Saudi reportedly requested, through Oman, that they arrange a new round of negotiations between Ansar Allah (the Houthis) and the Riyadh-backed government, Al Akhbar reports citing sources

Riyadh and Sana'a have been through several rounds of this back-channel choreography, almost always with Muscat carrying messages, since the truce-era talks first stalled. The recurring fault line is the one on display here: the Houthi side has consistently refused formats in which Riyadh appears as mediator rather than principal, and prior offers framed this way have been rejected on the same grounds, so the sourcing of this request through Oman follows the established pattern rather than breaking from it. Episodes of this kind have historically mattered to markets only insofar as they feed into the Red Sea shipping calculus: it is the trajectory of attacks on transit and the associated war-risk premia, rerouting around the Cape and tanker insurance costs, not the negotiation headlines themselves, that transmit into freight and crude. The operative distinction is between a ceasefire track, which has tended to limp along, and any reduction in actual Houthi operational tempo, which is what insurers and charterers price. What is worth watching is whether Sana'a's rejection hardens or softens on the principal-party demand, and whether the Saudi side accepts that framing, since that concession has been the precondition on previous occasions when talks actually convened. Until that moves, the read is status quo: an offer of a type already declined once, carried by the same intermediary.