Last summer, as Washington tried quietly to coax Saudi Arabia towards the grand bargain of normalisation of its relations with Israel, diplomats in Riyadh were much more focused on securing a different peace deal on its southern borders with one of the most successful insurgencies of modern times – the one led by the Houthi rebels of Yemen, also known as Ansar Allah, the supporters of God.
With an informal ceasefire holding inside Yemen, and after months of private talks mainly mediated in Oman, on 14 September a Houthi delegation flew to Riyadh, where they met Prince Khalid bin Salman, the defence minister and brother of the crown prince.
