How Yemen’s Houthis punch above their weight

The master of the rope-a-dope probably never made it to mountainous Yemen, but it has been a pebble in the shoe to many powers over the centuries.

The president said in early May that the U.S. will stop bombing the Houthis in Yemen, and that they will stop attacking our ships. One might think that cease-fire removed the pebble from our shoe. It is still there, unfortunately.

Here’s the thing. I’m leery of the deal. But even if it does hold, we aren’t done with the Houthis. Let me tell you why. And along the way I’ll explain who the hell the Houthis are, anyway. It always helps to know whom you’re bombing.

Unless you’re one of the 35 million or so Yemenis, the inclusion of an Atlantic journalist in a chat group about military operations in their country might have been the first time you’ve heard of the Houthis. As one of the Signal-gate texts said, “nobody knows who the Houthis are." (I’m not counting the Friends episode where Chandler winds up in Yemen to escape an irritating girlfriend.)

The Yemenis are the most generous, hospitable people I’ve ever met. But woe unto foreigners who try to impose their will on them. The Ottomans, the British, and the Egyptians each found that out the hard way.

U.S. involvement in Yemen has been a mixed bag. In the last frontier of the Cold War, the U.S. backed North Yemen, Communist East Germans supported South Yemen, and the country kinda sorta reunified in 1990. Ingrates, Yemen promptly stood with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein during Operation Desert Storm the next year.

A decade later, al Qaeda attacked the USS Cole in the Port of Aden. Then 9/11 prompted relentless U.S. attention to Yemen, the ancestral home of Osama bin Laden. Many Arab veterans of Afghanistan’s jihad against the Soviet Union had heeded the call to arms to conquer the commie heathens in South Yemen—and stayed.

Concentrated in the province of Marib, these terrorists morphed in to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The public has this group to blame for millions of lost hours and billions of dollars spent on airport security lines around the world. Thankfully, U.S. and allied counterterrorism operations eliminated the devious minds behind shoe, underwear, rectal, and toner cartridge bombs.

Saudi Arabia in 2015 led a military coalition to intervene in Yemen’s ongoing civil war. Flipflop-wearing Houthis with drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, and some old North Korean SCUDs held their ground. Things more or less ended in a stalemate and a truce in 2022.

So, who are the Houthis? Well, there’s a Yemeni tribe named Houthi. Most of its members adhere to the Zaydi branch of Shiite Islam. Houthis largely hail from Saada, a hard-scrabble area, where there are more weapons than at a Texas NRA convention.

The Houthi elder, Hussein al-Houthi, traded his family weapons business for religious work somewhere in the 1990s. By the early 2000s, his movement, Ansar Allah (God’s Cadre), began accusing the longtime Yemeni president of being a U.S. and Saudi Arabian stooge. Hussein was “captured dead" by government forces in 2004.

His brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, took over. He doubled down on support from Iran and Hezballah; or, some might say, they tripled down on the Houthis as their latest proxy franchise. The best organized and armed opposition group in Yemen, the Houthis deftly co-opted popular discontent during the 2011 Arab Spring.

And really the rest is Houthi history. Though the never-really-ending civil war in Yemen continues, the Houthis effectively rule the roost.

Their platform—“Death to America. Death to Israel. Curse on Jews. Victory to Islam."—has done nothing to improve the lot of Yemenis. Shaking down international cargo ships in the Red Sea. Attacking U.S. vessels. Lobbing projectiles at Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Israel. These are the Houthi contributions to the world.

I doubt it is a coincidence that the U.S. cease-fire with the Houthis arrived on the eve of the president’s first state visit abroad, which happened to be a trip to the Arabian Peninsula. The travel was geared toward eye-popping investment, financial, and retail numbers. Why risk that the Houthis might spoil a trillion-dollar visit?

Yemen’s Gulf neighbors tacitly applauded the U.S. truce with Houthis. Who wants any more instability in the region, whether during the president’s visit or after. Plus, Big Tech data farms, hotels, and golf courses don’t flourish in chaos.

The Houthis themselves probably welcomed a little respite from months of U.S. bombing of their leadership, missile warehouses, and drone factories. A little breather to rearm and regroup never hurt any militia.

In the short term, the transactional deal between the U.S. and Houthis was a win for most of the region, except Israel (and the impoverished citizenry of Yemen). A problem for Israel often turns into a problem for the region and the U.S., history tells us.

As the Houthis reminded anyone paying attention, their deal with the U.S. didn’t include a stand-down on attacks aimed at Israel. Houthi projectiles fired on Israel have generally been militarily ineffectual, but daily air raid sirens have a way of playing havoc with sleep patterns, air traffic, and quotidian life. Plus, the Houthis can boast that they’re the only member of the Axis of Resistance still actually resisting the continuing war in Gaza.

Iran has been quiet these days, but it no doubt encouraged the Houthis to accept a deal with the U.S. Iran’s nuclear talks with the U.S. have seemingly delayed any knockout blows planned by Israel.

The Houthis’ Hamas pals also cut a separate deal with the U.S. just before the president’s trip to release the last remaining U.S. hostage in Gaza. I’m not sure if Hamas got anything out of the release other than creating some daylight between the U.S. and Israel, but that is a win in Hamas’ mind’s eye.

The president’s decision to lift sanctions on the fledgling Syrian government added to Israel’s concerns. As did the president’s granting Gulf countries easier access to military, AI, and civil-nuclear technology without public pressure to expand the Abraham Accords.

In today’s zero-sum world, the Axis of Resistance had a pretty good couple of weeks, largely thanks to the Houthis.

Looking ahead, the Houthis might well maintain the deal with the U.S. and sustain their truce with Saudi Arabia—at least for as long as they can contribute to friction between Israel and the U.S. Or, they might not, confident in their resilience to repair damage from U.S., Israeli, or Gulf attacks and in their ability to jack up global insurance costs, disrupt international supply lines, and terrorize Israel. Either way, they’ll remain underfoot.

I also wouldn’t put it past the Houthis to enlist others to do their dirty work. Remember those al Qaeda guys in Marib, Yemen? Well, they’re still there. Right next door to Saudi Arabia. And just across the Red Sea is Somalia, home to al-Shabaab, themselves experienced pirates and terrorists. In that part of the world, enemies of my enemies are my friends—and the Shiite Houthis and Sunni jihadists, whether Yemeni, Somali, or other, have a lot of shared hate toward the U.S., Israel, and Gulf nations.

So, cease-fire or no, I’m hoping our leaders will check their shoes if they ever end up in Yemen.

About the author: Theodore J. Singer retired in 2023 from the Central Intelligence Agency, where he served five times as a chief of station and head of Middle East operations. He currently advises private and public sector clients and is a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle East Initiative.