Tehran sees ‌Beijing as potential bridge to Washington

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told Araghchi on Wednesday that Beijing was ready to play a “constructive role” in resolving international disputes and urged Iran and the United States to rebuild their negotiating mechanism and hold substantive consultations on unresolved issues.

Araghchi appeared to attach considerable weight to the talks, writing on X afterwards that decisions made in consultation with Chinese partners would “decide future strategic balance in the region, with immeasurable knock-on effects.”

His visit came ahead of Xi’s planned meeting with Trump in Washington on September 24, where the Iran war and China’s economic ties with Tehran are expected to be among the issues discussed.

China has not publicly offered to mediate directly between Tehran and Washington. But its diplomatic weight, relations with both countries and ties across the Middle East have prompted growing speculation in Iran that Beijing could assume a larger role.

China also has experience mediating between Iran and a major regional rival. In 2023, Beijing brokered an agreement that restored diplomatic relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia after years of hostility.

Ahmad Bakhshayesh-Ardestani, a member of parliament’s National Security Committee, told Fararu that previous mediators such as Qatar and Pakistan had not been completely neutral and had been influenced by Washington. China, he argued, carried greater political weight and could provide stronger guarantees.

Beijing, he said, “can play a different role from previous mediators.”

Moderate daily Shargh made a similar argument, pointing to China’s position as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and its extensive economic relations with Arab states as well as close ties with Tehran.

“This multilayered network of relations allows Beijing to pursue the Hormuz issue on two levels: dialogue with Tehran on the one hand, and engagement with the United States and other powers influencing regional security on the other,” Shargh wrote. “This is the difference that separates Araghchi’s visit to Beijing from an ordinary diplomatic trip.”

Nour News, which is close to Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, said Tehran supported regional peace initiatives involving countries ranging from Pakistan and Qatar to China and Russia, while insisting that such diplomacy did not mean abandoning what it described as Iran’s right to defend itself.

The outlet argued that Beijing, conscious of the Strait of Hormuz’s geopolitical importance, was seeking to improve conditions for diplomacy rather than pressing Tehran to abandon its positions.

Some Iranian media and analysts have suggested China could also help bring Iran and Arab states into a broader regional arrangement rather than confining its role to US-Iran diplomacy.

Wang said Wednesday that China supported dialogue between Iran and regional countries based on respect for territorial sovereignty and national security. He also said the existing Middle East security architecture needed to be reformed and strengthened.

Farda News, which is close to parliament speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf, interpreted Wang’s remarks as an attempt to link the immediate security crisis to a broader mechanism for dialogue between Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Jalal Sadatian, a former director general of the Foreign Ministry’s East Asia Department, told Khabar Online that Tehran should seek Beijing’s help in persuading Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to participate in a wider regional agreement involving the Strait of Hormuz.

International affairs analyst Sabah Zanganeh similarly told ILNA that China could broaden existing diplomatic efforts to include Iran, Iraq and GCC states, rather than limiting them to temporary arrangements between individual countries.

“Such an action is necessary and must certainly go beyond a temporary action between two countries,” he said.

Beijing’s diplomatic backing for Tehran was also visible at the United Nations on Thursday, when China and Russia vetoed a US-backed resolution that would have extended the mandate of a panel of experts monitoring sanctions on Iran. The resolution received 11 votes in favour, two against and two abstentions.

Iranian conservatives portrayed the veto as evidence of a changing international order. Rouydad24, however, cautioned against equating the end of the monitoring mechanism with the lifting of sanctions, noting that Washington retains extensive economic pressure tools outside the UN framework.

For now, Beijing’s public position remains more cautious than some of the expectations being voiced in Iran: China has offered to play a constructive role in diplomacy, but has stopped short of announcing itself as a mediator between Tehran and Washington.

Iranian officials say attacks have knocked out about 230 million cubic metres a day of gas-production capacity, compared with pre-war output of roughly 650 million cubic metres a day. That is just over a third of pre-war production.

Tehran has begun trying to claw some of that capacity back. Officials have said roughly 100 million cubic metres a day could be restored in the coming months, still less than half the capacity reported lost.

But restoring production is only part of the problem. Rystad Energy estimated in April that repairing damage to Iran’s energy infrastructure could cost as much as $19 billion, affecting gas processing, refining and export facilities.

