Israel shifts focus to Houthis, but it needs partners to defeat distant foe

Over the past year, Israel has methodically — and at times spectacularly — hammered Iran and its regional allies, cutting off tentacles of the proverbial “octopus of terror,” as former prime minister Naftali Bennett awkwardly put it.

Hamas’s military is a shadow of the force that poured across Israel’s border from Gaza on October 7 of last year. Hezbollah threw in the towel in Lebanon and agreed to a ceasefire after losing its leadership and much of its arsenal, jettisoning its pledge to keep firing at Israel until it pulls out of Gaza.

The Assad regime in Syria, a key hub in Iran’s network, crumpled in days after rebels swept southward out of their stronghold, encouraged by Israel’s successes against Tehran and its proxies.

And on Monday, Shiite militias in Iraq reportedly decided to stop attacking Israel.

Yet one distant Iranian ally remains stubbornly in the fight.

Early Wednesday, the Houthi rebels in Yemen fired another ballistic missile at Israel, the fourth such overnight attack in less than a week and the fifth targeting central Israel since December 16.

The attacks were only the latest in a campaign in which the Houthis have launched more than 200 missiles and 170 drones at Israel over the past year.

Israeli leaders are promising to address the threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would act against the Houthis with the same force it used against Iran’s other “terrorist arms.”

Israel will begin targeting Houthi leaders, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday.

“The Houthis are making a big mistake when they continue to attack Israel,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

“Today, when we have a ceasefire in Lebanon and less intense fighting in Gaza,” continued the official, “we now have the opportunity to shift our attention and resources toward the Yemeni front, the Houthi front. This is what we are doing these days, and we are also formulating a response alongside our allies led by the United States, and when the time comes, we will make sure that the Houthi forces pay.”

The threats are not empty pledges. As a Houthi attack hit a school in Ramat Gan last week, the IDF carried out a wave of intense airstrikes against Houthi targets. Israeli military sources said the strikes, aimed at paralyzing all three ports used by the group, targeted fuel depots, power stations and tugboats used at the Houthi-controlled ports.

Yet the Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, continue firing.

Israel will have to do more than carry out occasional airstrikes. It faces a determined enemy, well-adapted to withstand bombing campaigns. Only by working for a more muscular American and Arab coalition against the Houthis will Israel succeed in confronting the threat — and potentially moving toward closer ties with its natural allies in the region.

A newfound popularity

The Houthis have many reasons to keep firing.

Violence against Israel and the US is central to the Houthi ideology. As the group’s slogan goes: “God Is the Greatest, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”

In addition to the launches at Israel, the Iran-backed group has also carried out repeated missile and drone attacks on some 100 merchant vessels attempting to traverse the Red Sea, forcing many carriers to avoid the key waterway and hamstringing global shipping.

The attacks also elevate them within the Iranian axis and the broader Muslim world.

“You see Hezbollah in a ceasefire,” said Danny Citrinowicz, research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. “Iraqi militias hardly attack. The Iranians hesitate to respond, and the Houthis are the only ones pulling the ‘resistance’ forward.”

A poor tribal group in the desert that almost no one had heard of 15 years ago, the Houthis are now enjoying unprecedented popularity across the Muslim world as the vanguard of the fight against Israel.

There are also pressing domestic reasons for the Houthis to fire at Israel. The country is now home to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, with 80 percent of the population relying on aid, per the United Nations. Almost half of Yemen’s children under 5 are moderately to severely stunted.

“Being in constant conflict is actually strengthening their domestic cohesion,” said Wolf-Christian Paes, senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “because people are not asking so much about service delivery and the economy and all of that when you’re in war.”

Houthi attacks in the Red Sea are far more popular than the group itself. An October poll found that only 8% of respondents in Houthi-controlled areas viewed the group favorably, while 35% approved of the attacks.

Not a proxy

Though their animus toward Israel and the West aligns neatly with Iran’s worldview, the Houthis are not proxies in the mold of Hezbollah or Shiite militias in Iraq.

“They consider themselves to be part of the Axis of Resistance,” said Paes. “But this does not mean that they take their orders from Tehran.”

Unlike many proxies, they don’t rely on Iran for money, instead raising funds from taxes and smuggling networks. The Houthis also practice a different strain of Shiite Islam from Iran, and make decisions independently of Iran and its Revolutionary Guards. For example, Iran reportedly urged the Houthis not to take the capital of Sana’a in 2014, advice the group promptly ignored.

