Yemen on the Brink Again: The STC's Lightning Offensive and the UAE-Saudi Proxy War

Yemen is in crisis again, and for once the Houthi rebel organization is not the cause. Over the course of a few days, a powerful fighting faction called the Southern Transitional Council has carried out a rapid territorial takeover, seizing the means of production across Yemen’s most important oil fields and conquering cities with stunning efficiency. Yemen’s internationally recognized government is at risk of collapse, and if the southern separatists have their way, they will soon rule over a brand-new nation.

Behind the conquest is the hidden hand of the United Arab Emirates, which has been fueling the southern advance. Now Yemen’s eastern battlegrounds could host a far larger showdown, as a proxy contest between the Emirates and their Saudi rivals threatens to spiral out of control. Just when it seemed things could not get worse for Yemen, the country appears to be approaching yet another round of collapse.

The pace and surprise of the takeover have invited comparisons to the fall of Syria’s Assad regime, which collapsed with similar speed. The thesis of this analysis is straightforward: the fragile three-way equilibrium that has held Yemen together for years has broken, and a UAE-backed separatist bloc is now positioned to carve a new state out of the country’s south while the Gulf’s two great powers edge toward open confrontation.

Key Takeaways

The Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist movement formally established in 2017, has seized most of the populated belt of Yemen’s Hadhramaut Governorate and other eastern territory in a lightning offensive that began in earnest on December 3.
The fighting has almost nothing to do with the Houthis. The crisis is a clash between Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the STC, backed by the United Arab Emirates.
Hadhramaut holds nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s oil reserves plus rich mineral deposits, and it was once part of South Yemen, making it the central prize for the separatist STC.
The STC’s spearhead, the Hadhrami Elite Forces, took the city of Seiyun, its airport, military headquarters, and presidential palace within hours, sending Yemeni government forces into full retreat.
The Yemeni government has emerged as the clear weakling among Yemen’s three factions; it likely cannot recapture the lost territory without an all-out war it can barely afford to wage.
Saudi Arabia may be intervening directly, with footage on December 7 appearing to show Saudi armored columns entering Yemen, but Riyadh’s appetite and ability to win a direct fight are both in doubt.
The STC is laying the groundwork for a separatist “State of South Arabia,” raising the old South Yemen flag and tailoring its messaging toward Western audiences in pursuit of international recognition.

The Three Factions and a Fragile Balance

To understand the present crisis, it helps to start with the three major fighting factions that collectively control the vast majority of Yemen’s territory, each backed by a powerful regional rival.

The Houthis control the capital, Sana’a, and most of Yemen’s densely populated areas. They are backed by Iran, which has flooded Houthi territory with drones, weapons, and cash as part of its Middle Eastern network of proxy groups. Yet for the events now unfolding, the Houthis are largely bystanders, watching from several hundred kilometers away.

Then there is Yemen’s internationally recognized government, led by the Presidential Leadership Council and referred to here simply as “Yemen.” It controls only a few population centers near Houthi territory, such as Ma’rib and the besieged city of Taiz, but it holds most of Yemen’s expansive, largely empty northeast. It is backed by Saudi Arabia, both through direct support and through Riyadh’s side deals with a network of local tribes.

The STC and Its Emirati Patron

The third faction is the one to understand. The Southern Transitional Council is a separatist movement established only in 2017, but it traces its lineage through decades of southern discontent. The STC controls most of the land along Yemen’s southern coast and a majority of the territory that used to be South Yemen, a formerly communist state that existed from 1967 until unification around the end of the Cold War. The STC wants to re-establish that entity as the “State of South Arabia,” along the former borders of South Yemen.

Technically, the STC aligns with Yemen’s internationally recognized government. In practice, the two have clashed repeatedly over the past several years, and as of now they are hardly aligned at all.

On its own territory, the STC works alongside the Hadhrami Elite Forces, a special operations command first created in 2016 to fight al-Qaeda. Powerful, operationally advanced, and backed by foreign financiers, the Hadhrami Elite Forces operate autonomously on the territory they hold, but they generally pursue the same goals as the STC.

That foreign financier is the United Arab Emirates. The Emirates currently back separatist and non-state actors across the region: the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan, the region of Somaliland in Somalia, and in Libya the more eastern of that country’s two rival governments, loyal to the warlord Khalifa Haftar. As Iran has done with its proxies, the UAE has worked overtime to build these allied forces into a network, bringing it closer to its highest ambitions as a new regional power. The STC is instrumental to that effort.

As of the end of November, the STC, the Houthis, and the Yemeni federal government existed in a fragile but relatively stable balance. Their three sponsors, the Emirates, Iran, and Saudi Arabia respectively, did not appear particularly interested in upsetting the status quo. Each side had advantages and disadvantages that roughly leveled out. The Houthis held the capital and most population centers but had been dealt recent blows by Israel and a global coalition on the Red Sea.

