I got curious about the Houthis and found few things interesting.
They control the region where around 80% of the population of yemen lives - about 34 million people.
Saudi Arabia has around 35 million people in the country.
Houthis have around 500,000 active military (plus lots of fighting experience) and another 1 million that they have put through training recently. They also have developed some pretty strong drone and missile capabilities from Iranian assistance. I also suspect Russia has been finding a way to sneak in some tech they have learned in Ukraine to them as well (Wagner group etc).
Saudi has around 250,000 active military mostly reliant on U.S. tech that has taken a severe beating recently from Iran.
If it comes to full out war, the Houthis on paper potentially can beat the shit out of them. This is no small fringe group. Its a small nation.
Same with Iran vs Isreal. On paper. But you need to see how much support Saudi and Isreael get by the US. However, just wait and see. US ammunition depots are depleted. Israel and Saudi will have huge issues soon, where as Iran and Yemen have no issues with the long conflict.
On paper is on paper
It all depends on what they are both actualy made of
On paper iraq was a dangerus oponent which would surely cause significant casualties
Just as on paper ukraine was going to fold instantly
Iraq suffered from decade-long sanctions before it was invaded. It was already quite exhausted even before the sanctions after an eight-year war with Iran.
Ukraine has the support of NATO and some of the richest countries on Earth.
In 2022 ukraine was a country that had fought sense 2014, which has had significant chunck taken over by russia ,unlike iraq, ukraine didnt have the money from oil exporting
And ukraine wasnt given heavy weapons until well after the innitial attack was blunted, specificly because it was expected for ukraine to fall (also why it took soo long for ukraine to get western fighters, pilot training started during the war )
Just the blunting of the innitial attacks meant that russias goal of repeating what happened with crimea were a failure
Well done! Fuck MbS
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