Who are the Houthis?

For weeks, Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched drone and rocket attacks targeting ships in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a strategic passage that connects the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea. On January 11, the U.S. and British militaries, in conjunction with other allies, launched the first strikes in response, targeting Houthi weaponry in Yemen after warnings to the group went unheeded. 

 

The Houthis are a Shiite Muslim sect with roots that date back centuries in Yemen. Members of the religion are a minority in Yemen, which is predominantly Sunni Muslim, but they are a significant one, numbering in the hundreds of thousands and making up as much as a third of the overall population.

 

Despite being minorities in the country, in 2012 Houthi rebels — numbering then in the low thousands — managed to capitalize on unrest in Yemen to build a loyal following in the north of the country. In 2014, they seized the capital Sanaa, sparking a civil war with the Western- and Saudi-backed government.

 

That war has continued since, despite limited cease-fires. A report in the Yemen Post from 2017 said the ranks of the rebel militia and administration, which refers to itself as Yemen's government, had swelled to roughly 100,000 people.

 

The Houthi administration now controls most of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and the key Red Sea port of Hudaydah.

 

The Western-backed government has been dislocated to the southern port city of Aden, but it also controls the less-populated eastern portion of the country.

 

The Houthi movement has not been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government since 2021. The Biden administration has tried to walk a thin line between granting the group recognition as a legitimate political faction, in hopes of easing the war, while also backing the fight against it.

 

The veteran diplomatic envoy tasked by President Biden with finding a political solution to Yemen's bloody civil war said for the first time in 2021 that the U.S. recognized the Houthi rebels "as a legitimate actor," as Washington accepted that both sides in the conflict bore responsibility for the ongoing violence.

 

"No one can wish them away or out of the conflict, so let's deal with realities that exist on the ground," Lenderking said, adding that in his experience, the Houthis had "spoken about a commitment toward peace in Yemen and I think there are certainly elements within the leadership that favor that."

 

The overture failed to bring peace to Yemen, however, and after Hamas' brutal Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel sparked the war in Gaza, the Palestinian group's ideological allies — including the Houthis and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah group, both of which are supported by Iran, like Hamas — vowed to back up Hamas.

 

The Houthi movement has said its "naval operations" are being carried out "to support the Palestinian people in confronting the aggression and siege on Gaza." A spokesman added in a social media post that the rebel group did not intend the Red Sea attacks as "a show of force nor a challenge to anyone."

 

The Houthi rebels, who have a significant supply of ballistic missiles and Iranian-made attack drones, claim to be targeting ships belonging to Israel or the country's Western allies. U.S. warships in the region have shot down many weapons launched from Yemen over recent weeks — including the Houthi's largest barrage ever of drones and missiles, launched on January 9.

 

Some vessels have been hit, but many of the rockets and drones launched from Yemen never reach their intended targets, and it's often not clear what those targets actually were before the weapons are destroyed.

 

The U.S. government estimates that almost 10% of the world's seaborne petroleum products passed through the Bab al-Mandab Strait in 2017, along with myriad other goods. The impact of the threat to shipping in the area has already been significant, disrupting the logistics of some of the world's biggest sea cargo lines and oil companies.

 

The Houthis, along with Hezbollah and Hamas, are part of a vaguely defined alliance that Iran refers to as "the axis of resistance" against Israel. All of the groups, like Iran, either dispute or reject Israel's right to exist as a nation and have regularly clashed with the close U.S. ally.

 

Iran, given its financial and military support of the Houthis, likely wields more influence over the group than any other entity. The Islamic Republic has worked for years to bolster its influence across the Middle East by funding and arming Shiite Muslim insurgent groups, from rebels in Syria and Iraq and Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the Houthis in Yemen.

 

On Dec. 18, in Israel, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced a new joint military operation aimed at addressing "security challenges in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, with the goal of ensuring freedom of navigation for all countries and bolstering regional security and prosperity."

 

Austin said the effort, dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian, would see at least seven nations join the U.S., including the U.K., and several European Union allies, along with Bahrain and Canada. The operation's goal is to contribute militarily to policing the vital sea passages around Yemen's coastline and responding to attacks from Houthi-controlled Yemen. It was these allies who launched the reprisal strikes on the Houthis on January 11.

 

"These attacks are reckless, dangerous, and they violate international law," Austin said during a trip to Israel. "This is not just a U.S. issue. This is an international problem, and it deserves an international response." 

 

The Guardian operation was created under the guises of the existing Combined Task Force 153, which was launched in 2022 with a virtually identical mission.

