Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Called Trump Twice Asking Him to Bomb the Houthis. Twice Trump Said No — Then Sent His Own Negotiators to Cut the Houthis a Deal That Leaves Saudi Arabia Out.

Abstract: Over roughly ten days in September 2026, Washington's posture toward the Houthi seizure of Yemen's Red Sea coast moved from quiet intelligence support for Saudi Arabia to a direct, separate arrangement with the Houthis themselves. CNN reported on 10 September that the United States was already sharing intelligence and targeting data with a Saudi-led campaign against the group, backed by roughly 200 American military personnel operating in a non-kinetic advisory role. On 11 September, as Houthi forces seized the port of Mocha, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman telephoned President Trump twice asking for direct US strikes; Trump refused both times. On 12 September, speaking in Dublin alongside Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, Trump said the Houthis had told him directly that "they don't want to fight us. They don't want me to attack them and said they would much prefer that we don't intervene," adding that the remaining problem was confined to "one country" he did not name and promising to "take care of fixing that." On 14 September, Admiral Brad Cooper, commander of US Central Command, flew to Saudi Arabia for coordination talks with the crown prince; Washington again declined strikes but reaffirmed intelligence-sharing. Around 15 September, American officials met Houthi representatives, including sanctioned spokesman Mohammed Abdul Salam and negotiator Abdul Malik al-Ajiri, at the US embassy in Muscat in talks brokered by the Omani government. The Houthis pledged not to attack American or Israeli vessels or other commercial shipping, explicitly excluding vessels linked to Saudi Arabia from that protection. The result, as Al Jazeera reported on 18 September, is a United States "willing to watch from sidelines" while a non-state armed group it designates a foreign terrorist organisation consolidates control of one of the world's most important maritime chokepoints, twenty kilometres from Djibouti's own coast.

Two phone calls, two refusals

The shape of Washington's response became clear in the same week the Houthis' advance did. Axios reported that Mohammed bin Salman called Trump twice on 11 September, as oil prices surged on news of the Houthi seizure of Mocha, asking the United States to strike the group directly. Trump declined both times. US officials told reporters the administration had no plans to open a new front while keeping American forces focused on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz, which Iranian forces have kept effectively sealed for much of 2026. What Washington offered instead, according to CNN's 10 September reporting, was intelligence and targeting support delivered through a newly established joint forces command, with roughly 200 US military personnel in Saudi Arabia in a non-kinetic role, sharing information but not flying strikes, refuelling Saudi aircraft, or otherwise participating in combat operations. Three days later, with Houthi forces still advancing, Admiral Brad Cooper travelled overnight to Saudi Arabia for what regional outlets described as urgent coordination talks with the crown prince; the outcome, again, was intelligence-sharing rather than the direct intervention Riyadh had asked for.

What Washington agreed to in Muscat

The clearest sign of the administration's actual strategy arrived not from Washington or Riyadh but from Oman. Around 15 September, American officials met Houthi representatives at the US embassy in Muscat in a meeting organised with Omani government mediation, according to reporting from Axios, the Times of Israel and Gulf News. The Houthi delegation included Mohammed Abdul Salam, the group's chief spokesman and a US-sanctioned figure, and senior negotiator Abdul Malik al-Ajiri. In the talks, the Houthis assured US officials they had no intention of attacking American or Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, and said the restrictions the group intends to enforce on commercial traffic through the strait would apply specifically to vessels linked to Saudi Arabia. Trump had previewed the substance of that arrangement days earlier in Dublin, telling reporters the Houthis had called him directly and said they preferred the United States not intervene, and that the only unresolved "problem" was a single country he declined to name but which every outlet covering the remarks read as an unmistakable reference to Saudi Arabia.

One blockade, sorted by flag

What emerged from Muscat is not a ceasefire in the ordinary sense but a bifurcated one: American and Israeli-linked shipping is to pass the strait the Houthis now physically control, while Saudi-linked shipping is not. That is a meaningfully different arrangement from the multilateral security architecture the region's own states had been building toward. FIKIR Institute reported on 7 September that fourteen countries, Somalia and Djibouti among them, had joined a coalition intended to guard Bab el-Mandeb collectively, and on 12 September that the coalition's premise collapsed within days when the Houthis seized the strait outright rather than being deterred by it. The Muscat arrangement does not revive that collective framework or extend its logic to the wider shipping using the strait, Somali-flagged vessels, East African fishing fleets, or the general commercial traffic the fourteen-nation coalition was built to protect. It is a bilateral understanding between Washington and an armed group that answers to neither Mogadishu nor Djibouti, covering the ships of two governments and leaving the safety of everyone else's, Saudi Arabia's most explicitly, unaddressed and, for now, unprotected.