That figure covers physical repairs rather than the wider economic consequences of lost production, disrupted exports and industrial shutdowns. Rystad has also identified shortages of critical equipment and workers as major obstacles to recovery.

Winter could provide the first major test of whether Iran can repair enough of its energy system quickly enough to prevent wartime damage from developing into a broader economic crisis.

A system already under pressure

Iran entered the war with an energy system already struggling to match supply with demand.

The US Energy Information Administration has said sanctions slowed development of the country’s natural-gas infrastructure and that limited storage capacity left Iran poorly equipped to manage seasonal swings in consumption.

In 2022, residential and commercial consumers accounted for 33% of Iran’s gas consumption, industry including petrochemicals for 27%, and electricity generation for another 28%, according to the EIA.

Household and commercial gas consumption rises during winter, while demand from the electricity sector is highest during summer.

The loss of production capacity therefore leaves Tehran having to allocate a reduced supply among households, power stations, petrochemical plants and other industrial users.

The problem is not simply how much gas Iran has underground. Gas reserves alone do not guarantee reliable supply: the country also needs functioning processing plants, pipelines and storage facilities, as well as electricity, maintenance, equipment and skilled workers to keep the system operating.

Damage beyond gas

Reduced gas supplies to power plants could constrain electricity generation, while restrictions on industrial users could hit petrochemicals and energy-intensive sectors such as steel, aluminium and cement.

That means the eventual cost of the damage cannot be measured solely by the reconstruction bill. Lower production can also translate into weaker industrial output and exports at a time when Tehran needs resources to finance repairs.

Iran's broader energy sector is already under severe financial pressure. The war and US naval blockade have sharply curtailed Iranian oil exports, leaving tens of millions of barrels stranded in storage and depriving Tehran of crude export revenue.

The combination creates the risk of a cycle in which energy shortages constrain economic activity while reduced revenues make restoring the energy system more difficult.

A longer-term problem

The war has also magnified structural weaknesses that predate the conflict.

South Pars, which Iran shares with Qatar, is the country's largest non-associated natural-gas field and the centre of its gas industry. But the EIA had already warned before the war that without additional investment Iran could struggle to satisfy domestic demand while meeting its export commitments.

Sanctions have restricted access to foreign investment, technology and specialised equipment, leaving Tehran with an existing infrastructure challenge before US and Israeli attacks added an urgent reconstruction burden.

Rystad said delays in procuring critical equipment were likely to determine how quickly damaged energy infrastructure could be restored, while shortages of workers were another major obstacle.

The winter test

For Tehran, the immediate question is how much of the reported 230 million cubic metres a day of lost gas capacity can be restored before colder weather drives household demand higher. How severe the remaining deficit becomes will depend on demand, further repairs and whether additional infrastructure is damaged.

Tehran may have to balance household heating against industrial production and electricity generation while trying to rebuild infrastructure under sanctions.

Rystad's $19 billion estimate gives a sense of the potential physical repair bill. The larger test is whether Iran can restore enough of the system to prevent damaged gas infrastructure from feeding through into electricity shortages, industrial disruption and further economic pressure.

The coming winter should provide the clearest indication yet.

A girl who was just entering adolescence when the Woman, Life, Freedom protests began is now approaching adulthood. The past four years have been part of the period in which her understanding of society, government and freedom has taken shape.

Women burning their headscarves, nighttime chants from apartment windows, protests in schools and universities, young people knocking turbans off clerics’ heads and protesters standing up to security forces all became part of the memories that accompanied that generation into adulthood.

One of the most enduring changes is visible on the streets.

Many women now appear without mandatory hijab in streets, universities, cafes, shopping centers and on public transport. Some ride bicycles and motorcycles without covering their hair.

The Islamic Republic has responded to this defiance with arrests and summonses, warning text messages, vehicle seizures, restrictions on bank accounts and SIM cards, surveillance cameras and the closure of businesses.

Human rights organizations say tens of thousands of women have faced security or judicial action over their clothing during the past four years.

Abandoning mandatory hijab has become one of the clearest forms of collective disobedience to emerge from 2022, continuing in parts of society despite the security and legal costs.