 

"Because this is a coalition of the willing, it's up to individual nations as to which parts of the combined maritime task force mission they will support," Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder told reporters last week. "We're working through that process right now, in terms of which countries will be participating in Task Force 153, and specifically what capabilities and types of support they will provide."

Troublesome Houthi Militias Become  the New Hezbollah of the Red Sea

The U.S. bombing of Yemen, one of the world’s poorest countries, has not deterred the nation’s Houthi militia from attacking ships in the Red Sea in protest at the Israeli slaughter in Gaza. The Houthis have proven to be an unstoppable force since they announced that they planned to attack shipping on its way to the Israeli port of Eilat, 1,000 miles from Yemen. The threat was enough for the Biden administration to target the Houthis. Despite U.S. and British bombing of Yemen, the Houthis have continued to pose a threat to shipping in one of the world’s more important waterways. For the past year, until the war in Gaza, the Houthis were militarily silent after fighting a war against the Saudis and its Arab allies who were backed by the U.S., Britain, and France. The Saudis, using weapons purchased from the U.S., slaughtered a massive number of Yemeni women and children, using U.S. surveillance, bombs, and missiles. While Yemen suffered a massive loss of life and infrastructure, as well as a deadly famine, the Houthis, nevertheless, proved to be a wily and dangerous enemy. Such was their success in hitting targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, that a ceasefire was negotiated last year. It was clear to the Saudis, and to Washington, that a new Hezbollah had arrived on the Red Sea. Just like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis, starting in 2014, began building an expanded military capability, with help from Iran, Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon. They acquired missile parts and technology and created their own assembly plants. They also began to experiment with drones of a type used by Iran that have proven to be a major threat in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Russia has been using mainly Iranian drones in the past two years. Since 2014, while the focus was on its nuclear industry, Iran began rebuilding its military, introducing new ballistic missiles, drones capable of delivering explosive packages over long distances, anti-ship missiles, and underwater missiles. Iran has become one of the world’s major arms producers, and this has benefited the Houthis and Hezbollah, as well as the Iraqi military. It is, therefore, not surprising that Israel’s Netanyahu would love to see the U.S. go to war with Iran. The Houthis now have ballistic and cruise missiles in a sizable and sophisticated arsenal. They have not expressed a desire to attack U.S. facilities in the Middle East. Instead, their anger has been directed at Israel over Gaza. They have not attacked the Saudis, but this could change if the United States continues to bomb Yemen. Most observers believe that if Israel was forced to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza, the Houthis would stop attacking shipping in the Gulf. The problem is the Biden administration’s unwavering support for Israel. It is an example of his utter duplicity and incompetence. Instead of adopting the soft voice and big stick approach of Ronald Reagan, he has chosen the loud voice and a tiny stick in dealing with Benjamin Netanyahu. He has given Israel additional weapons to create more casualties in Gaza and across the region, while pretending to oppose Israel’s military carnage. This has lowered the standing of the U.S. across the globe. There are others who believe that they have spotted another example of Biden duplicity. The Yemeni journalist, Fares Al-Humairi is one of them, and he argues that the U.S. and British bombing of Yemen has not been at all strategic. It has been the opposite, in his view, with the Houthis being able to relocate 100 naval missiles from dismantled military bases before British and U.S. strikes happened. A British diplomat familiar with the region, speaking off-the-record, offered AFP this explanation for the apparent contradictory posture by Washington and London. He said that he believed “the Yanks and Brits” were “play acting” to please the Israelis, and to avoid a wider conflict with Iran. He suspected that the Israelis had considered hitting Iran and Yemen, and the Saudis persuaded Biden to launch some attacks on Yemen, but not ones which would result in massive damage or loss of life. The Saudis do not want to go back to war with the Houthis, knowing it would seriously damage their economy at a time when they have a ceasefire with the Houthis, and much better relations with Iran. In this diplomat’s opinion, Biden and the Brits have been playing a deceptive game to keep the Israelis happy, but it is a game that could collapse. It has led the Houthis, at the request of Iran, to stop targeting Israel proper with its larger missiles that could strike the Israeli port of Eilat. The British diplomat suggested that when the war in Gaza ends, Washington will seek to repair relations with the Houthis by offering aid, not wishing to have another powerful anti-American militia in the region, with capabilities like Hezbollah in Lebanon. It remains to be seen if the Houthis would be receptive to such an overture if Washington, as seems likely, continues to give Israel unqualified support