The Houthi Card

Their calculus is rooted in their confidence in their ability to punish the global economy by choking off the Strait of Hormuz, and thereby strike back at the U.S.’ center-of-gravity; our political economy.But while attention is rightly focused on the Hormuz, it is not the only point of vulnerability. Yemen’s Houthis remain positioned to close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which sits astride the vital sea route to the Red Sea and Suez Canal. With the Strait of Hormuz effectively shut, Saudi Arabia is now routing roughly five million barrels per day through the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Every barrel sits within Houthi strike range. The USS George H.W. Bush carrier strike group, deployed from Norfolk in late March, is right now rounding the Cape of Good Hope rather than transit Bab el-Mandeb — a 6,000-mile detour that tells you exactly how seriously the Pentagon takes the threat.Since the ceasefire took effect, the Houthis have launched at least eight barrages at Israel and have shifted their approach to Red Sea shipping from broad pressure to selective political screening — identifying and targeting vessels by political affiliation rather than nationality, applying the same graduated-pressure formula Iran employed at the Strait of Hormuz. Senior Houthi political official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti has stated publicly that current strikes on Israel constitute only a first phase, a formulation that signals the movement is managing its escalation options against future contingencies, not simply reacting to current events.Removing the threat to the Red Sea, however, will not flow automatically from a U.S.-Iranian peace deal, even if one is achieved. Washington’s analytical error is treating the Houthis as a faucet Tehran can open or close. The evidence points the other way. The Houthis are not an Iranian subsidiary taking orders; they are a franchise operator pursuing their own agenda under a shared brand. Their calibrated restraint through most of March, followed by ballistic missile strikes on Israel starting March 28 and a claimed “joint operation” with Iran and Hezbollah on April 1, reflects a Yemeni calculus rooted in Yemeni domestic politics — not Tehran’s stage management. Understanding the distinction matters because it determines whether Bab el-Mandeb closes alongside the Strait of Hormuz. And if it does, the economic shock of this war moves from severe to catastophic.From “Fingers on the Trigger” to Missiles on IsraelOn February 28 — the same day the U.S. and Israel launched Operation Epic Fury — the Houthis threatened to resume Red Sea attacks. Industry bodies reacted immediately. The Baltic and International Maritime Council warned that vessels tied to U.S. or Israeli interests faced elevated risk. UK Maritime Trade Operations issued an advisory flagging increased danger across the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, and the Red Sea corridor. Then, nothing.On March 5, Houthi paramount leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi declared the group’s “fingers are on the trigger, ready to respond at any moment should developments warrant it.” The statement was conditional, not committing. Through the first three weeks of the war, Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel. Iraqi Shia militias struck U.S. targets in Kuwait and Jordan. The Houthis — Iran’s most geographically advantaged proxy, astride the second most important maritime chokepoint in the region — stayed quiet.Their hesitancy baffled me and many of my analytic colleagues. Michael Hanna of the International Crisis Group said plainly: “We are not exactly sure, to be honest.” CSIS and Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies each published assessments attempting to account for the reticence. The Times reported on March 16 that the Houthis were awaiting an Iranian signal. Bab el-Mandeb remained the only functioning artery for Saudi crude, with roughly 30 tankers near Yanbu within Houthi range at any given moment.On March 27, Houthi supporters rallied in Sanaa in “solidarity with Iran and Lebanon.” Military spokesman Yahya Saree warned that the U.S. and Israel would not be permitted to use the Red Sea as a base against Iran. The next day, March 28, the Houthis fired their first ballistic missile at Israel since October 2025. The IDF intercepted it. A second salvo of a cruise missile and drones followed the same day. On April 1, Saree claimed a coordinated “joint operation” with Iranian and Hezbollah forces targeting Israeli military sites. But the Houthi attacks then ceased and the group again went quiet.On April 7, a senior Iranian source told Reuters that “if the situation gets out of control, Iran’s allies will also close the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.” As of this writing, no commercial vessel has been struck in 2026. The USS George H.W. Bush is off Namibia. Saudi crude still flows through Yanbu. The Houthis have reshaped global naval movement without firing a shot at shipping.Who They Actually AreMost American coverage describes the Houthis as “Iran-backed Yemeni rebels” and leaves it there. That shorthand obscures more than it reveals.The movement emerged from the “Believing Youth” (al-Shabab al-Mo’men) Zaydi revivalist study circles that formed in Yemen’s northern Saada province in the 1990s. The Houthi family’s grievances were not invented in Tehran. They run back to Yemen’s 1962 revolution, which ended a millennium