By Sajad Abedi, Sirous Amerian and Khalid Al Abri 

After two years of the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) military campaign in Yemen, which was intended to bring a ‘swift’ end to the Shiia Houthi rebellion, no end to the conflict appears to be on the horizon. Saudi Arabia is suffering an increase in troop casualties both in Yemen and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) itself through Houthi rocket attacks and cross-border skirmishes. This essay will argue that the military campaign in Yemen has created further security challenges for the Saudi Kingdom, where unforeseen factors brought on by the intervention may unite certain sections of Saudi society to openly call for regime change.

The essay will be comprised of two sections. The first will begin with a brief overview of the Yemeni conflict and the formation of the Saudi-led intervention. A discussion on the domestic objectives of the military campaign aimed to achieve for the KSA will follow, where the authors will highlight how two main objectives, namely bonding a divided nation, and uniting a fractured royal family, are entwined together to meet one over-arching goal; that is to legitimize King Salman’s authority to rule based on a tribal tradition where loyalty to leadership is gained through a demonstration of military skill on the battlefield (Stensile, 2016).

The second section will discuss two pressing security concerns for Saudi security authorities. The essay will begin by discussing the potential of the Shiite minorities in the southern and eastern region of the kingdom rising up against the Saudi authorities in an effort to claim equal rights from the KSA. The report will then highlight how the intervention has empowered Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to rally like-minded Islamists within Saudi Arabia against the next generation of the Al-Saud monarchy. This report will demonstrate that the military intervention in Yemen has the potential of having the opposite effect that Saudi authorities had planned initially. So Instead of strengthening the position of the young Crown Prince who is effectively in charge of running the campaign, the lack of an apparent victory, and pressure on Saudi economy, has casted doubts on the country’s new leadership. A recent leak of e-mails (Swisher & Hirst 2017)1 showing Mohammad Bin Salman’s desire to leave the Yemen conflict and even giving the go ahead to negotiate with Iran, could be a signal that the Saudi goals of entering Yemen are out of reach and they don’t want to be hurt any further.