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In his 2023 article, “Negotiating Saudi Arabia’s Defeat and the Houthi Victory in Yemen,” Thomas Juneau of the University of Ottawa assessed that the Saudi-Yemen ceasefire would “not lead to a sustainable peace.” Two years on, as tensions in the Middle East are higher than ever, we asked him to revisit his argument.Image: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Cpl. Christopher ThompsonIn your 2023 article, “Negotiating Saudi Arabia’s Defeat and the Houthi Victory in Yemen,” you outlined the challenges and consequences of rapprochement between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia after years of a costly military intervention in Yemen. You assessed it as not being a “sustainable peace.” Two years on, how do you feel your assessment holds up?Overall, my assessment from 2023 holds up well, but if anything, I am more pessimistic today than I was back then. I was correct in predicting that these talks would not lead to sustainable peace in Yemen but would instead encourage the continuation of the trend toward more significant fragmentation in the country. I was also correct in emphasizing that the objective of the Houthis, ultimately, is not national reconciliation but the consolidation and legitimization of their rule. My assessment also accurately highlighted the brutality of their rule, which has only worsened in the past two years. At the end of the article, I correctly warned about the long-term threat that the Houthis posed to navigation in the Red Sea — a trend that some Yemen watchers had been worryingly monitoring for years. That said, I would say that while my 2023 article was already quite somber in its tone, I am even more pessimistic today. As I write this in mid-April 2025, the likelihood of renewed violence on a large scale are higher than they have been for years. I also mentioned a several