Ties between Iran and the Houthis expanded markedly in 2011, when they led a revolution that toppled Yemen’s pro-Saudi president Ali Abdullah Saleh. When the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — regional rivals of Tehran — launched a military campaign against the Houthis in 2015, Iran began shipping advanced drones and missiles to the group.

In February, the US Central Command announced that a Coast Guard team intercepted a vessel from Iran to the Houthis that contained “medium-range ballistic missile components, explosives, unmanned underwater/surface vehicle  components, military-grade communication and network equipment, anti-tank guided missile launcher assemblies, and other military components.”

The sides could draw even closer together in light of Israel’s recent achievements.

The relationship “will grow closer now that Hezbollah has stood down and Assad has lost power,” said Kenneth Katzman, senior fellow at The Soufan Center. “The Houthis are now almost all that remains of Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ strategy.”

At the same time, the weakening of Iran’s axis could lead to a more independent and assertive Houthi movement.

“If tomorrow you had, say, a regime change in Tehran or the government in Tehran would decide to stop this, it doesn’t mean that necessarily the Houthis would stop,” said Paes.

Reactive half-measures

Against powerful foes, the Houthis have proven resilient. As in Afghanistan, Yemen’s mountainous terrain is a valuable asset to guerrilla groups facing aerial attacks.

And over the years, they have learned how to adapt to aerial campaigns.

The Saudis led a Sunni coalition that started bombing attacks in 2015, along with the deployment of tens of thousands of ground troops. That effort has failed to dislodge the Houthis from the capital or reinstate the coalition’s preferred leader.

In January, the US and UK launched Operation Poseidon Archer to strike the Houthis. However, said Brian Carter of the American Enterprise Institute, “a series of reactive half-measures has not achieved decisive effects or meaningfully degraded Houthi military capabilities.”

“The Houthis are not deterred, and have also collected significant insight into the operation of US defenses against their attack systems,” he continued.

“Are they stopping the Houthis? No,” said US President Joe Biden of the airstrikes. “Are they going to continue? Yes.”

The Houthis have moved weapons manufacturing underground, and still enjoy access to ports and weapons shipments.

US-led attacks “didn’t eliminate the leadership at all,” said Citrinowicz. “They didn’t touch the Iranian mission in Yemen, they didn’t touch the chief of staff, they didn’t touch any of the senior officials.”

If the Saudis and UAE, and more recently the US and UK, have failed to stop Houthi attacks, why should Israel expect better results?

Even though Israeli leaders boast about images of the Hodeida port in flames after Israeli operations, sporadic airstrikes aren’t going to scare the Houthis. They might even strengthen them in the region.

For Israel to have success, it can’t go it alone, like it did in the neighboring Gaza and Lebanon. It will have to quietly join or lead a renewed, aggressive coalition against the Houthis.

“We need to pause,” said Citrinowicz. “Sit with the Americans and wait for the Trump administration. Set as a strategic goal a fatal blow to the leadership and the stability of production, work together with the countries of the region, and certainly the Saudis.”

A more assertive coalition could keep up a high-tempo bombing campaign, similar to what Israel did to Hezbollah. It could go after Houthi leaders, driving the survivors underground and seriously disrupting the organization’s command and control.

Israel could also urge allies to go after the Houthis’ ability to smuggle weapons. Until now, efforts have focused on protecting ships and striking large sites, while keeping naval vessels far from Houthi missiles. But enforcing a blockade to stem the flow of Iranian weapons would have significant effects.

“Every missile that doesn’t make it to the Houthis doesn’t need to be defended against,” noted Paes. “Smuggling a ballistic missile is not easy, certainly not on a dhow.”

Carter suggested pushing for the removal of Houthi-controlled banks from the international SWIFT system, making it much harder for the group to receive financial support and pay salaries.

And if the coalition were really serious, it would enhance its support for Yemeni government forces, to create a credible ground threat to push the Houthis back from the capital and their ports.

That may be starting to unfold. This week, Saudi Arabia and their local allies have opened attacks on Houthi forces in two provinces.

Israeli leadership in a confident, effective regional coalition against the Houthis — after years of failed and expensive operations — would further cement Israel’s place as the undisputed leader of the regional anti-Iran coalition, and would increase incentives to deepen ties with the Jewish state.

On the other hand, if Israel and its regional partners fail to address the threat, the threat will only grow.

“Even if the war ends tomorrow in Gaza, the genie is out of the bottle,” said Citrinowicz. “They’ll attack the Saudis tomorrow, and the next day they will attack Israel again over something that happens in the West Bank. They will do it again and again.”