Saudi Arabia's Bright Shiny Objects
The Saudi leadership has realized its $1.25 trillion giga-projects are vulnerable to attack, throwing the regime into the arms of... the Houthis?!
Saudi Arabia has lots of new bright shiny objects, and these bright shiny objects have been valued at around $1.3 trillion. They include many outlandish structures — a linear city called The Line, 500 meters high, 200 meters wide and, if it goes to plan, 170 km long by 2045; a vast cube structure called the Mukaab, 400 meters in width, length and height, and big enough to fit inside it “20 Empire State Buildings”, according to the marketing; and a green city called King Salman Park, six times bigger than New York’s Central Park and the planned final resting place of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi. These ‘giga-projects’ — which are at the heart of the ‘Vision 2030’ economic reform plan — are particularly focused on the Red Sea region, from the Neom fantasyland near Jordan, down to the mountains of Abha near Yemen.
Moreover, these bright shiny objects embody the hubristic dreams of a brash young ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to put his country’s controversial radical religious past behind it to become a pioneer in AI technology and green industries, positioning itself as a global tech hub at the nexus of Europe, Africa and Asia. With these bright shiny objects, the Saudi regime will attract enough political and financial support from East and West to never have to worry again about pesky political demands from a population that took the trouble to make them during the Arab Spring uprisings.
But these bright shiny objects are also attracting the wrong kind of attention from some quarters. The Israeli religious right has taken to publicizing their expansionist fever dreams of seizing territory for a Greater Israel that includes not just Sinai, Damascus and, somewhat ambitiously, Baghdad, but the northwest corner of Saudi Arabia, where the futuristic city Neom, including The Line, is under construction.
More worrying, however, the Houthi movement in Yemen has taken to issuing periodic threats to target the projects if Saudi Arabia doesn’t step up to safeguard their regime in Sanaa. Yes, you read that right: the ragtag army of mountain rebels who seized power in 2014 and Saudi Arabia spent eight years trying to dislodge from power — they are turning the screws on Riyadh to keep the Saudis in line, and in the best tradition of ancient Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu is more than happy to keep its keep its friends close but its enemies even closer.
The Saudi leadership has been on a mission to force the Yemeni government in Aden to accede to its desire for peace with the Zaydi Shia Houthi movement since 2022 when it forced out former president Abd-Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and replaced him with a pliant Riyadh-based body called the Presidential Leadership Council. Since the Riyadh has made sure the government is unable to stymie its plans to forge ahead with a Sanaa normalization by withholding financial aid while the Houthis impose a blockade on southern ports by threatening to missile or drone them without an agreement on revenue division, as well as setting up a Salafi militia called the Nation’s Shield as a counter to UAE-backed militias on the government side.
The Yemeni parties on the government side will be forced into peace talks of their own once Riyadh and Sanaa have formally signed a pact of peace. Yet Riyadh’s best-laid plans were ruined by the Gaza war and the Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping in support of Palestinians, which have made it politically impossible to move ahead on a peace deal. But just in case the Saudis get a bit queasy under all that American and UAE pressure, the Houthis — or to use their formal name, Ansar Allah — have resorted to frequent threats to target the bright shiny projects.
Things came to head in July after months of pressure from the central bank in Aden for banks to exit Houthi territory or be shut out of the international banking system, when Ansar Allah’s leader Abdelmalik al-Houthi publicly ordered Saudi Arabia to make the government knock it off. In a televised speech attacking the banking blockade as “crazy, stupid, criminal, hostile, illogical”, he declared: “We will act to respond to every step in the same manner, the airport in Riyadh for the airport in Sana’a, banks with banks, ports for the port.” The Saudi ambassador immediately kicked into gear and the central bank’s decrees were speedily rescinded.
The Houthi attacks have been ruinous for maritime shipping, causing around a 66 percent drop in trade passing through the Suez canal and pushing up insurance prices globally, while missiles and drones that have landed in Israel — including one that killed a man in a Tel Aviv apartment in July — have played a key if underreported role in the deterioration of the Israeli economy as hundreds of thousands flee the country. Particularly telling for Saudi calculations is a recent statement from a senior US Pentagon official about Houthi capabilities, which have gone beyond US expectations. “What I've seen of what the Houthis have done in the last six months is something that — I'm just shocked,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante said.
Now, Saudi Arabia has influence. That fact was on stark display the other week when Yasir Al-Rumayyan — the governor of the Public Investment Fund, which leads the Saudi giga-projects — was among the posse accompanying Trump on his emperor-with-the-gladiators visit to a UFC martial arts fight in New York on November 16. The Saudi official was seen chatting with Trump alongside Elon Musk and other figures set to take posts in the next administration. PIF currently has around $925 billion in assets under management including major investments in US equities. PIF has also inserted itself into another of Trump’s favorite sports: golf. PIF is currently the financial backer of LIV Golf, but Al-Rumayyan has personally been involved in talks with the PGA Tour to create a new PIF-backed entity that could unite the two competitions. Al-Rumayyan will also be of interest to Trump as the chairman of Saudi state oil giant Aramco and chairman of PIF-owned mining company Ma’aden.
Yet US analysts hoping for more intervention in Ukraine and the Middle East think the appointment of Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Trump’s nomination, is the harbinger of more hawkishness, and perhaps their dream of US action against Iran. Rubio has outlined his preferences in recent months for a more muscular approach on Yemen, not just reinstating the Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) that Biden lifted in 2021 but targeting Houthi leaders and arming anti-Houthi militias on the government side. Bar the FTO designation, which seems likely, any such move could have repercussions in Saudi Arabia if the Houthis feel Riyadh hasn’t done enough to stop it. Even without quiet Saudi lobbying against it, the chances of Trump wishing to wade into this quagmire any more than necessary do not seem high.
The fact is, Saudi Arabia has done a thorough about-turn from its bellicose posture of King Salman’s early years when it was air bombing Yemen, blockading Qatar, and promising to stoke internal division in Iran. The new policy is zero problems with neighbors, not least with Iran’s Zaydi friends in Sanaa. The Saudi-Houthi rapprochement has in effect created the region’s newest odd couple, a frenemyship set to result in a formal peace that will in all likelihood include demands for Saudi aid for reconstruction of that which the Saudi war destroyed in Yemen — a relationship rooted in the reality that the Houthis have got Saudi Arabia by the gigas.