The Houthis: Iranian pawns, who also want to take over Yemen - opinion

To the question of who these Houthis are, the short answer is pawns in Iran’s master plan. 

For 45 years, the upholders of Iran’s Islamic Revolution have been intent on consolidating and extending its sphere of influence across the Shia Muslim world.  Once known as the Shia Crescent, and more recently, as Sunni extremists have been added, as the Axis of Resistance, regimes and organizations subservient to Iran stretch through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon down to Gaza.

By converting the Houthis of Yemen into a dependent entity, Iran has now gained a foothold in the Arabian peninsula. This brings the Iranian leadership one step closer to the fundamental purpose of the regime’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini.

On July 24, during his address to a joint session of Congress, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to this. “When he founded the Islamic Republic,” said Netanyahu, “Ayatollah Khomeini pledged: We will export our revolution to the entire world.”

Khomeini’s philosophy, which he penned nearly 40 years before the 1979 revolution, required the immediate imposition of strict Sharia law, domestically, and a foreign policy aimed at spreading the Shi’ite interpretation of Islam across the globe by whatever means were deemed expedient. 

“We shall export our revolution to the whole world,” he declared. “Until the cry, ‘There is no god but Allah,’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

As Netanyahu pointed out, pursuit of this fundamental objective of the Islamic Revolution has involved Iran in undertaking or sponsoring acts of terror, mayhem, and murder against Western, and largely American, targets, and against non-Shi’ite Muslims as well. 

Khomeini was unequivocal about the basic purpose of his regime. “We have set as our goal the worldwide spread of the influence of Islam and the suppression of the rule of the world conquerors.”

“Now, ask yourself,” said Netanyahu, addressing the joint session, “which country ultimately stands in the way of Iran’s maniacal plans to impose radical Islam on the world? And the answer is clear: America, the guardian of Western civilization and the world’s greatest power. That’s why Iran sees America as its greatest enemy... But Iran understands that to truly challenge America, it must first conquer the Middle East. And for this it uses its many proxies, including the Houthis, Hezbollah, and Hamas. Yet in the heart of the Middle East, standing in Iran’s way, is one proud pro-American democracy – my country, the State of Israel.”

Meanwhile, the Houthis are being deployed as an arm of Iran’s anti-Israel strategy, along with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and, of course, Hamas in Gaza.  Since the Houthis’ flag is emblazoned with the slogans, “Death to America. Death to Israel. A curse on the Jews”, their philosophy obviously accords with that of Iran’s supreme leader and its ayatollahs.

Who are the Houthis?

Who are the Houthis? They are a minority group on the Shia side of the great Islamic Sunni-Shia divide – Zaydi Shi’ites, taking their name from Zayd bin Ali, a descendant of the Prophet Mohammad’s cousin and son-in-law. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, a Zaydi monarchy took power in North Yemen, but it was overthrown by republicans, and in 1968 the Yemen Arab Republic was formed in the north.

At roughly the same time, the south was undergoing a constitutional upheaval of its own. In 1967, South Yemen was established as a socialist state under the protection of the USSR. In 1972, the two Yemens took up arms against each other. A ceasefire, brokered by the Arab League, included the aspiration of eventual unification. It took a further 18 years of military and political in-fighting before that aspiration was realized, but in 1990, the Unified Republic of Yemen came into being. Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had been president of North Yemen since 1978, was proclaimed president of the newly united state. 

Saleh was far from universally popular, and it was not long before the Houthis, accusing Saleh of corruption and being backed by Saudi Arabia and the US, emerged as an opposition movement, under the leadership of Zaydi religious leader Hussain al-Houthi.

In 2011, Saleh became a victim of the so-called Arab Spring. He gave up the keys of office with very bad grace and was quite prepared to ally himself with his erstwhile enemies, the Houthis, in an attempt to maneuver his way back to power. The Yemeni military, including its air force, had remained largely loyal to Saleh. As a result, and supported by military hardware from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the Houthis overran large tracts of the country, including the capital city, Sana’a, and the port city of Hodeidah. 

The subsequent turn of events seems depressingly familiar in the context of Yemen’s long history. Saudi Arabia, intent on thwarting Iran’s expansion into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis. Saudi’s Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), assembled a coalition of Arab states, obtained the diplomatic backing of the US, United Kingdom, Turkey, and Pakistan, and launched a series of air strikes against the rebels.

The unconventional Saleh-Houthi partnership came to an abrupt end on December 2, 2017, when Saleh went on television to declare that he was splitting from the Houthis and was ready to enter into dialogue with the Saudi-led coalition. This volte-face was to end in tragedy. On December 4, Saleh’s house in Sana’a was besieged by Houthi fighters. Attempting to escape, he was killed.

Subsequently, Iran poured finance and technology into boosting the Houthis and consolidating their hold on the large chunk of western Yemen that they had conquered. With Iran’s aid, the Houthis managed to beat off the consolidated forces led by Saudi Arabia, acting in support of the internationally recognized government.

With the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Iran upgraded the role played by its proxy. On October 31, the Houthis effectively declared war on Israel. Controlling Hodeidah port as they do, they have been attacking international shipping in addition to dispatching drones the roughly 2,000 km. toward Israel. 

On July 19, one of these long-distance missiles managed to evade Israel’s aerial defenses, and fell on Tel Aviv, killing a civilian. The next day Israeli warplanes, in the first such attack on Yemen, struck Hodeidah, killing three people and wounding more than 80.

At the moment the Houthis are content to act as Iran’s proxy since it accords with their own fervent anti-Israel ideology. But they have their own agenda, namely to take over the rest of government-held Yemen, and then to conquer the area of southern Yemen that has split and declared independence. An extended intra-Yemen struggle lies ahead – a struggle that has nothing to do with the Palestinian cause, and in which anti-Israel military action is irrelevant.

The writer is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. You can follow him at: a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.