of Zaydi imamate rule in the north and marginalized the Hashemite clerical class from which the al-Houthis claim descent. The founder, Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, was killed by Yemeni government forces in 2004 in the first of six Saada wars with the Saleh regime. His recorded lectures still form the core indoctrination curriculum today.The current leader is Hussein’s younger brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. He holds the title Alam al-Huda — “Icon of Guidance” — signifying his claim as supreme leader chosen by God and entitled to absolute obedience from his followers. He has not appeared publicly in weeks. Israeli airstrikes in August 2025 killed 12 members of the Houthi cabinet including Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi; Chief of Staff Mohammed al-Ghamari was killed in October 2025. Houthi senior leaders have been instructed to stay off-grid.Organizationally, the movement is highly personalized and familial. The “preventive security” apparatus — modeled explicitly on Iran’s IRGC and reportedly set up with Hezbollah and Iranian trainers — reports directly to Abdul-Malik al-Houthi rather than to any Yemeni state institution. A U.N. Panel of Experts has described it as the most influential intelligence apparatus in Houthi-controlled areas. The key public figures are Yahya Saree (military spokesman), Mohammed Abdulsalam (chief negotiator, under U.S. sanctions), and Mahdi al-Mashat (formally “commander-in-chief”). But real authority rests with Abdul-Malik and a narrow circle of family and clan figures in Saada.What motivates them is a blend Washington consistently underestimates: Yemeni nationalism, Zaydi-Hadawi revivalism, Hashemite hereditary entitlement, and an anti-imperial ideology that borrows from Khomeini’s Wilayat al-Faqih but does not depend on it. Their slogan — “Death to America, Death to Israel, Curse the Jews, Victory to Islam” — predates Gaza and is core identity, not opportunistic branding. They are not popular. A 2024 Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies poll found that only 8 percent of Yemenis in Houthi-controlled areas viewed the movement positively. They rule by coercion. Their revenue model — war profiteering, smuggling, extortion of humanitarian aid, racketeering through the port of Hodeidah — has immiserated Yemen rather than developed it.Franchise, Not SubsidiaryHere is where the analysis matters most. The conventional framing — Houthis as “Iranian proxy” — is useful shorthand but strategically misleading. CSIS Middle East Program director Jon Alterman has put it most plainly in congressional testimony: Iran did not create the Houthi movement, and Iranian support for it is “relatively new” and “largely opportunistic.”The historical record bears this out. Through the first Saada war in 2004 and the five that followed, Iranian involvement was minimal. The Houthis took the Yemeni capital of Sanaa in September 2014 without significant Iranian support. Serious Quds Force engagement — weapons transfers, training, technical assistance — began only around 2017, after the Houthis had already demonstrated they could hit Saudi Arabia on their own.What Iran has provided since is real and strategically consequential: ballistic and cruise missiles, anti-ship weapons, long-range drones, training (initially routed through Hezbollah, later direct), intelligence, and increasingly Chinese-sourced dual-use components moved through Iranian logistics networks. But patronage is not command. A franchise pays royalties and flies the brand; it does not take operational orders on schedule.The distinction is not academic. It shows up in the March-April 2026 pattern in three ways that contradict the proxy frame.First, Iran reportedly pressed the Houthis to attack Red Sea shipping. Bloomberg reported in late March, citing European officials, that Tehran was pushing Abdul-Malik’s circle to prepare a renewed maritime campaign contingent on further U.S. escalation. The Houthis declined. They launched at Israel instead — a much lower-risk target under the terms of the May 2025 U.S.-Houthi ceasefire, which covered U.S. vessels but not Israeli territory.Second, credible reporting suggests elements of the IRGC have actively discouraged Houthi escalation at certain moments. Nadwa al-Dawsari of the Middle East Institute has argued that the Guards do not want to “drag the Houthis into a suicidal war” because Tehran may need Yemen as a fallback base if the Iranian regime itself collapses. That is not how a principal treats an agent. It is how one franchise operator protects another.Third, the Houthis are conducting their own internal debate. Al Jazeera’s reporting from Sanaa and analysis by INSS identify two camps inside the Houthi leadership. A cautious current, shaped by the hard lessons of Operation Rough Rider — the U.S. bombing campaign that ran from March to May 2025 and killed many of the group’s senior missile and drone commanders — argues that direct involvement drains resources, invites Israeli decapitation strikes, and complicates the political track with Saudi Arabia. A maximalist current, aligned with the “unity of fronts” rhetoric coming out of Tehran, argues that this moment is the strategic payoff the movement has spent a decade preparing for. The March 28 strikes on Israel were a compromise between these camps, not an order from Iran.The May 2025 Omani-brokered U.S.