The Yemeni government held sparsely populated land, but that was where most of the nation’s oil sits. The STC was internally fractured and faced a persistent al-Qaeda presence, but it controlled lucrative coastal areas, including the critical port city of Aden. The result was an uncomfortable but mutually acceptable equilibrium, one that can now be described only in the past tense.

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The First Spark at the Masila Oil Fields

The first sign that something was amiss in eastern Yemen came on November 29 at the country’s Masila oil fields. There, the major company PetroMasila carried out drilling operations in lands controlled by the Yemeni government, in the expansive, mostly empty governorate of Hadhramaut.

Hadhramaut is the setting for nearly all of the fighting that followed, and it matters for several reasons at once. It is home to nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s oil reserves, it is known for rich mineral deposits, and it used to be part of South Yemen, meaning that in the separatist STC’s ideal world the group would control all of it. Before this offensive, the STC controlled only the southern part of Hadhramaut, under the direct control of the Hadhrami Elite Forces, whose name derives from the province itself.

On November 29, forces loyal to the Yemeni government took up positions around the Masila fields in a deployment of a Saudi-backed coalition of local tribal forces. By that point, the Yemeni government and the STC had been engaged in a war of words for weeks. The STC feared that the Yemeni government might cut a deal with the Houthis, strengthening Yemen’s overall position and making it harder for the separatists to take territory later. Sensing the STC felt threatened, the Yemeni government directed those tribal forces to lock down the Masila fields, knowing they sat within striking distance of STC territory.

The fields had not actually been under the Yemeni government’s control since January, after tribal leaders seized them, but those leaders still act at Saudi Arabia’s behest, and Riyadh appeared to support the move. Production was halted, causing blackouts in areas served by local oil-fueled energy infrastructure, including in STC zones. The STC then built up its own forces, and on December 2 began moving north toward the de facto border separating Yemeni and STC territory. It now had a pretext to act against the Yemeni government and the militias holding the oil fields, something it had likely long wanted to do but had lacked justification for, given the bloodshed such a move might involve.

A Shock Offensive: The Fall of Seiyun

On December 3, the STC’s shock offensive began in earnest, and its target was not just the Masila oil fields. Instead, the separatists focused on the city of Seiyun, with a pre-war population of about 135,000. Home to an important international airport and a historic presidential palace, both strategic targets, Seiyun was thought to be relatively defensible from the Yemeni government’s point of view. That assumption proved wrong.

In an assault spearheaded by the Hadhrami Elite Forces, the STC bombarded the military headquarters in Seiyun before storming the city in a lightning offensive. Within hours, the separatists controlled the military headquarters, the international airport, and the presidential palace, in a takeover that was not exactly bloodless but was certainly one-sided. Yemeni government forces fell into full retreat, and the STC pressed its advantage, seizing neighboring cities and towns before the day was out.

By the next morning, it was clear to anyone watching that the STC would hold the upper hand in whatever came next. The separatists fielded heavy weaponry, including armored vehicles from the Emirates and the Chinese-made, lightweight AH-4 towed howitzer, both fixtures of the Rapid Support Forces offensives in Sudan’s civil war. They attacked in overwhelming force from multiple directions at once, leaning on the Hadhrami Elite Forces as a spearhead to great effect. They sent Yemeni forces into disarray and, just as important, avoided confrontations with the Saudi-backed tribes in the area, who largely chose to vacate territory rather than fight.

Rolling Through the Countryside

On December 4, the offensive continued to roll through the Yemeni countryside. Rather than try to hold the Masila fields and the corresponding PetroMasila facilities, the Saudi-backed tribal forces withdrew under an agreement that received a direct sign-off from Riyadh.

In Yemen’s easternmost province, the STC advanced on the capital city of al-Ghaydah, pre-war population about 11,000, and captured it without a fight, taking the local airport as well. The separatists also seized the port of Nishtun in the same province, and over the following days assumed control of various towns across Hadhramaut. Because this part of Yemen is so sparse, taking those towns often meant assuming de facto control over much larger surrounding areas. In practice, the STC took control of huge sections of the former South Yemen in the span of days.

For a moment over the following weekend, it appeared the STC’s gains would be quickly reversed. Several territorial holdings were handed back to the Yemeni government, including an important military camp, the airport at al-Ghaydah, and the port at Nishtun. The reversals were likely due to pressure from Saudi Arabia, whose threat of concentrated retaliation could beat back the STC in one or two places at a time.

