Behind closed doors, China has been pushing Iran to pull back its Houthi allies in Yemen, according to three Iranian sources with knowledge of the matter, a move that followed Saudi Arabia’s own outreach to Beijing over the past week’s fighting. Riyadh reportedly sought Chinese help after Houthi forces rapidly seized territory along the Red Sea coastline and around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, leaving both Saudi oil shipments and broader regional shipping increasingly vulnerable, particularly given that some of the kingdom’s other export channels are already strained.
Publicly, Beijing has stuck to familiar language, calling for calm, dialogue, and a return to safe maritime passage through the Red Sea. But according to the sources, what China communicated to Tehran privately carried considerably more weight than its public statements suggest. That added weight appears to stem from China’s economic hold over Iran: Beijing buys more oil from Iran than any other country, accounting for upward of 80 percent of Iran’s total oil exports, and remains its single largest trading partner overall.
Even so, the sources say Chinese officials avoided any direct threats and stopped short of implying that economic consequences would follow if Tehran failed to restrain the Houthis. Exactly how or when this message reached Iranian officials isn’t clear, though it may have come up when Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, sat down with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing this past Wednesday.
China’s foreign ministry said it hopes regional tensions won’t spread any further into Yemen or the Red Sea, framing continued instability as something that benefits no one. It called on all parties to respect each other’s sovereignty and security, warned against targeting infrastructure essential to civilian life, and pressed for a resolution reached through talks rather than continued conflict. Neither Iran’s foreign ministry nor the Saudi government’s press office responded right away to requests for comment.
The Houthi movement, which first emerged in the 1990s pushing back against Saudi religious influence inside Yemen, is generally described by Iranian and Western officials alike as a group that Tehran arms, trains, and bankrolls, positioning it alongside Hezbollah and Hamas within what Iran calls its “Axis of Resistance.” Iranian officials have publicly resisted the label of “proxy,” even though Reuters reported just last week that members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had supplied weapons, funding, and battlefield direction as the Houthis pushed along the coast.
That advance has already reshaped the map: the Houthis have taken the port city of Mokha along with the Perim, Greater Hanish, and Lesser Hanish islands, giving them effective control over nearly the entire Yemeni coast bordering the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. They’ve also declared a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports.
