By The Jerusalem Post (World News) | Created at 2024-12-31 00:55:06 | Updated at 2025-01-02 23:28:23
2 days ago
Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has not been deterred and, supplied by Iran, has continued his missile launchings.
By NEVILLE TELLER DECEMBER 31, 2024 02:36
HOUTHI SUPPORTERS of Gaza in Sana’a, Yemen, last Friday. The Houthis are the most powerful of the cards remaining in Iran’s hands, the writer asserts.
(photo credit: KHALED ABDULLAH/REUTERS)
Four of Iran’s main anti-Israel instruments are effectively out of action. Hamas is a shadow of the fighting force it once was; Hezbollah has been neutered and is currently in a two-month ceasefire deal; Iran’s two efforts at a direct attack on Israel were humiliatingly ineffective; and control of the militias in Syria has been wrested from Iran’s grasp. As a result, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been forced to fall back on the one resource still effective – the Houthis.
Distant from Israel though they are, the Houthis represent the most powerful of the cards remaining in Iran’s hands.
Following the Hamas pogrom of October 7, 2023, Iran determined that the Houthis would be one of the seven fronts from which a united attack would be launched on Israel, to exploit the assault and Israel’s inevitable military response. Under instruction from Iran, the Houthis began launching drones and ballistic missiles 2,000-plus kilometers from Yemen into Israel. They have so far dispatched approximately 200 of these, most of which have been intercepted before reaching their target. More than 20 have, however, evaded Israel’s air defenses, including one that exploded in a playground in the middle of Jaffa on December 21. Fortunately, only minor casualties resulted.
In response, Israel Air Force fighters have undertaken a number of punitive strikes against Houthi facilities in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital, targeting those used to smuggle Iranian weaponry into the country. Most recently, the Houthis’ three ports have been struck together with the region’s energy infrastructure, and media outlets in Yemen have reported that many places in Sana’a and the port city of Hodeidah lost their electricity supply and were blacked out.
Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has not been deterred and, supplied by Iran, has continued his missile launchings. One of two that crossed into Israeli airspace on December 25 caused Ben-Gurion Airport to suspend all flights temporarily.
“The Houthis have been carrying out attacks against Israel in violation of international law,” said IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, “and the Houthi regime is a threat to peace and security in the region.”
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea, conflating the Houthis with Yemen as a whole, as the group has taken to do, said they would not be deterred by the Israeli strikes. “The Israeli aggression will not deter Yemen and the Yemenis from performing their religious and moral duty in responding to its massacres in the Gaza Strip,” he said.
The Houthis are the only players on the world stage that are openly antisemitic. Others that are, vehemently deny the charge, and shelter under the convenient anti-Zionist cloak. The Houthis, however, emblazoned across their flag “A curse on the Jews.” Even the Iranian regime does not go this far. Anti-Israel they certainly proclaim themselves, but Judaism is tolerated in Iran as a minority religion, and synagogues continue to serve various Jewish communities across the country.
Much more in line with the ayatollahs’ philosophy are two other exhortations on the Houthi flag – “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.” It was these that made the Houthis, in their bid to overthrow Yemen’s internationally recognized government, a natural target for Iranian support. Incidentally, a working alliance with the Houthis gave Iran the chance to extend their “Shia crescent” to the Arabian peninsula.
The Houthis are Zaydi Shi’ites, a minority group on the Shia side of the great Islamic Sunni-Shia divide. Following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, separate regimes were established in north and south Yemen, and the country was plagued for nearly 50 years with active or passive civil strife. It was only in 1990 that the two regimes agreed to unite as the Unified Republic of Yemen under the presidency of the former president of the northern state, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
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Saleh was far from universally popular, and it was not long before the Houthis, accusing him of corruption and being backed by Sunni Saudi Arabia and the United States, emerged as an opposition movement under the leadership of Zaydi religious leader Hussain al-Houthi, from whom they took their name.
In 2011, Saleh fell victim to the so-called Arab Spring. He gave up the presidency reluctantly. The Yemeni military, including its air force, remained largely loyal to him. In an attempt to maneuver his way back to power, he allied himself with his erstwhile enemies, the Houthis. As a result, supported by Yemen’s military and with weaponry from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in September 2014 Houthi troops overcame government forces and took control of large areas of west Yemen, finally capturing the capital, Sana’a. When Saudi Arabia, alarmed at Iran’s expansion into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis, Iran increased its financial and military support.
As a result the Houthi-Iran relationship soon changed. From it being a case of Iran assisting the Houthis in their domestic struggle for power, it quickly turned into the Houthis becoming a proxy for Iran in its regional bid for dominance.
Houthis' declaration of war on Israel
With the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas War, Iran boosted the Houthis’ role. On October 31, they effectively declared war on Israel, nominally in support of Hamas in its conflict with Israel in Gaza. Subsequently, the Houthis have attacked Israel by both air and sea.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait is a strategic sea passage at the very foot of the Red Sea, connecting it to the Gulf of Aden. It is flanked to the east by the Houthi-occupied coastline. Claiming to target vessels directly connected to Israel, the Houthis began attacking shipping passing through the Strait.
Through faulty intelligence, shipping whose connection to Israel was peripheral, or even non-existent, was also attacked. As a result, the whole campaign has proved something of an own-goal. It has attracted air strikes by the US and United Kingdom, as well as by Israel’s Air Force, and it has also angered the international shipping world. The attacks have disrupted maritime trade routes, causing significant revenue losses for the Suez Canal and adversely affecting Egypt’s economy.
While international anger is largely directed at the Houthis, there is also broader criticism of Iran’s role in supporting them, thus contributing to the disruption of global maritime security and trade.
UN Security Council Resolution 2722, passed in January 2024, condemned the Houthi attacks on shipping, and ordered them to desist. The resolution was supported by the US, UK, and France, but Russia and China abstained, presumably unwilling to condemn an obviously Iranian-backed initiative.
While deprived of other means of attacking Israel, Iran is unlikely to curb the Houthi naval-air campaign, and for the moment the Houthis are content to act as Iran’s proxy since it accords with their own intense anti-Israel ideology. But they have their own agenda – namely to take over the rest of government-held Yemen, and then to conquer the area of southern Yemen currently ruled by the Southern Transitional Council that has split away and declared independence.
An extended intra-Yemen struggle lies ahead – a struggle which has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause, and in which anti-Israel military action is irrelevant. At some point, Iran might find that its staunch Houthi reserve has become just as unreliable as its other proxies.
The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is: Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at: www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com
