Yemen's Saudi-backed government launched what it termed a "peaceful operation" on Friday to retake military positions seized by UAE-backed southern separatists in Hadramout province. The Southern Transitional Council immediately reported seven Saudi airstrikes targeting their positions, including the strategically significant Al-Khash'a military camp. The contradiction between the government's stated intentions and the military action that followed marks the most direct confrontation yet between the two Gulf powers whose forces have nominally fought on the same side since 2015.
The escalation follows weeks of mounting tension after the STC's December 2025 offensive, during which the separatist force seized control of both Hadramout and Al-Mahra provinces—Yemen's resource-rich eastern governorates stretching along the Arabian Sea coast—and refused Saudi demands to withdraw. What was once an anti-Houthi coalition has now fractured into open combat, with the alliance's two principal sponsors directing fire at each other's proxies rather than their declared common enemy.
The structural logic of divergence
The current clashes are not aberrations but the inevitable expression of incompatible strategic objectives that were papered over during the early years of Yemen's war. Saudi Arabia's primary security imperative in Yemen has consistently been defensive: establishing a stable buffer state along its southern border to prevent militant infiltration and Iranian influence. This requires, at minimum, a functioning central government capable of exerting authority across Yemen's territory, even if that government remains dependent on Riyadh.
The UAE's objectives, by contrast, are projective and maritime. Abu Dhabi's intervention in Yemen was never primarily about the Saudi border. Instead, the Emirates seeks to control critical infrastructure along Yemen's southern coastline—particularly the ports of Aden and Mukalla—to secure commercial shipping routes and project military power across the Bab el-Mandeb strait into the Horn of Africa. This strategic goal is best served not by a unified Yemen under a Saudi-aligned government in Sana'a or Aden, but by a partitioned south where the UAE can cultivate a dependent client entity like the STC. These objectives cannot coexist. Every gain for the STC's separatist project represents a corresponding loss for Saudi Arabia's vision of a unified, governable Yemen.
The crisis at Aden International Airport crystallizes this structural incompatibility. Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Yemen accused STC leader Aidarus al-Zubaidi of personally blocking a Saudi diplomatic delegation's aircraft from landing. The STC responded by claiming Saudi Arabia had imposed an air blockade on Aden. Both narratives reflect the same underlying reality: neither side recognizes the other's authority over what should be shared strategic infrastructure.
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Implications for Yemen's future
The prospect of a unified Yemeni state, already remote after a decade of civil war, has receded further. The conflict is no longer a straightforward confrontation between the internationally recognized government and Houthi rebels, but a three-way competition among the Houthis in the north, a Saudi-backed government struggling to assert authority, and a UAE-backed separatist project controlling the strategic south. Each faction answers to external sponsors with conflicting visions for Yemen's political future.
The violence in Hadramout demonstrates that these contradictions can no longer be managed through diplomatic coordination or shared anti-Houthi rhetoric. The structural logic that drove Saudi Arabia and the UAE into partnership in 2015—opposition to Iranian influence and support for Yemen's displaced government—has been overtaken by the deeper logic of their divergent regional strategies. What began as a coalition of convenience has collapsed into a proxy confrontation, with Yemen's population bearing the cost of great power competition dressed in the language of Yemeni political disputes.
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