Saudi ambassador compares the Houthis to ISIS, calls for a broad coalition
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the US, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, compared the Houthis to ISIS in a New York Times op-ed published after a deadly attack on Riyadh's airport.
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Princess Reema bint Bandar Al Saud, compared Yemen's Houthi movement to the Islamic State (ISIS) in an op-ed published in The New York Times. The piece was widely discussed by Foreign Policy magazine as well.
The comparison
According to the ambassador, today's Houthis resemble ISIS before it seized the Iraqi city of Mosul and declared a "caliphate" — a terrorist movement the world underestimated. She called for setting the goal of ending the Houthis "as an armed terrorist force" and for building a broad international coalition similar to the 80-plus-nation coalition formed against ISIS. This is the assessment and appeal of a Saudi official.
The figures
The ambassador wrote that more than 1,000 ballistic missiles and drones have been fired at Saudi Arabia since March 2016. (Her claims that the Houthis mobilise children into combat are also her own assertions and have not been independently verified.)
The trigger — the airport attack
The op-ed was published after an attack on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh on 10 October 2026. According to Al Jazeera, at least 13 people were killed and more than 300 wounded; across October's wave of attacks roughly 22 people were killed in total.
The Red Sea and Yemen
In September 2026 the Houthis seized territory along Yemen's Red Sea coast, expanding their control over the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. According to Lloyd's List, after the maritime blockade the Houthis declared in July, transits through the strait fell by about 24% — from 354 to 269 ships a week — before stabilising around 266. The Houthis are described as an Iran-backed force.
