← WW3 RISK TRACKER / THEATER: Yemen War & Houthi Attacks
Saudi – Houthis conflict
- Houthi missile and drone strikes targeted Mokha port, killing eight people and forcing port authorities to suspend all maritime operations.
- Ansar Allah launched ballistic missiles and rockets at civilian areas in Marib city, causing multiple reported civilian casualties.
- Yemeni government forces conducted drone strikes in Taiz governorate, killing three Houthi fighters during active ground clashes.
- Houthi media reported Saudi artillery shelling along border positions in northern Yemen alongside localized ground skirmishes in Taiz.
- Saudi Arabia initiated efforts to organize a maritime coalition as commercial shipping threats in the Red Sea persist.
Houthi forces expanded internal missile barrages across Yemen, forcing the closure of Mokha port on 15 August following more than 25 strikes. Concurrently, Ansar Allah launched ballistic missiles at Marib city while exchanging artillery fire along the Saudi border.
Houthi missile and drone strikes on Mokha port killed eight people, set multiple commercial vessels ablaze, and caused an estimated $16 million in facility damage. In Marib, Houthi ballistic missiles hit residential districts, resulting in civilian casualties. Government forces carried out retaliatory drone strikes in Taiz governorate, killing three Houthi fighters, while Houthi media reported Saudi border artillery shelling in northern Saada.
The internationally recognized Government of Yemen pledged a military response to the Mokha strikes, while Saudi Arabia initiated discussions regarding a regional maritime coalition. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan publicly noted potential Egyptian participation in a joint defense agreement alongside Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan.
The destruction at Mokha port interrupts commercial shipping corridors connecting the southern Red Sea to interior Yemeni markets. Unresolved disputes over airport access, public sector salaries, and detainee exchanges under the December 2023 roadmap framework remain unfulfilled as kinetic operations expand across coastal and inland fronts.
Intensifying Houthi strikes on critical infrastructure alongside renewed border artillery engagements indicate a breakdown in post-2022 military restraint. Assessment: Persistent Houthi strikes against Yemeni ports and urban centers increase the probability of broad kinetic escalation across multiple domestic and maritime fronts.
- 2026-08-15
Houthi strikes on Mokha port kill eight and shut down maritime operations
Houthi missile and drone strikes targeted Mokha port, killing eight people and forcing authorities to suspend all maritime operations.
- 2026-08-12
Houthi forces launch fatal Red Sea ship attack and sustain missile strikes on Mokha
A Houthi attack on a commercial vessel in the Red Sea killed six crew members, including three Pakistani nationals and one Indonesian. Concurrently, Houthi forces launched ten missiles and four drones targeting Yemen's western coast and Mokha port over four consecutive days.
- 2026-08-11
Fatal Houthi missile strike on commercial vessel near Bab el-Mandeb kills three crew members.
COMMON QUESTIONS
Is there a war in Yemen?
Not a declared war between states. The armed confrontation is between the Houthi movement and the Saudi-led coalition and the Yemeni government, and it reaches shipping in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab strait. Fighting has continued through repeated truces without a settlement. Legally a non-international armed conflict — the Houthis against Yemen's government — internationalized by Saudi and Emirati involvement. The index reads 57/100 as of 1 January 1970 (active war); above 50 it grades the fighting itself rather than the risk of it.
How dangerous is the Saudi and Houthis situation right now?
The index reads 57/100 — active war. The scale is anchored on 22 historical episodes from 1914 to 2005, so the number means the same thing from one theater to the next. It is a measurement of what is reported, not a forecast.
How is the Saudi and Houthis risk index calculated?
By fixed formula from open-source reporting: events are extracted and graded by how well evidenced they are, scored across weighted factors, and the model never picks the number. How the index works, and what it does not measure, is explained at wwiii.report/methodology.
How often is this updated?
Every day. The report is rebuilt from that day's reporting and the index re-judged from it, and a fall is published only once the evidence confirms it.
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
Timeline events — hover the chart to read them
One 0–100 scale for the whole conflict. 0–49 is escalation before war; 50–100 is active war and how far it has gone.
50 is not a threshold the number can cross on its own. Which side a theater sits on is decided by whether verified belligerents are fighting there, so war onset always moves the score up across 50 — the number never declares a war by climbing.
It is a stage, not a probability: 42 is not a 42% chance of war. Below 50 it grades movement toward war, above 50 the war itself.
Why it moved, under the chart, names what changed in the latest move: the day’s readings — strikes, casualties, talks — and, when the conflict’s stage was re-judged, what was graded differently and the events behind it. Open it for the detail.
Re-judged from open reporting by fixed formula — the model never picks a number — and a fall publishes only once the evidence confirms it. A dot on the line is a day the stage itself moved. How it is made →
Direction — which way the week pushed. Severity — where the index sits. Connections — how much of the rest a shock here reaches. Cascade — that reach combined with how ready this theater is to go off.
The index reads the state of the conflict, not the volume of news. Each run grades the factors listed below against fixed rubrics, and the score follows by formula.
So a dramatic headline moves nothing unless it changes a grade. A theater already graded for recurring incursions absorbs one more without moving — it is priced in.
Open How this was measured for every grade, its movement since the last run, and the events behind it. Full construction →
A different measurement from the score above, from a different source. This line counts how much of the world's news reports conflict between these two states, against their own long-run normal: 100 is normal, 200 is twice the usual level.
It is computed mechanically from the GDELT Project's open event stream every 15 minutes and never touches the assessed index above — when both move together, that agreement is the signal. A day with too few events shows no reading rather than a guess. Click the chart for the full history.
Data: the GDELT Project.