As the fourth anniversary of Amini’s death approached, a coalition of Iranian Kurdish political groups called for a general strike on September 16, urging people to close shops and markets and stay away from work.

From Mahsa Amini’s death to prison and executions

Mahsa “Jina” Amini, a 22-year-old woman from Saqqez in Iran’s Kordestan province was detained by the morality police in Tehran on September 13, 2022. She was taken to hospital and died three days later.

Her gravestone bears the words: “Dear Jina, you will not die. Your name will become a symbol.”

Her father, Amjad Amini, wrote on September 14, ahead of the fourth anniversary of her death, that her name had “gone beyond our small home.”

The family, he said, was still waiting for the truth to emerge.

“The sealed secret that you and all the loved ones resting in this earth carry with you will not remain hidden forever,” he wrote.

Amini’s name quickly became a rallying cry for protests that began in Saqqez and Kordestan, spread to Tehran and then swept across Iran. The Kurdish slogan “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” and its Persian equivalent, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” became the uprising’s defining chant.

“Death to the dictator,” “This is the final message, the target is the entire system,” “Poverty, corruption, high prices — we will go on until overthrow,” and “Don’t call it a protest, it’s called a revolution” were also heard on the streets, reflecting the political direction the protests had taken.

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Republic itself became the direct targets of many of the slogans.

The uprising also quickly became a global cause. Artists, athletes, academics, human rights activists and political figures around the world voiced support, carrying Amini’s name and the slogan Woman, Life, Freedom far beyond Iran’s borders.

The authorities answered the protests with lethal force, widespread injuries and mass arrests.

Human rights organizations have put the number of people killed in the uprising at more than 550. Many more were wounded, while shotgun pellets blinded dozens of protesters in one or both eyes.

Judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei said in May 2025 that more than 90,000 cases had been opened in connection with the 2022 protests, including cases involving schoolchildren, university students and teachers.

The crackdown continued in the courts after large street gatherings subsided.

Execution, imprisonment, flogging, internal exile, fines, travel bans and restrictions on social rights were among the punishments handed down to protesters and activists linked to the uprising.

Mohsen Shekari, Majidreza Rahnavard, Mohammad Mehdi Karami, Mohammad Hosseini, Saleh Mirhashemi, Saeed Yaghoubi, Majid Kazemi, Milad Zohrevand, Mohammad Ghobadlou, Reza Rasaei, Mojahed Korkor, Mehran Bahramian, Mehrab Abdollazadeh, Abdoljalil Shahbakhsh and Aref Khoshkar were among those executed in cases connected to the 2022 protests.

Others remain at risk of execution.

Among them is Ali Zarei Dozdarehsi, who suffered an eye injury from shotgun pellets during the uprising. After spending time in Germany, he returned to Iran, was arrested and was later sentenced to death by a Revolutionary Court.

Dozens of other protesters have also received death sentences or still have cases under review.

Golrokh Iraee, Nasim Simiyari, Hamid Ghareh-Hassanlou, Farzaneh Ghareh-Hassanlou and Hossein Mohammadi are among hundreds of political prisoners connected to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprising who have faced restrictions in prison, including being denied phone calls, family visits or furlough.

For some, much of the past four years has been spent behind bars, even as Iranian society outside prison has moved through new protests and new changes.

A generation that says ‘We are not going back’

The children and teenagers of 2022 have grown older. Some are now at university, some have entered the workforce and others have left Iran.

What many share is the experience of growing up in a society that lived through one of the most widespread uprisings in the history of the Islamic Republic.

Schools themselves became protest sites in 2022. Students chanted slogans, pulled down images of Islamic Republic officials from classroom walls and girls removed their headscarves.

Universities saw weeks of demonstrations, sit-ins and confrontations with security forces.

For a generation that witnessed those scenes during formative years, politics became tied to the street, the school, the university and everyday life.

German-American political thinker Hannah Arendt linked freedom to the human capacity to begin something new. In her thought, political action emerges among others in the public sphere, and revolutions are among the moments when the possibility of a “new beginning” becomes visible.

For the teenagers of 2022, an experience of that kind unfolded on a mass scale before their eyes: people who often did not know one another chanted the same slogans, supported each other and joined collective action in schools, universities, neighborhoods and streets.

Four years later, this generation lives in a society where repression continues. But the experience of 2022 has not been erased from its political memory.