-Houthi ceasefire is the one piece of evidence often cited for the proxy frame. Iranian officials did sway the Houthis to accept it, and the Atlantic Council read this as evidence of Tehran’s “continued command and control.” But the better reading is the INSS one: Iran negotiates with the Houthis, not through them. The ceasefire served Houthi interests — stopping a bombing campaign that had killed their commanders — at a moment when those interests happened to align with Iran’s. Alignment is not subordination.Why Restraint Now, and What Breaks ItThree drivers account for Houthi restraint through the current phase of the war.The first is self-preservation after 2024 and 2025. Israeli and U.S. strikes gutted Hodeidah port, killed the cabinet, eliminated al-Ghamari, and degraded the missile and drone arsenal Iran had spent a decade building up. The decapitation playbook Israel ran against Hezbollah — killing Hassan Nasrallah in September 2024 and most of the senior leadership in the weeks that followed — is now a credible Yemen scenario. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi knows this. His survival instinct counsels caution.The second is the Saudi détente. The 2022 truce between the Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition has held through the Gaza war and survived Operation Rough Rider. Saudi Arabia has spent the last year quietly betting that containment works. More urgently, Riyadh now depends on the Red Sea ports — Yanbu especially — as its Hormuz workaround. Any Houthi strike on shipping off Yanbu shatters the détente and reopens the active Yemen war at a moment when the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government in Aden is stronger than it has been in years.The third is Yemeni public opinion. Palestine mobilizes the Yemeni street. Iran does not. Most Yemenis view the Islamic Republic as yet another foreign power meddling in their country. Attacking commercial shipping “in solidarity with Gaza” in 2023 and 2024 produced a domestic popularity surge. Attacking shipping “in solidarity with Iran” in 2026 is a much harder sell.But restraint has a trigger. Three developments would collapse it.First, U.S. ground operations against Iran. President Trump has deployed an additional 2,500 Marines to the region and has publicly discussed seizing Iran’s Kharg Island. If the war moves from air campaign to ground operation, the calculus inside the Houthi leadership inverts — because the unity-of-fronts logic becomes existential rather than rhetorical.Second, direct strikes on Houthi infrastructure. If the U.S. or Israel hits Hodeidah, Sanaa, or senior Houthi leadership, the internal debate flips immediately toward the maximalist camp. The cautious current’s entire argument rests on the premise that the Houthis can keep their heads down and preserve the movement. Strikes that negate that premise negate the argument.Third, an Iranian signal tied to regime survival. Will Todman at CSIS has laid this out clearly: if Tehran judges the regime is existentially threatened, it will squeeze the Houthis hard to join in the fray. New Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has already hinted at “new fronts in the conflict.” If the IRGC concludes Yemen is the last lever available, they will pull it — and the Houthi maximalist camp will pull with them.The Bottom LineWhat happens at Bab el-Mandeb determines whether this war produces a manageable economic shock or a generational one. Saudi Arabia cannot sustain export volumes without the Red Sea. Egypt cannot sustain its balance of payments without Suez Canal revenues. Asian economies cannot sustain industrial output if both straits close simultaneously. The Bab el-Mandeb is not a secondary concern. It is the keystone of the global response to the Hormuz closure.The policy implications of the franchise frame are three.One: any off-ramp with Iran that does not include a separate Houthi track will leave the Red Sea threat intact. Tehran cannot deliver the Houthis. It can influence them, but it cannot guarantee their behavior after a ceasefire.Two: Riyadh and Muscat are faster levers than Tehran for keeping Bab el-Mandeb open. Oman brokered the 2025 U.S.-Houthi ceasefire. Saudi Arabia has direct back-channels to Abdul-Malik’s circle through the stalled peace roadmap. Those channels should be running hot right now.Three: direct strikes on Houthi infrastructure should be understood as guaranteeing, not deterring, the Red Sea campaign. Every previous American bombing campaign against the Houthis has ended with more sophisticated Houthi capability and more aggressive Houthi rhetoric. The U.S. Navy is better served by escort operations and deterrent patrols than by strikes that radicalize an internal debate currently running in Washington’s favor.The image to keep in mind is the USS George H.W. Bush rounding the Cape of Good Hope in mid-April. The Houthis have not fired a shot at a commercial vessel in 2026. They have not sunk a tanker, seized a ship, or mined a shipping lane. And they have still reshaped American naval movement across one of the world’s most critical chokepoints.That is the franchise at work. Alongside Iran, the Houthis are a consequential variable the Trump administration does not control — and cannot control by treating the Houthis as someone else’s problem to manage.The author is a former CIA intelligence officer with extensive experience on the Near East. This analysis draws on open-source reporting, regional analysis, and publicly available assessments. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government. 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