Saudi Arabia sought to divide the uneasy alliance between the Houthi rebels and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh for months. But when the 75-year-old Saleh moved against his onetime ally, the Saudis had no plan to assist him against the Houthis or to exploit the breakup. The outcome leaves Riyadh even more tied down in an expensive quagmire and raises more questions about the Saudi leadership.

The Houthi-Saleh alliance was always a tense and unlikely accommodation to temporarily shared interests. While he was president, Saleh fought a series of largely unsuccessful military campaigns against the Houthis. The Saudis provided assistance to Saleh. When Saleh was removed from the presidency in favor of his deputy Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi after an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Saleh, the Houthis and Saleh began cautiously to cooperate together. At first their conspiracy was clandestine, but after the Houthis seized Sanaa, the allies came out of the closet.

For at least the last year, the Saudis have been trying to persuade Saleh to abandon the Houthis and flip sides. In October, the Saudi media reported that the Saudi coalition had allowed a Russian medical team to travel to Sanaa to perform a life-saving operation on Saleh, presumably linked to wounds suffered in the previous assassination attempt. It was a very open signal of Saudi interest for Saleh to jump ship. The Houthis certainly noticed and intensified their long-standing efforts to weaken support for the ex-president in the capital and the rest of northern Yemen.

Last week Saleh made his move and denounced the Houthis as Iranian agents, offered to turn “a new page” with the Saudi coalition and portrayed himself as the defender of Arabism. Bloody street battles rocked Sanaa. But Saleh had no support elsewhere in northern Yemen and the Houthis quickly gained the upper hand in the capital. Saleh died Dec. 4 apparently trying to escape from the city.