What Woman, Life, Freedom gave the protests that followed

The 2022 uprising did not topple the Islamic Republic, but it changed the language and horizons of protest.

Woman, Life, Freedom entered Iran’s political vocabulary alongside slogans calling for the overthrow and end of the Islamic Republic.

Women stood at the center of a nationwide uprising. School students emerged as a visible force in protest, and acts of disobedience moved from demonstrations into everyday life.

Some of the behaviors that took shape during those months continued in the years that followed.

Rosa Luxemburg, the Marxist revolutionary and theorist, viewed the defeats of revolutionary movements as links in a historical chain that could help prepare the ground for future victories.

After the failed January 1919 uprising in Berlin, she treated the experience and political understanding gained through defeat as part of a revolutionary movement’s accumulated strength.

The protests that followed 2022 began from a point that Woman, Life, Freedom had already reached. Opposition to the Islamic Republic as a whole, and demands for its overthrow, remained present in later protest slogans.

January 2026 offered one of the clearest examples.

Protests that began over economic grievances rapidly spread across the country, with political slogans against the Islamic Republic becoming a major feature.

Estimates of those killed ranged from the government’s official figure of 3,117 to more than 36,500 in Iran International’s reporting. Tens of thousands were wounded, while around 100,000 people were arrested, summoned or interrogated.

For the generation that had experienced 2022, January 2026 became a second encounter with a nationwide uprising and a bloody crackdown within only a few years.

A generation carrying the memory of several generations

Iran’s teenagers and young adults now stand at the end of a much longer history of protest and repression: women’s protests against compulsory hijab in March 1979, the executions of the 1980s, the July 1999 university dormitory crackdown, the 2009 Green Movement, the protests of January 2018 and the bloody November 2019 crackdown.

Many learned about those events through their families, photographs, books and news reports.

Woman, Life, Freedom and the January 2026 protests, however, belong to their own lived experience.

That distinction has helped shape this generation’s political memory.

Images of protesting women, schoolgirls, young people in the streets, families demanding justice and political prisoners now sit alongside images of those killed, wounded and executed.

A girl who was just entering adolescence in September 2022 is now approaching adulthood carrying memories of Amini, protest, repression and disobedience — memories now layered alongside the stories earlier generations carried from March 1979, the 1980s, July 1999, the Green Movement and November 2019.

Four years after Amini’s death, Woman, Life, Freedom remains part of this generation’s memory: in the school and the street, in experiences of repression and defiance, and in the picture of freedom and Iran’s future that it carries into adulthood.

Above all, this generation has seen that the path to political change in Iran runs through the street, collective action and effective organization.

Kayhan on the hard right, and Shargh and Donya-ye Eghtesad on the pragmatic and pro-reform side of the divide, all reported that the talks in Oman had effectively broken down, leaving Tehran without an immediate way out and its economy exposed to worsening inflation, shortages and a lurching currency.

The meeting had been meant to give Iran a diplomatic opening. Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was due to present maps for a "managed transit corridor" through the Strait of Hormuz, and to seek regional endorsement of an Iran-Oman "phased framework," a temporary joint corridor and mine-clearance plan.

It did not happen. Fars News, affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, reported that the postponement had been a joint decision by Tehran and Muscat, taken at the request of unnamed "certain regional countries."

Behind that phrasing sat a refusal. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain did not attend, and the Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf declined to endorse Iran's transit proposal. They were being asked to back a plan for safe passage through Hormuz at a moment when Iran-aligned Houthi forces were expanding strikes on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline and fortifying coastal artillery at Bab el-Mandeb after taking the port of Mokha.

Washington's position was its own obstacle. It rejected treating the shipping question in isolation, insisting any transit arrangement be tied to broader nuclear concessions. Tehran's answer was that normal shipping requires an immediate halt to US tanker interdictions and the release of $24 billion in frozen Iranian assets under the Islamabad framework. Neither side moved.

The argument in Tehran

With the diplomatic route stalled, the argument inside Iran has turned to force, and the failure in Oman has sharpened it.

Kayhan, other Guards-aligned outlets and figures in the ultraconservative Paydari Front are pressing to abandon proportional retaliation altogether and to strike all Western-aligned shipping if a single Iranian vessel is hit.