Saudi Arabia's three routes, all cut in the same fortnight

The stakes of Washington's refusal are compounding for Riyadh specifically. Saudi Arabia has for most of 2026 relied on three main paths to export crude: the Strait of Hormuz, effectively sealed for much of the year by Iran's own blockade in the wider US-Iran war; a pipeline route to the Red Sea that came under direct Houthi attack in August, forcing a shutdown; and Red Sea shipping through Bab el-Mandeb itself, now subject to a blockade the Houthis have told Washington will apply specifically to Saudi-linked vessels. Eastern Herald's 19 September reporting described the result bluntly, as Saudi Arabia's crude export options collapsing "in sequence" with no functioning exit remaining, a characterisation consistent with the "worst-case scenario" language used by other outlets covering the kingdom's position through mid-September. Riyadh's response has included overtures beyond Washington: Israeli officials have reportedly offered to intervene against the Houthis on Saudi Arabia's behalf, an offer Gulf analysts describe as fraught given the reputational cost of visible Saudi-Israeli military coordination amid the war in Gaza, and one Riyadh has not publicly accepted.

A close partner, treated differently than the group that attacked it

The gap between how Washington is treating its own and Israeli shipping interests and how it is treating Saudi Arabia's has drawn direct criticism from former US officials. Barbara Leaf, a former State Department official who worked extensively across the Middle East, told CNN on 19 September that Trump's public framing of the Houthi outreach was "shocking," adding: "It's a pretty harsh way to treat your relationship with a close partner, to appear to privilege your agreement with a group you've designated as a [foreign terrorist organization] that attacked that partner." Trump has sought to reassure Riyadh in parallel, describing Mohammed bin Salman as a "good friend" and telling reporters "everything will work out very well," language that has not so far translated into either strikes on the Houthis or a shipping guarantee extended to Saudi Arabia comparable to the one extended to the United States and Israel.

The view from the other shore

None of this negotiation included the states that actually border the strait on the African side. Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea have no seat in the Muscat channel, despite hosting the base cluster, escort ports and coastal communities most immediately exposed to whatever the Houthis do next with a strait they now control militarily. FIKIR Institute reported on 19 September that China has spent the past two years quietly upgrading its Djibouti base's signals-intelligence architecture, a development CSIS's satellite-imagery analysts tied explicitly to the rising strategic value of a listening post at the strait's mouth during exactly this kind of regional turbulence. Djibouti's government, separately, is absorbing more than 2,500 Yemeni refugees who have crossed the strait in the opposite direction since 10 September, a humanitarian consequence of the same fighting whose maritime dimension Washington and the Houthis have just settled between themselves. Somalia's own coastal and fishing fleets, along with the wider commercial shipping the fourteen-nation coalition was built to protect, remain outside the terms of an arrangement negotiated entirely among Washington, Muscat and the Houthi leadership.

What to watch

Three signals will show how far the Muscat arrangement actually extends. First, whether the Houthis honour their pledge in practice, distinguishing Saudi-linked vessels from others in a strait where flag and ownership are not always visible at a distance, and whether Somali, Djiboutian or other African-flagged shipping is treated as protected, targeted or simply untested by a distinction drawn for American and Israeli benefit. Second, whether Saudi Arabia pursues the Israeli offer of assistance despite its political cost, or instead escalates its own military response using the intelligence and targeting support Washington has continued to provide short of direct strikes. Third, whether Washington's bilateral approach to strait security becomes the template other powers follow, each cutting its own arrangement with whichever force controls the chokepoint at a given moment, rather than any return to the collective escort framework Somalia and Djibouti joined in early September and that collapsed within days of being tested.

Policy implications

For Saudi Arabia, the sequence confirms that its alliance with Washington does not currently extend to direct military backing against a group that has attacked its territory and export infrastructure repeatedly through 2026, a gap Riyadh will weigh heavily in any future security planning that assumes American intervention as a baseline. For the United States, securing safe passage for its own and Israeli shipping while leaving a formal partner's exposed is a policy that buys short-term de-escalation at the cost of the credibility of any future American-led maritime security initiative in the region, including the fourteen-nation coalition Washington itself helped assemble in early September. For Djibouti, Somalia and Eritrea, the Muscat channel is a reminder that the security of the water on their doorstep is being negotiated in a room they are not in, by a great power whose interest in the strait is protecting its own shipping rather than guaranteeing the wider order the region's own governments have spent the past month trying to build; whatever protection reaches Somali or Djiboutian vessels will arrive, if it arrives, as a byproduct of an arrangement designed for someone else. For the wider Horn of Africa, the episode reinforces a pattern FIKIR Institute has tracked across the past two weeks, from China's Djibouti base upgrade to Djibouti's refugee crisis to Somaliland's recognition diplomacy: the region's strategic environment is increasingly being set by decisions made elsewhere, in Muscat, Washington and Riyadh, about a strait the Horn's own states can watch but, for now, cannot govern.