Yemen’s Houthi rebels have transformed over the past decade, from a little-known group in northwest Yemen to Iran’s most powerful ally in the region and a central adversary of the United States and its allies in the Middle East.
While Iran’s other proxy forces have been exhausted in recent years, the Houthis have taken center stage in the Middle East, offering yet another example of how a smaller, guerrilla-style force entrenched on the ground can cause asymmetric damage via air attacks that are difficult to repel.
In support of their Iranian benefactors, the Houthis launched their first attacks against Israel shortly after the United States joined the Jewish state in its strikes across Iran on February 28, sparking the ongoing Middle East conflict.
Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s richest countries and a key U.S. ally, now bears the brunt of the crisis. Houthi attackswho killed at least 20 people at Saudi airports last week. Alongside other allied groups, the militants have also attacked Saudi oil infrastructure, helping to drive up global energy prices by threatening the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which, like the Strait of Hormuz, is a key maritime chokepoint for oil and gas shipments.
Paz Pizarro and Olivia Bugault/AFP/Getty 
The Saudis have asked the United States to join their military operations against the Houthis, and President Trump, who initially rejected the request, said over the weekend that he was considering it.
Iran is ‘the most powerful proxy’
The Houthis are supported financially and militarily by Iran, American and Israeli officials, as well as numerous regional analysts, have said for years.
They were once a relatively marginal group within what Iran calls its Axis of Resistance – a loose alliance of anti-Israel and anti-American militant groups that includes Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Both of these US-designated terrorist organizations were severely weakened by Israeli operations launched during World War II. following the attack carried out by Hamas on October 72023.
The Houthis joined Hamas and Hezbollah attacks on Israel and became the target of an Israeli counteroffensive, as well as military operations by the Biden and Trump administrations. But unlike Hamas and Hezbollah, the group bounced back and emerged better armed, seasoned and confident.
“The Houthis are arguably the most powerful intermediary within the Iranian network,” said Mohammed Al-Basha, founder of the Basha Report, a U.S.-based risk advisory group. “Any US military strategy planning a campaign against Iran will have to take into consideration what the Houthis do next.”
After the attack on Israel in 2023, with the help of Iran, the group truly began to gain capacity and momentum.
“Before October 7, we didn’t see them receiving the latest equipment from Iran. After October 7, they got the best,” al-Basha told CBS News, adding that Tehran not only armed the Houthis but also helped the group hone its skills in penetrating air defenses.
The Houthis began adopting new tactics, including targeting Israel with overlapping attacks using drones, cruise missiles and then ballistic missiles to overwhelm the country’s important defenses.
Today, the Houthis are using the same tactics against Saudi Arabia.
In the era of asymmetric warfare, the group has also used Yemen’s ranking as one of the world’s poorest countries as a strategic advantage: They rely on a strongly ideological support base willing to suffer economic pain and isolation if compromise inflicts great damage on the Saudis and the global economy, said Yoel Guzansky, a senior fellow focused on Persian Gulf politics and security at the Institute for National Security Studies.
“All you need is a not very sophisticated surface-to-surface missile to hit the Riyadh airport. They can assemble them in small factories in the mountains,” Guzansky said.
What do the Houthis want?
Houthi military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Gen. Yahya Saree said recently that the group’s attacks on Saudi Arabia were a response to “brutal Saudi aggression against our country and our people.”
But al-Basha said the Houthis’ real goals are not retaliation, but power and recognition.
They want to take control of all of Yemen and get the Saudis to recognize their legitimacy and help finance their expansion, he said. This is why he thinks they linked their campaign in Yemen to attacks on Saudi Arabia.
The evolution of the Houthis powered by Iran
The Houthi movement grew out of the Shiite Zaydi Muslim sect, whose roots go back centuries in northern Yemen. They are a minority in the predominantly Sunni Muslim country, but the number of Zaydis is significant, making up up to a third of Yemen’s total population.
The Houthi movement originally emerged as an effort to protect Zaydi culture in Yemen, but it has evolved into a group whose slogan is: “Allah is greatest; Death to America; Death to Israel; Curse on the Jews; Victory of Islam. »
Analysts estimate that the Houthi armed force consists of hundreds of thousands of combat-ready fighters. The group itself claims to have trained more than a million activists.
Mohammed HUWAIS/AFP/Getty 
Their march toward real power began in 2012, when this then much smaller group, made up of thousands of fighters, took advantage of the unrest in Yemen that followed the Arab Spring topples longtime authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh build customer loyalty in the north of the country.
In 2014, they seized the capital Sanaa, sparking a civil war with the Western-backed government and Saudi Arabia. The government was forced to move to the southern port city of Aden, where it is still based, and it also retained control of the less populated eastern part of the country.
The Houthis quickly took control of the state’s main military and civilian powers, including missile brigades and special forces, as well as the ability to raise taxes, al-Basha said.
The group survived an initial round of fighting with the Saudi-led military coalition from 2015 to 2022. During that time, military advisers from Hezbollah and Iran helped train Houthi commanders and fighters — and boosted the group’s ability to make its own weapons, including drones and missiles, analysts say.
The Houthis could also use AI software to refine their weapons. US technology company Anthropic released a report in September claiming to have identified “threat actors” based in northern Yemen using their Claude Code software “in place of human software engineers to develop the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) software that steers and stabilizes a flying vehicle.”
The weapons that the unnamed actors were attempting to develop included guided rockets and multi-stage ballistic missiles, according to Anthropic, which said it had no evidence that the actors had successfully deployed an operational device.
Although they can produce some of their own weapons, Fabian Hinz, a weapons analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, wrote last year that the Houthis “remain dependent on Iran for key technologies and advanced capabilities.” Although Tehran’s support has, in some areas, evolved from the direct provision of complete systems to the possibility of localized manufacturing, it remains a critical enabler of Houthi military activity.
But it’s not a one-way relationship.
“With Hamas and Hezbollah severely weakened, the Houthis have become an increasingly indispensable pillar of Iran’s regional strategy, providing Tehran with a relatively resilient and cost-effective way to threaten Saudi Arabia, Israel and international shipping while projecting power well beyond Yemen,” Guzansky told CBS News. “Their strategic value to Iran has arguably never been greater, even if the Houthis retain considerable autonomy in their decision-making.”
The devastating war in Yemen
Located at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthis are geographically isolated from any external ground forces, with the exception of the Saudis, who do not have the manpower to confront such a well-entrenched enemy, analysts say.
Domestically, in Yemen’s brutal civil war, the well-coordinated group faces opposing forces that, while largely aligned with the Saudi-backed government, are themselves divided and operate under separate command structures.
Since Yemen entered war in 2015, the United Nations estimates that some 377,000 people have died, more than half from indirect causes such as famine and disease amid the fighting.
Essa AHMED/AFP/Getty 
More than 201,210 people have fled their homes, according to data from the United Nations International Organization for Migration, including more than 3,700 fleeing by sea to Djibouti.
According to figures released last week by the World Health Organization, the Yemeni Ministry of Health and Population reported 959 deaths and 4,207 injuries directly attributed to fighting in 10 provinces between early September and October 2.
The Houthi-led health ministry said Tuesday that the death toll from the recent escalation of fighting during the same period stood at 107, with an additional 278 injured.
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