Yemen’s vice-president Abdullah al-Alimi said Iranian flights to and from Yemen are an unacceptable violation of the country’s sovereignty after a plane carrying a Houthi delegation from Tehran was diverted and later landed in Hodeidah. The diversion followed Yemeni government planes bombing Sana’a airport and quickly fed into a fresh military exchange with Saudi Arabia.
Al-Alimi said the planes contained equipment for the Houthi movement and warned that the group’s reach now extended beyond Yemen. He said the Houthis were weaker than they had been for many years and tied that shift in part to the weakening of Iran.
Hodeidah after Sana’a airport
The plane carrying the delegation had to change course after the strike on Sana’a airport, then landed at Houthi-controlled Hodeidah. That route left the delegation returning through a different airport than the one it had been expected to use, with the flight itself becoming part of the dispute over who controls Yemen’s airspace and what can move through it.
Yemen has been in intermittent civil war since 2015, when the Houthis seized Sana’a and the Saudi-backed, UN-recognised government withdrew to Aden in the south with Saudi support. In that setting, a flight carrying a political delegation is not just transport; it is also a test of which side can move people and equipment through territory the other side contests.
Houthis and Saudi Arabia
The Houthis responded by firing missiles at Saudi Arabia, breaking a four-year truce in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Iran-aligned group. An emergency session of the UN security council heard calls for both sides to de-escalate, but no further decision was set out in the material available here.
Al-Alimi said the government would keep “brandish[ing] the sword of peace until the very last moment” and added: “We are ready if the Houthis impose war.” He also said, “Without Saudi support, the government would not have been able to meet its salary obligations,” putting the immediate strain on the Saudi-backed, UN-recognised government in practical terms.
Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab
He framed the Houthis as more than a domestic armed force, saying they were now a regional and international threat because of threats to the waterways in the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab. In his telling, that shift makes the flight dispute part of a wider struggle over movement, security, and the flow of trade through Yemen’s surrounding waterways.
The Houthi delegation’s own response cut in the opposite direction. Its head said: “Defending oneself, the homeland and the people is a religious, national, moral and humanitarian duty, and a legitimate right affirmed by Islamic law and international law. The aggressor is the real wrongdoer.”
What remains in focus now is the flight itself and the cargo claim attached to it: the planes were said to contain equipment for the Houthi movement, but the available material does not set out any independent check on that allegation. The dispute has already moved from an airport diversion to missiles, a sovereignty charge, and a security council session.