They have paired this with a push to treat calls for referendums or ceasefires as treason, to cast economic hardship as an ideological duty, and to demand full withdrawal from the Non-Proliferation Treaty after the IAEA referred Iran to the UN Security Council.

Reformist and moderate figures in the administration argue instead for keeping the channels through Qatar and Oman open and putting economic survival first. But this is a dispute over method, not over the system either camp is defending: one faction would answer the blockade with escalation across the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, the other fears that combining a naval blockade abroad with intensified repression at home would leave Iran isolated on both fronts at once.

That repression is already visible. Police and the Revolutionary Guards have increased street patrols and moved additional forces into Tehran and Isfahan ahead of the anniversary of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests, which began in mid-September.

The economy behind the argument

The deadlock feeds directly into the crisis that produced the talks in the first place.

Point-to-point inflation is nearing 90 percent, and on the open market the rial is at 2.3 million to the dollar. Against a minimum monthly wage now worth about $72, the volatility alone makes household budgeting impossible.

The sharpest damage is in medicine. Container backlogs at Bandar Abbas, Iran's main southern port, have choked domestic pharmaceutical production and caused acute shortages of essential drugs. Out-of-pocket medical costs have more than doubled, pushing low-income households to abandon treatment. In call-ins to Persian-language television abroad, viewers have described selling household belongings to pay for care.

The government's own remedies have added to the strain. It has raised petrol prices and drawn on the central bank's foreign currency reserves, steps that have deepened the erosion of public trust rather than eased it.

The postponement, then, does more than delay a meeting. It removes Tehran's nearest diplomatic exit at a moment when the hardline factions are pressing for wider retaliation across the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and when the economy can least absorb what that would cost. Whatever Iran's rival camps decide, it is private businesses and urban households that will carry it.

Saudi Arabia is taking a harder military posture after efforts to defuse tensions with Tehran stalled. Riyadh had sought de-escalation, wary that a wider conflict could threaten the regional stability on which its economic ambitions depend.

A meeting planned for Monday between Iran and several Persian Gulf states over arrangements for the Strait of Hormuz was postponed after Saudi Arabia requested a delay, amid Riyadh’s growing frustration over attacks by Iran-aligned groups.

That leaves Riyadh with options, none of them ideal.

Saudi Arabia does not want an all-out war. But the Houthis may be testing how long the kingdom can afford to avoid one.

Saad bin Tefla Al Ajmi, Kuwait's former information minister, said Saudi Arabia has so far exercised patience but its military options remain open.

That restraint reflects what the kingdom has at stake. Saudi Arabia has spent years trying to avoid being dragged back into direct conflict with the Houthis, while its economic transformation depends heavily on regional stability.

"There is no stability, there is no development. There is no stability, there is no prosperity," Al Ajmi told Iran International.

But Houthi attacks on Saudi territory and advances along Yemen’s Red Sea coast are making that restraint increasingly difficult to maintain. The Saudi-led coalition said Houthi missile and drone attacks on Khamis Mushait, Abha and Taif on Monday injured 13 civilians.

Al Ajmi believes some of the Houthis' recent territorial gains could be reversed, particularly if Saudi Arabia decides to deploy its overwhelming advantage in air power. He described Houthi forces operating along the flat Tihamah coastal plain as "sitting ducks."

Saudi Arabia led a military intervention against the Houthis beginning in 2015, with direct hostilities largely subsiding after a UN-brokered truce began in 2022. Years of bombardment failed to eliminate the movement, and Riyadh subsequently spent years trying to avoid being pulled back into a full-scale Yemen war.

The question now is whether the Houthis are pushing that restraint too far.

Houthis risk overplaying their hand

The battlefield in Yemen remains fluid. The Houthis have seized Mokha, Dhubab and Perim Island and expanded their control along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, while Saudi-backed government forces have regrouped and vowed to retake lost territory. That leaves open the question of how durable the Houthis’ gains will prove.

"The Houthis fought the Saudis and the Saudi militias for years. They also have a history of being overextended," Alberto Fernandez, a former senior US diplomat, told Iran International.

Fernandez said the Houthis may have pushed too far.

"I think we could see them lose some of the territory that they've gained," he said.

