The Houthis emerged in the 1990s as a fierce tribal insurgency and overran parts of northern Yemen, including its capital, Sana’a, in 2014, sparking an ongoing civil war. The question now is whether US strikes are enough to make the Houthis give up, or grow stronger.
By ordering a preemptive strike on the Houthis in Yemen, President Trump hopes to succeed where all others have failed, taking on a foe that has outmatched powerful foes for years. U.S. officials said the strikes were designed as a show of overwhelming force, far more intense than the strike order under the Biden administration to take away the Houthis’ ability to harass shipping lanes in the Red Sea. The strikes also directly targeted the Houthi leadership, officials said, something the Biden administration decided against.
MESSAGE TO IRAN
And they were intended to serve as a message to the Houthi’s biggest backer, Iran, as well as to the U.S. resolve to act militarily in the Middle East, officials said. They described them as the start of a sustained campaign that analysts say could last for weeks. “Freedom of navigation is fundamental, it’s a core national interest,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News yesterday. “The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’re going to stop shooting at your ships, we’re going to stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end. But until then, it will be relentless.”
US ATTACK
The Houthis have withstood attacks from both domestic and foreign enemies throughout their decade in power. The Houthi movement emerged in the 1990s as a fierce tribal insurgency and overran parts of northern Yemen, including its capital, Sana’a, in 2014, sparking an ongoing civil war. The question now is whether the U.S. strikes are enough to make the Houthis give up, or to grow stronger. For the Houthis, their attacks and defiant response to Western airstrikes have enabled the group to show solidarity with Palestinians, gain popularity in the Arab world and present itself as an international player, going head-to-head with some of the world’s most powerful militaries.
CONFLICT PROLONGATION
“The idea that you’re going to do this massive wave of airstrikes and the Houthis are just going to lie on their backs and take it is absurd,” said Mohammed Albasha, founder of the U.S.-based Middle East security consultancy Basha Report. “They’re going to retaliate and they’re going to retaliate hard. It’s going to be a vicious cycle.” The airstrikes marked a new level of intensity in the conflict, he said. In addition to resuming attacks on Israel and shipping, the Houthis could also try to strike U.S. bases in Djibouti, just across the border from Yemen, and in the United Arab Emirates, about 800 miles away. If the conflict drags on, he warned, the Houthis are likely to resume attacks on Saudi Arabia as an indirect form of pressure on Washington.
THE REBELS’ COUNTERFIGHT
Separately, the Houthi rebels said they had targeted a US aircraft carrier in response to Saturday’s US airstrikes in Yemen. “The American enemy has launched a flagrant aggression against our country in recent hours with over 47 airstrikes,” the Yemeni Shiite group’s spokesman, Yahya Saree, said in a statement. In response, “The Armed Forces carried out a specific military operation targeting the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and its warships in the North Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone.”
In the statement, the Houthis added that Yemeni armed forces “will not hesitate” to strike “all US warships in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea in response to the aggression” against the country and that, “with the help of Allah Almighty, they will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and prevent ships from entering the Gaza Strip from the Strait.”
