This month the war in Yemen is 2 years old. It pits a coalition of mostly wealthy Arab countries, led by Saudi Arabia, supporting President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi's government against a ragged alliance of Houthi Shiite rebels and backers of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who enjoy Iranian support. Despite occasional claims that victory is near by the Saudi-backed Hadi loyalists, there is little prospect for the war to end. The Yemeni people, the poorest in Arabia, are paying a terrible price.

The war is Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud's war. Salman had just ascended to the throne in early 2015 after the death of his brother Abdullah. Salman had just made his favorite son, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, defense minister. The Houthi rebels chased Hadi out of Sanaa and seemed poised to take the whole country. Hadi fled in exile to Riyadh. The Houthis opened direct commercial flights from Sanaa to Tehran, Saudi Arabia's nemesis, and took other steps to strengthen their longstanding but limited ties to Iran.

Riyadh panicked. Salman feared an Iranian puppet state on his most vulnerable border, with 27 million Yemenis under Iranian influence demanding a fair distribution of the Arabian Peninsula's wealth. The Saudis announced creation of a coalition to back Hadi and return him to power in Sanaa. Some of the announced partners, including Oman, Yemen's only other neighbor, and Pakistan, quickly made it clear that they were not joining the war. The Pakistani parliament even voted unanimously to stay out of the war. Salman has not visited Muscat since; he has been to every other Gulf Cooperation Council capital and his monthlong trip this month to Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Japan, China and the Maldives flies over Oman en route to the Arab summit in Jordan.

It quickly became clear that the young defense minister had no game plan for victory or an endgame for the war. The mission was titled Operation Decisive Storm, but two years later there is no decision. The young prince originally was the public face of the campaign; now he prefers to discuss his ambitious plans to oversee the kingdom's economic transformation to Saudi 2030. The Saudi border towns have borne the burden of the Houthis' counterstrikes with rockets and missiles. Reporters are not allowed to visit.