Houthis threaten independently of Iran

After fourteen months of war, the ceasefire in Lebanon is holding, the fighting in the Gaza Strip is at low intensity, and the number of missiles launched at Israel from Iraq has dropped, but the Houthis in Yemen aren’t stopping. In the early hours of Saturday morning, they fired a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv that landed in a park in Jaffa, injuring sixteen people, after a similar incident last week sent millions of Israeli scurrying to air-raid shelters.

Throughout the war, the Houthi rebels in Yemen have been in lockstep with Iran. But now, when on other fronts things are calming down, they are maintaining their hostile posture. Israel’s incursion into the buffer zone on the Syrian border is a casus belli as far as they are concerned, even though, in the wake of the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the Iranians have been withdrawing from Syria. While Iran’s regional web of forces has largely collapsed, the Houthis appear to be keeping up a militant front against the West. Have they turned from a pro-Iranian militia into an independent one?

“’Iranization’ causes unease”

The rulers of Yemenite capital Sanaa may be Shiites, but they are not from the same Shiite sect as the Ayatollahs who rule Iran. The Iranians are Jaafari Shiites – the most widespread school of Shiite Islam in the world – while the Houthis are Zaydis. Inbal Nissim-Louvton, an expert on modern Yemen at the Open University, explains that the tie between the two is not a natural alliance, but something much more expedient, in accordance with overlapping interests and common hostility to the West in general, and to the US and Israel. “The Zaydis have undergone a process of ‘Iranization’, Nissim-Louvton says, “and not all of the Zaydi establishment supports that. At the very least, it causes unease among some in the Houthis ranks. I’m not sure that all of them are terribly happy to fall into line, and at least some would be glad to see the influence diminish.”

Dr. Yoel Guzansky, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), adds: “The independence of the Houthis has always existed, and Iranian control of them has never been as tight as it was over Hezbollah and the Assad regime. It’s not clear how much coordination there is at present, and it could be that the Iranians have an interest in presenting their axis as active, despite the situation.”

Nissim-Louvton points out that, first and foremost, the Houthis serve their own interests. “They are active in a way that first of all suits them, even if it doesn’t necessarily match the interests of the Iranians one-on-one. We saw this in the warming of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2023 and the mutual opening of embassies brokered by China. The Iranians asked the Houthis to lower their profile, but they continued to attack coalition targets.”

Benny Sabati, an expert on Iran at INSS, stresses that when the ceasefire agreement with Hezbollah was signed, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei declared that the “resistance” would continue, and offers an alternative explanation for the Houthis’ behavior. “’The resistance’ is a supreme goal as far as Iran in concerned. There are tactical intermissions along the way, which sometimes apply to everybody and sometimes to some only. There are also vague orders that allow partial freedom of action to remote militias such as the Houthis.”

No longer just a regional problem

Unlike other Iranian tentacles, at an early stage of the war the Houthis created a global threat. Their strategic location north of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the southern entrance to the Red Sea through which 14% of global seaborne trade passes, enabled them to disrupt maritime traffic in the area.

The threat to the sea lanes forced ships to sail round Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, instead of through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, lengthening supply chains by at least two weeks. Egypt, which in normal times derives 2% of its GDP from Suez Canal tolls, was hard hit. The head of the Suez Canal Authority said that revenue from the canal in the 2023-2024 financial year totaled $7.2 billion, substantially less than the $9.4 billion total in the previous year.

“The Houthis will continue to be a global security threat for several reasons: their position on Bab el-Mandeb; their proximity to an important oil producer, Saudi Arabia; and their capabilities provided by Iran alongside development of independent capabilities,” explains Dr. Guzansky.

The Houthis are also a disruptive element within Yemen itself. The Yemeni government that the international community recognizes resides in Aden. According to the World Bank, in the first half of 2024 it lost 42% of its revenue. The damage to oil exports and the dependence on imported products led to the Yemeni rial depreciating from 1,619 to the US dollar in January to 1,917 in August. There are reports of a shortage of food in some regions of the country. According to the International Monetary Fund, Yemen’s GDP will shrink by 1% in 2024, after shrinking by 2% last year.

Published by Globes, Israel business news – en.globes.co.il – on December 22, 2024.

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