"They're arrogant. Yes, they're motivated by ideology. And when you're motivated by ideology and you're arrogant, you tend to sometimes overextend," Fernandez said.

But the Houthis are also betting on reluctance from both Saudi Arabia and the United States to become drawn more deeply into the conflict.

Saudi Arabia's attempt to remain outside the wider Iran war has already "certainly backfired on them," Fernandez said.

The uncertainty over how much the kingdom can rely on its allies only complicates its options.

Fernandez described the relationship between Washington and Riyadh as increasingly complicated. The Saudis, he said, felt blindsided by the United States launching the Iran war, while Washington in turn felt unsupported by Riyadh.

That strain has become more visible as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sought direct US military action against the Houthis, while Trump declined requests for US strikes and Washington limited its support to intelligence and targeting assistance.

That uncertainty also extends to the Makkah Joint Defense Agreement, signed by Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan on August 7. The pact says an armed attack against any one of the three countries will be regarded as an attack against all.

"So far [it] has turned out to be a paper tiger," Fernandez said, joking that the arrangement appeared to have the equivalent of a health insurance "pre-existing condition clause."

Saudi Arabia looks elsewhere for help

As Washington hesitates, Saudi Arabia is looking elsewhere.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is considering Saudi requests for diplomatic and military support to counter the Houthis, Bloomberg reported Monday, as London grows increasingly concerned about the economic consequences of another expanding front in the Iran war.

The requests come as Britain has backed Saudi Arabia’s right to defend itself against Houthi attacks and stressed the importance of protecting freedom of navigation and global trade through the Red Sea.

The widening conflict has raised the stakes beyond Yemen. Houthi gains along the Red Sea coast and around Bab el-Mandeb, combined with attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure, are putting pressure on westward export routes that have become more important while shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained.

The Houthi offensive and attacks on Saudi energy infrastructure have added further pressure to oil markets already strained by the Iran war. Brent crude climbed above $108 a barrel Monday after attacks shut down Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, a crucial alternative export route while shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains constrained.

"It gets to push up oil prices a little more," Fernandez said.

"For them, every dollar that prices go up, for them they see that as a plus for the regime, putting a little more pressure on the Americans and the Europeans."

The paradox for Tehran is that the greater the disruption caused by the widening conflict, the stronger the incentive may become for governments outside the region to help Saudi Arabia contain the threat.

Iran does not need to control the Houthis

"The broader strategic danger is that Iran does not need to control the Houthis completely to benefit from their actions," Mohamed Fahmy, a journalist and Middle East political analyst, told Iran International.

"It only needs the movement to retain sufficient military capability, autonomy and motivation to pressure critical maritime routes while Tehran maintains distance from the confrontation."

Fahmy cautioned against reducing the Houthis to an Iranian proxy.

They are "an intensely nationalist movement with their own domestic agenda and deeply rooted local interests," he said.

Their relationship with Tehran is nevertheless exceptionally close. Iran has provided weapons, military technology, intelligence and other support, Fahmy said, while the strategic interests of the two sides increasingly converge.

That convergence has become particularly consequential around the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb.

"One of the Houthis' strategic objectives is to exert control over Yemen's Red Sea coast and the northern Red Sea, where they can increasingly influence who is permitted to transit and who is not," Fahmy said.

For Tehran, the Houthis therefore provide an additional source of pressure on its adversaries without requiring direct Iranian military involvement.

But Saudi Arabia's military answer is not straightforward.

Fahmy pointed to Saada, the Houthis' traditional stronghold and geographical heart of their power, which has been repeatedly targeted by Saudi forces since the intervention began in 2015. Despite years of Saudi-led bombardment and military pressure, the Houthis survived and retained significant military capabilities.

"A limited campaign of additional strikes is therefore unlikely to fundamentally diminish their ability to threaten shipping or project power across the Red Sea," Fahmy said.

That leaves Saudi Arabia confronting a difficult choice.

Continued restraint risks allowing the Houthis to impose greater costs on the kingdom and giving Tehran additional leverage. But a renewed military campaign carries risks Riyadh knows well after years of fighting failed to eliminate the movement.

Iran has gained leverage as the war reaches Saudi Arabia. But the more Houthi attacks raise the costs for Riyadh, the greater the risk that Tehran’s leverage provokes the response that ultimately erodes it.