Andreas Krieg, a professor at King’s College London, said this experience of challenging Israel’s advanced air defenses gave the Houthis confidence and expertise as they now strike Saudi Arabia.
“They learned to oversaturate the radars,” he said.
The Houthis, working with allied militias in Iraq, have also targeted Saudi oil installations, including a vital pipeline used to export oil via the Red Sea, while movement across the Strait of Hormuz is restricted. The Houthis have also seized territory in Yemen near Bab el-Mandeb, a key Red Sea waterway, putting further pressure on Saudi oil exports.
Calculation error
Michael Ratney, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, says the kingdom believed the Houthis would not strike civilian targets like airports. It marked “a paradigm shift,” he said.
Ratney, now an adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the Saudis now find themselves in a position where they must respond while trying to keep the fighting from spiraling out of control.
“They cannot not fight back – they were attacked very brutally by their sworn enemies,” he said. “They need to put military pressure on the Houthis and then find a way to achieve some sort of de-escalation. »
Rather than sending troops to Yemen, the Saudis will likely launch airstrikes against the Houthis and step up support for nationalist forces, several analysts said.
“It will be a war of substitution,” Krieg said.
A formidable force
Although the Houthis lack the firepower of Saudi Arabia, they have become a formidable force controlling about a third of Yemen with help from Iran.
The United Nations estimates the Houthis may have recruited up to 350,000 fighters by 2024. That’s up from just 30,000 in 2015, when Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemeni government’s internationally recognized civil war against the Houthis and imposed a naval blockade.
Ratney says the Houthis now have a “symbiotic relationship” with Iran and should not be seen as an Iranian puppet.
The strikes on Saudi airports and economic assets symbolize a sharing of lessons from asymmetric warfare between the Houthis and the Iranians: how not only to breach costly air defenses, but also to damage vulnerable energy facilities and threaten global shipping lanes.
“Over the last few years, the Iranians have innovated and shared this with the Houthis and it’s been a two-way street. The Houthis have innovated and shared this with the Iranians,” Ratney said. “It’s no coincidence that they took a similar approach.”
Their recent military successes have made the Houthis feel “untouchable,” said Farea Al-Muslimi, a researcher at Chatham House specializing in Yemen.
“It’s very difficult to convince a man that he’s going the wrong way if he’s just walking forward and he’s got a gun in his hand,” he said. But the Houthis now risk facing a brutal Saudi counterattack, he said.
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