As is often the case in these sparsely populated desert regions, territorial captures often involve no more than a few hundred or even a few dozen fighters in a given location, with even fewer charged with holding the captured front lines. That makes it easy for either side to mass forces and retake individual areas, often captured by large traveling groups that then leave the zone vulnerable once they move on. For a force like the STC, whose best fighters are highly competent but few in number, a few defeats at the wrong moments could have become a real problem. With its captures having involved relatively low casualties to that point, the STC was briefly able to come to terms.

The Counterattacks and the Fall of Aden’s Palace

Over the following days, it became clear that the Yemeni threats were empty. Once target areas were handed back, it was the Yemeni government that struggled to hold them, and the STC that could mass its forces and sweep back in through counterattacks. The separatists promptly demonstrated their willingness to do so, and by Monday morning most of that territory had fallen to the STC again, along with other zones the STC had not even captured in its first assault.

When Yemeni government forces attempted to counterattack Seiyun and recapture it, the STC rallied to head them off. In the port city of Aden, where the STC has for years allowed members of Yemen’s Presidential Council to reside, the central palace was taken over, and security forces loyal to the Yemeni government were directed to leave immediately. A small group of Saudi soldiers was instructed to leave with them.

As of the morning of Monday, December 8, local time in Sana’a, the STC had captured an important border checkpoint with neighboring Oman, most of the eastern al-Mahrah Governorate, and a growing proportion of Hadhramaut. Open-source conflict mapping data suggests the STC now holds the vast majority of the populated belt of cities and towns cutting through Hadhramaut. The Yemeni government may technically lay claim to the more northern reaches, but its position there is highly vulnerable. Not only would that territory be easy to claim, but through the population centers the STC has already captured most of the actual value in this part of Yemen.

According to anonymous STC sources speaking with the international press, the organization ultimately intends to assert control over all of Hadhramaut. In its own press releases, the group says it will “restore stability to the [Hadhramaut] Valley, end the state of security breakdown, and halt the exploitation of the region by forces alien to the Valley and governorate.” That work is not yet complete, but it is not clear that either the Yemeni government or its Saudi-backed tribal allies can stop the STC from taking everything it wants.

What Happens Now

As the STC moves to expand and consolidate its hold, the rest of the offensive may turn on one question: What is the Yemeni government willing to lose in order to stop it? The loss of this territory is a major problem for the internationally recognized government, but it is not clear that anything short of all-out war would be enough to save it.

The STC is stronger than the Yemeni government in these areas, especially now that it holds densely populated, urban or semi-urban zones it can more easily defend once it repositions its forces after this first lightning assault. The Yemeni government’s assets are scattered across the parts of the country it still controls, with large proportions tied up in the ongoing siege of Taiz or positioned to deter the Houthis from moving east. Of the threats the Yemeni government faces, the STC offensive was not one it was prepared to deal with.

The problem compounds, because the Yemeni government now appears to be the clear weakling among Yemen’s three factions. The STC’s conquests put it and the Hadhrami Elite Forces in a very strong position. While large stretches of open desert remain to be taken, the separatists have seized the vast majority of the population centers that once made up South Yemen. It is likely the STC now controls over 90 percent of the population in former South Yemeni territory, and potentially more than 95 percent.

The STC also controls the region’s most valuable oil fields, with the oil in its crosshairs making up over 80 percent of Yemen’s proven reserves. Yemen does not have much oil, but modest revenues are far better than none. The separatists have also captured important mineral deposits and mines, securing some of Yemen’s only real resources. Before the civil war, the vast majority of the national budget and trading revenues were derived from assets on the land the STC now controls.

The Houthi Gambit and the Risk of Collapse

If Yemen’s internationally recognized government is to survive, it must respond, ideally by recapturing those resources. But that is a very difficult task. The government cannot spare the forces while it is also managing the Houthi threat. Instead, it may push forward with an effort to strike a peace accord with the Houthis, freeing forces elsewhere to redirect against the STC.

Even that is risky, more so now than before. When the Houthis and the Yemeni government were weighing a deal, the two were not at exact fighting parity, but close enough that neither could defeat the other without massive losses, and neither wanted to weather them. That is no longer the case. After its defeats at the hands of the STC, the Yemeni government is in a far worse position, which means a deal with the Houthis could play out in one of two dangerous ways.

In the first scenario, the Houthis recognize that the Yemeni government is weak, and with their battles against Israel seemingly on pause, they launch their own offensive and start taking government territory. In the second, potentially worse scenario, the Houthis sign a deal and then double-cross the government, waiting for it to pull assets away from the Houthi line of control to join the STC fight before launching their own lightning assault to seize the newly undefended territory.

