Stephen Kalin and Saleh al-Batati
In disrupting international shipping and drawing U.S. military strikes, Yemen’s Houthi forces are trying to complete a two-decade-long transformation from a ragtag tribal insurgency into their country’s legitimate rulers.
Washington and its allies say they have attacked dozens of Houthi targets in the past two days, including on Saturday morning against a radar site. The Houthis’ deputy information minister, Nasr al-Din Amir, reported no material losses or casualties from the latest strikes and said the targeted site was already defunct.
The strikes are the latest signs that conflict stemming from the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is widening across the Middle East, with the Red Sea as a new flashpoint between Washington and the various Iran-backed groups arrayed across the region.
Houthi rebels said they remained undeterred after a U.S.-led coalition launched strikes intended to reduce the Iran-backed group’s attacks on ships in the Red Sea. WSJ’s Stephen Kalin explains how the strikes could threaten a broader conflict. Satellite Images: Maxar Technologies
The Houthis, aligned with Iran but with a looser connection than the likes of Lebanese Hezbollah, have proved a surprisingly resilient force. They emerged emboldened and well-armed from a long conflict with Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, who intervened in Yemen’s civil war in 2015 after the rebels seized the capital, San’a, launching thousands of airstrikes and sending in ground troops. Iran ramped up its supply of arms and training to the Houthis during the war, bringing them into general alignment with the regime in Tehran.
Now, dozens of attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea—and a defiant response to American-British airstrikes that began this week—have enabled the Houthis to show solidarity with the Palestinians during Israel’s war in Gaza and cast themselves as an international player. A road map aimed at a lasting peace in Yemen, which Saudi Arabia brokered with the Houthis last year in United Nations-backed talks, now appears in jeopardy.
More important, the latest confrontation has boosted the Houthis’ popularity in Yemen and the broader Middle East, while distracting from the challenge of actually governing the northern areas of the country the group controls.
“Who attacked your country?” Houthi leader Mohammed Ali al-Houthi asked Friday at a rally in San’a’s Sabeen Square. Tens of thousands of Yemenis who gathered there to protest the U.S. strikes replied: “America!”
“America is the devil. America is your enemy. America is terrorism,” the Houthi leader said. Confrontation with the U.S. has long been an ambition for the Houthis, whose slogan includes the lines “death to America, death to Israel.”
The Houthis, a political movement and militia inspired by the Zaidi offshoot of Shiite Islam, have been waging a prolonged fight for dominance with the internationally recognized Yemeni government. They initially launched attacks on Israel after the beginning of its Gaza offensive. After failing to penetrate Israel’s air-defense systems, they turned to other targets, primarily international shipping lanes, including those in and out of the Suez Canal.
While the Houthis have said they were targeting any Israeli-affiliated ship, many of the targeted ships have no clear connection to Israel or the war. Iran supports them with arms and intelligence but says it doesn’t control their actions.
Maged Al-Madhaji, chairman of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, said that the opportunity to harass the U.S. and directly engage with the American military is the Houthis’ “most cherished aspiration.”
He said that as peace talks with Saudi Arabia gain steam, the group is seeking a new justification to keep it on a war footing. “This conflict will turn into an eternal battle with the international community,” he said.
The U.S.-led strikes have been condemned by Yemeni political forces that are opposed to the Houthis but reject the violation of their country’s sovereignty.
Elisabeth Kendall, a Middle East expert and the head of the University of Cambridge’s Girton College, said the Houthis are used to sustaining heavy airstrikes and know the U.S. won’t escalate because it doesn’t want to put boots on the ground or further inflame regional tensions.
“This now makes them the victim-heroes, the heroic martyrs,” she said. “They have no real reason to stop and a high tolerance for casualties.”
Kendall predicted that a U.S. strike that produced high civilian casualties could be a tipping point in the conflict that the Houthis would use to inflame emotions.
“War has become a way of life,” she said. “Governance for the people to create prosperity is an alien concept.”
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