeks will answer.

On Sunday Houthi fighters moved east out of Bani Omar, took al Safiyah and al Mansora and then entered al Turbah, a town south of Taiz where the two main roads to Aden meet. Yemeni sources say the government commander responsible for the area had already left for Aden. Geolocated imagery put the Houthis in the town the same day.

The junction matters more than its size. Taiz has been under Houthi siege for more than a decade, and its defenders have depended on the roads south to the government's interim capital for reinforcement and resupply. With al Turbah gone, supplies to the city's front lines have to find another way in. The same roads were also the garrison's way out.

Saturday had looked different. Houthi attacks on the city's eastern and western flanks were reported as beaten back, and the government's military spokesman, who had counted at least 71 airstrikes across the governorate, described the Houthi forces there as starved of supplies. At least 13 strikes hit Sanaa the same day, aimed at missile and drone commanders. This was the third attempt on the road in under a fortnight, after 23 September and 1 October.

Presidential Leadership Council chairman Rashad al-Alimi responded by announcing an operation to recover all remaining Houthi territory and appealing for international support. He spoke from Saudi Arabia. By Sunday afternoon no government offensive action had been observed anywhere.

The pressure ran the other way across the border. A fire burned at the Aramco refinery in Riyadh on Saturday, its cause never stated. On Sunday an independent analyst reported a fire near a pumping station at Khurais on the East-West Pipeline, which had restarted only on 22 September. The Houthis claimed both without dates or evidence. If Khurais was struck, it would be the first attack there since 2019.

Two readings fit what happened, and the record does not yet choose between them. In one, Saudi airpower is losing the contest it was brought into, since a strike campaign aimed at Houthi logistics and commanders coincided with the loss of the road and fires at two oil sites. In the other, the aircraft were never the problem. Al Turbah fell after its commander left, and the strike campaign has produced no measure of its own effect in either direction. Nobody has published strike assessments, Houthi launch rates or a Saudi account of the refinery fire.

What would separate them is close at hand. A government force that retakes the junction or opens the road within two weeks puts the weakness on the ground and nowhere else. If the declared offensive is still unobserved by mid-October while the strikes continue, the gap between what Riyadh's partners announce and what they can do becomes the story of Yemen's war.