In either case, but especially the second, an attempt by the Yemeni government to regain control could lead to its complete collapse. The Houthis would like all of Yemen but would probably settle for the territory once known as the Yemen Arab Republic, while the STC explicitly wants only the lands of former South Yemen. Both regard the internationally recognized government as an inconvenience. If Yemeni forces are caught out of position or overextend in either direction, they could quickly find themselves caught between hammer and anvil, with no access to the sea, limited mobility, and only Saudi territory or undeveloped desert to retreat onto.

Will Saudi Arabia Intervene?

According to some reports, unverified at the time of writing, Saudi Arabia may already be intervening directly. Social media footage circulated on December 7 showing apparent Saudi armored columns moving into Yemen; some of the footage was older, but some appeared to have been filmed within the prior day.

Riyadh is known to have engaged the STC diplomatically. A Saudi delegation has been on the ground for a week, trying to defuse the situation and coordinate territorial withdrawals and take-backs with minimal loss of life. With that approach clearly failing, the Saudis are likely weighing military options, and may either hand their heavy armor to Yemeni government forces or re-engage in the conflict themselves.

Whether they could make a difference in a direct confrontation is far from certain. Saudi forces had a very rough time in Yemen during their last intervention, and the Houthis have shown since the mid-2010s that long-range drone technology, now abundant on modern battlefields and especially in UAE-backed arsenals, can wreak havoc against Saudi oil targets. It is not clear that Riyadh has either the stomach for direct conflict or the ability to win cleanly.

A New Order and a Bid for Recognition

As for the STC, the group appears to be laying the groundwork for a separatist state. The old flag of South Yemen has been appearing in conquered areas with growing regularity, and the group’s statements seem tailored toward Western audiences, whose support would be critical for any bid for international recognition.

In that effort, the STC is incentivized to see the internationally recognized Yemeni government collapse. If it does, the STC would be left in Yemen alongside the Houthis, a group most of the world would very much like to avoid legitimizing. Remove the current government, and the STC can present itself as the least-worst option for the world to support. The STC’s Emirati backers know the Saudis are unlikely to take part in direct hostilities and even less likely to win, and that in either case Riyadh will want to minimize the perception of failure and wash its hands of the whole ordeal.

In a sign that the STC intends to play for global support, its leaders say they are already coordinating internationally around the idea of taking the fight to the Houthis, despite their awareness that an all-out war would serve neither side well. The perception that the two groups would go to battle, however, would serve them both. The STC could push for recognition of a sovereignty claim in exchange, plus a future mandate to conquer the rest of Yemen, while the Houthis would absorb what remains of government-controlled territory outside the former South Yemen.

All told, Yemen appears to be at an inflection point, in which the unsustainable, tenuous balance of the last several years is about to be replaced by a new local order. A nation torn apart by civil war since the years of the Arab Spring may finally be about to divide in two, and the regional power games between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may be about to escalate dramatically. As of June 2, 2026, the country once again sits on the brink of collapse.

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the main parties in this new Yemen crisis, and why are the Houthis not central to it?

The crisis is a clash between Yemen’s internationally recognized government, backed by Saudi Arabia, and the Southern Transitional Council, backed by the United Arab Emirates. The Houthis, backed by Iran, control the capital and most population centers but are watching events from several hundred kilometers away. This particular fight has almost nothing to do with them, though it may eventually play to their advantage if the Yemeni government is weakened.

Why is Hadhramaut Governorate so important to the STC?

Hadhramaut holds nearly 80 percent of Yemen’s oil reserves and rich mineral deposits, and it was once part of South Yemen — meaning the STC claims it by both resource value and historical right. Before the civil war, the vast majority of Yemen’s national budget and trading revenue came from assets on this land, making its capture central to the STC’s bid to build a viable separatist state.

How did the STC offensive unfold so quickly?

After Yemeni government forces locked down the Masila oil fields on November 29, the STC built up its forces and pushed north on December 2. On December 3, the Hadhrami Elite Forces spearheaded an assault on Seiyun, taking its military headquarters, airport, and presidential palace within hours. The separatists used heavy weaponry including armored vehicles and Chinese-made AH-4 howitzers, attacked from multiple directions at once, and avoided confrontations with Saudi-backed tribes, who largely vacated rather than fight.

Can the Yemeni government recover the lost territory?

It would be extremely difficult. Government forces are scattered, with many tied up in the siege of Taiz or positioned to deter the Houthis. The STC now holds defensible population centers in the east. The government may seek a peace accord with the Houthis to free up forces, but that carries serious risk — the Houthis could either exploit the government’s weakness to launch their own offensive or sign a deal and double-cross them once government forces redeploy.

What is the likely outcome for Yemen as a whole?

Yemen appears to be at an inflection point where its long-standing three-way balance is breaking down. The country may finally divide in two, with the STC consolidating the former South Yemen and the Houthis positioned to absorb what remains of government territory. The rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, whose proxies are now on opposite sides, may escalate sharply as a result.