Published: 12:48 AM, 15 August 2026
How Relevant Is Bangladesh’s Tilt Toward a Saudi-Led Coalition?
Md. Abu Saim
On July 13, 2026, Yemen’s internationally recognized government said its forces struck the runway of Houthi-controlled Sana’a International Airport to prevent returning a high-profile Houthi delegation from the funeral of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the very beginning of the US-Israeli war on Iran.
The Houthis, however, blamed Saudi Arabia for the Sana’a airport attack and declared an end of the “de-escalation phase” of Yemen’s war. Most notably, Saudi Arabia and the Houthis were in a devastating war from 2015 to 2022, and since then, the two sides had maintained an informal truce that took place in 2022.
The Sana’a airport strike became a key trigger for the latest escalation. Following that, the two sides have restarted missile and drone attacks on each other. Reports said the Saudis launched airstrikes on Yemen’s Houthi-controlled port city Hodeidah, while the Houthis launched missiles and drones at Aramco facilities in Yanbu and Jizan, whereas Jizan is a major 400,000-bpd refinery, located close to Yemen’s border at the Red Sea coast. The confrontation, thus, moved from an airspace dispute into a broader military confrontation.
The next phase is a fresh diplomatic push by Saudi Arabia. On July 30, 2026, Saudi Arabia initiated a multinational maritime defence coalition to protect its shipping in the Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden. Representatives from 43 countries attended the meeting; whereas 14 countries supported the founding declaration, including Bangladesh. These 14 members are predominantly Muslim-majority countries, setting the coalition apart from Washington’s recent push to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with Iran, even as several NATO members have declined to join.
However, Bangladesh’s decision to join a Saudi-led multinational maritime defence coalition in the Red Sea raises a question that goes beyond shipping security. Why should Dhaka take sides in a Saudi-Houthi confrontation that, at its core, is a regional power struggle in which Bangladesh has no direct stake?
The government has presented the decision as a matter of national interest, with no effective military role as well as Bangladesh’s part in the coalition remains largely symbolic. Bangladesh depends heavily on Red Sea maritime trade, imports energy and has a large migrant workforce in Saudi Arabia.
But foreign policy cannot be reduced to immediate economic calculations. For a country like Bangladesh, that has historically sought to avoid taking sides in conflicts among Muslim states and has built its diplomacy around non-alignment, the decision deserves much closer scrutiny.
The central question here is simple: If the Houthis are primarily targeting Saudi energy infrastructure and have declared a maritime blockade against Saudi-linked shipping exclusively, why should Bangladesh become part of a Saudi-led military framework?
The Houthis are not targeting Bangladeshi vessels, nor have they targeted any non-Saudi ships in this maritime blockade so far. So the question arises again: is the recent Saudi-Houthi rivalry a bilateral confrontation, or has it become an international one? The current confrontation is, fundamentally, a bilateral conflict rooted in the longstanding rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis in Yemen.
Incidentally, Saudi Arabia has also succeeded diplomatically, in reframing what was largely a bilateral security confrontation as a broader international maritime-security issue.
This has to be for two reasons. First, the war on Iran has shown that the Strait of Hormuz, a vital chokepoint for the world’s exports and imports, can be made to take tolls on shipping by Iran in retaliation. And the whole world, including Western countries, is also suffering from this maneuver. They are now concerned that any disruption to the Bab el-Mandeb could push global trade and energy supplies further into a critical phase.
And the second factor is the Houthi dilemma. Saudi Arabia started a long war, along with a naval, sea and land blockade on Yemen, in 2015, after the Houthis took control of the northwestern part of the country, including the capital Sana’a. This blockade contributed to making Yemen one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in recent history, with children suffering from malnutrition and almost 377,000 people dying. Now, amid the 2026 Hormuz blockade by Iran, Saudi Arabia does not want to make the same mistake again on Yemen. So it chose diplomatic pressure on the Houthis by forming a coalition with other nations.
For Bangladesh, there could have been a crucial distinction between supporting freedom of navigation and joining a military alignment led by one side of a regional conflict. Bangladesh could have condemned attacks on commercial vessels, supported international maritime law and called for the protection of shipping without formally joining a Saudi-led security structure. That would have protected Bangladesh's stated interest without compromising its diplomatic flexibility.
The Government of Bangladesh further argued that Saudi Arabia's importance as a crucial labor market destination made it necessary to stand with Riyadh. That discussion is understandable— but it always narrows Bangladesh’s foreign policy decisions to a sort of economic dependence.
A country's foreign policy cannot be strategic when it thinks it must support a military coalition because its citizens work in that country's territory, especially when Bangladesh is sharply constructing its economic calibre to attain strategic autonomy.
The objectives of Bangladesh joining the Saudi Arabia-led maritime security alliance are specific, it wants its exports to reach Europe cheaply, and it wants its migrant workers protected and remittances to continue. But those objectives obviously do not require Bangladesh to become a military partner in a Saudi-led confrontation in an indispensable way.
Major Western countries, including NATO members, have not simply joined the Saudi coalition as founding members. Bangladesh does not possess the military weight of the United States or the European powers. Its strategic priority should be to avoid unnecessary exposure, not to acquire it.
Moreover, Bangladesh has a history of staying above Muslim conflicts. Traditionally, the country always attempted to maintain relations across competing Muslim states rather than become part of intra-Muslim military blocs. Bangladesh also secured a participation in attempting an end to the Iran-Iraq War in 1981.
That tradition also matters today, since the Middle East is not a static geopolitical map and alliances change when it comes to broader regional interests. Bangladesh therefore needs to ask a longer-term question: What happens if the regional balance changes?
The Houthis may appear to be a non-state actor operating under prompt Iranian influence in the region. But that calculation is not static invariably. Before the US-Israeli war on Iran, many expected Tehran to face a fate similar to Venezuela, yielding to US pressure. That did not happen. Even after more than five months of war, Professor Robert Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, has argued that Iran’s leverage over the Strait of Hormuz has strengthened its position as a major global power centre, while US strategy has faltered and American bases have sustained significant damage across the region.
For Bangladesh, non-alignment is not a weakness, while remaining neutral in intra-Muslim conflicts can preserve its diplomatic flexibility and strategic autonomy in the long run. Dhaka should therefore exercise caution before joining coalitions in such conflicts, prioritizing its capacity to make independent foreign-policy decisions at any means.
Md. Abu Saim acquired higher education in
International Relations and Political
Economy from Dhaka University.
