Who are Yemen's Houthis and why are they carrying out attacks against Israel?

Israel continues its military offensive against its enemies in the Middle East, including the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

In the Yemeni war, there are no regular armies or well-defined trenches, but rather shifting alliances, subnational actors, foreign intervention, and a conflict entangled with tribal, sectarian, and geopolitical logics. In this context, an actor has emerged that has challenged not only the Yemeni state, but also powers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and even the United States.

This is the Houthi movement, a Zaidi Shiite insurgency that has grown from the mountains of northern Yemen to become a major regional player. Their military prowess, their political and religious organization, and their anti-Western rhetoric have catapulted them to the center of the conflict in the Arabian Peninsula.

Although much of the coverage portrays them as simple "rebels" or "pro-Iranian militiamen," the Houthis are the product of a long history of political exclusion, religious infighting, and deep-rooted tribal dynamics.

Who are the Houthis of Yemen?

The Houthis, also known as the Houthi movement and officially the Ansar Allah, is a Zaydi Shia Islamist political and military organization that emerged from Yemen in the 1990s. It is predominantly made up of Zaydi Shias, with their namesake leadership being drawn largely from the Houthi tribe.
The group has been a central player in Yemen's civil war, drawing widespread international condemnation for its human rights abuses, including targeting civilians and using child soldiers. The movement is designated as a terrorist organization by some countries.  

The Houthis are backed by Iran, and they are widely considered part of the Iranian-led "Axis of Resistance".

Under the leadership of Zaydi religious leader Hussein al-Houthi (1959-2004), the Houthis emerged as an opposition movement to Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh (1942-2017), whom they accused of corruption and being backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States.

In 2003, influenced by the Lebanese Shia political and military organization Hezbollah, the Houthis adopted their official slogan against the United States, Israel, and the Jews.

Al-Houthi (1959-2004) resisted Saleh's order for his arrest, and was afterwards killed by the Yemeni military in Saada in 2004, sparking the Houthi insurgency. Since then, the movement has been mostly led by his brother Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

The organization took part in the Yemeni Revolution of 2011 by participating in street protests and coordinating with other Yemeni opposition groups. They joined Yemen's National Dialogue Conference but later rejected the 2011 reconciliation deal. In late 2014, the Houthis repaired their relationship with Saleh, and with his help they took control of the capital city. The takeover prompted a Saudi-led military intervention to restore the internationally recognized government, leading to an ongoing civil war which included missile and drone attacks against Saudi Arabia and its ally United Arab Emirates.

The Houthi movement attracts followers in Yemen by portraying themselves as fighting for economic development and the end of the political marginalization of Zaydi Shias, as well as by promoting regional political–religious issues in its media. The Houthis have a complex relationship with Yemen's Sunnis; the movement has discriminated against Sunnis but has also allied with and recruited them.

The Houthis aim to govern all of Yemen and support external movements against the United States, Israel, and Saudi Arabia

Because of the Houthis' ideological background, the conflict in Yemen is widely seen as a front of the Iran–Saudi Arabia proxy war.

Why do they carry out attacks against Israel?

Following the outbreak of the Gaza war, the Houthis began to fire missiles at Israel and to attack ships off Yemen's coast in the Red Sea, which they say is in solidarity with the Palestinians and aiming to facilitate entry of humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip

The Yemeni insurgent group copied the model of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant party, with which it maintains close ties. Hezbollah has provided them with military training since 2014, according to the Combating Terrorism Center, a US military research institute.

The Houthis also consider Iran, the large Shiite state, as an ally, while they see Sunni Saudi Arabia as one of their enemies, as well as Western powers and Israel. Western intelligence services claim that Iran is supplying weapons and financial resources to Yemeni rebels.

How strong are the Houthis in Yemen?

Yemen's internationally recognized government is the Presidential Leadership Council, to which President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi transferred his powers in April 2022. This organization is headquartered in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. However, the majority of Yemen's population lives in areas under Houthi control, and the organization collects taxes in the northern part of the country and also prints money.

Houthi rebels control around 30% of Yemen's territory, including much of the Red Sea coast, from where, in recent months, they have attacked merchant ships attempting to pass through the Suez Canal and also receive supplies from allies like Iran. This explains why ports are often targeted by Israeli attacks.

In 2005, the Houthis were estimated to have numbered between 1,000 and 3,000 fighters, and in 2009, between 2,000 and 10,000. However, the Yemen Post claims they have more than 100,000 men. According to expert Ahmed Al-Bahri, they could have between 100,000 and 120,000 followers, including unarmed fighters and sympathizers. They possess sophisticated weapons, such as drones and long-range missiles

Since late 2023, they have once again attracted global attention with the drone and missile attacks they launched against dozens of cargo ships passing through the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal.

The Yemeni Houthi insurgent group presented these actions as retaliation for the military operations that Israel launched against Hamas in the Gaza Strip and that were the Israeli response to the deadly attacks that the Palestinian organization carried out on October 7, 2023, in which more than 1,200 people died and 250 were kidnapped.

"They are fighting against the imperialists, against the enemies of the Nation of Islam. That was well received by their rank and file," said Hisham al-Omeisy, a Yemen expert at the European Institute of Peace (EIP), a few months ago, explaining the actions of the Yemeni rebels.