How Yemen's Houthi Rebels Could Decide the Iran War

If Iran had a secret weapon, you would think it would have used it by now. Roughly four full weeks into the latest war in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic still rules over Tehran, but it has taken one hell of a beating to get this far. An entire generation of Iranian leaders has been killed off by foreign air power, and a fair share of their replacements have been wiped out, too. Iran has managed to close the Strait of Hormuz, it has caused chaos across the Middle East, and it has taken the global energy market hostage.

In return, it has suffered devastation across the whole of society.

But on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula, Tehran has one critical ally it can still rely upon: the powerful Houthi rebel organization in the nation of Yemen. Positioned along one of the most important shipping routes in the world, and armed with all the drones and missiles that a decade of Iranian support could provide, the Houthis have the potential to turn this entire conflict on its axis. They are not Iran’s secret weapon, because Iran lacks the means to control them, but they have their own reasons to want a piece of the action.

Key Takeaways

The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, control most of western Yemen and have enjoyed Iranian patronage since the mid-2010s, but they are not a true proxy — they run their own proto-state, economy, and ideological movement, placing them somewhere between a proxy and a partner.
Their arsenal includes long-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, one-way attack drones, and sea drones, much of it produced inside Yemen, making them impossible to permanently suppress by destroying an arms shipment or two.
During the Israel-Hamas War, Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping affected over one trillion US dollars’ worth of maritime traffic, forced ships to reroute around Africa, and sank or hijacked roughly half a dozen vessels.
The Houthis appear to be waiting for the optimal moment to maximize disruption, with their target list spanning Saudi and Emirati oil infrastructure, Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility, and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait.
A well-timed Houthi entry at the right pressure points could make the conflict economically untenable for the rest of the world — and senior Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti has confirmed that joining the conflict is “only a matter of time.”

The United States, Israel, and the nations of the Persian Gulf are watching the Houthis closely, reassured by their decision not to enter the war until now. Yet there is a very real chance that the Houthis do not intend to sit this war out. Instead, they may be waiting for the perfect moment to enter the conflict and cause maximum devastation when they arrive. The central question is not whether the Houthis can hurt the world, but whether they are simply biding their time to do the most damage at the lowest cost.

A Movement That Answers to Itself

Officially known by the name Ansar Allah, Yemen’s Houthi rebels have enjoyed Iran’s patronage since the mid-2010s, when they exploded to prominence and seized Yemen’s capital city. Today, the Houthis control most of the territory of western Yemen, where the vast majority of the country’s population resides. Fundamentally opposed to the nation of Israel as well as the United States, the Houthis engaged in what they described as a solidarity campaign during Israel’s war in Gaza, building on their prior conflicts alongside Iran and other pro-Iran proxy forces.

Their connection to Tehran requires a degree of nuance to understand properly. Unlike the loose coalition of militia groups Iran can rely on in Iraq, or the Lebanon-based Hezbollah organization, the Houthis are not simply a weapon Iran can point and shoot at its enemies. They oversee their own proto-state in western Yemen, their own religious and ideological movement, their own state-sized economy, and more. They have their own ambitions, their own geopolitical goals, and their own incentive structure driving their decisions.

The Houthis existed long before their partnership with the Iranian regime, and they clearly intend to exist for a very long time afterward. They are generally in alignment with Iran, but they are not a true proxy force; instead, they sit somewhere between a proxy and a partner. They are also a proxy-ish partner that Iran would like to keep well-armed, well-trained, and capable of causing havoc across the Middle East.

An Arsenal Built at Home

The true size and limitations of the Houthi arsenal are unknown to most of the world, largely because Israeli, American, and other global intelligence services mostly dismissed the group as irrelevant, until the world was caught off-guard by their campaign in the Red Sea. That said, the group is known to possess multiple types of long-range ballistic missile, mostly based on equivalent designs from Iran, as well as a smaller but equally potent arsenal of cruise missiles.

Like other groups that work alongside Iran, the Houthis are experts in the use of modern one-way attack drones, and they also possess a growing arsenal of sea drones. Even more challenging for their foreign adversaries, the Houthis have their own internal production capacity, meaning they can build more missiles and drones on their own rather than relying solely on shipments from abroad. Even American military leaders have praised the Houthis for their innovation as weapons developers and their resilience as a fighting force, despite years of US and Israeli airstrikes.

That self-sufficiency is a major problem for the rest of the world, because even in ordinary times, the Houthis are one of those rare non-state actors who can cause chaos far beyond their own territory. They are not a threat that can be permanently suppressed by destroying an arms shipment or two; they are a movement with the industrial base to keep rearming itself.

What One Trillion Dollars of Disruption Looks Like

During the Israel-Hamas War, Houthi strikes on Red Sea shipping forced global trade traffic to avoid the waterway almost completely, compelling ships to undertake a much longer voyage around the entire African continent. The Red Sea is no minor channel: it handles more than a tenth of global sea trade, and it brushes up against the Houthi-controlled coast of Yemen.

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According to global trade experts, the Houthi campaign affected a total of over one trillion US dollars’ worth of maritime traffic. That figure included many tens of billions in losses, damage to dozens of ships, the sinking or hijacking of half a dozen more, and the cost of a multinational, sustained air and sea campaign mounted in response. This was the work of a group that the world’s intelligence agencies had previously written off.

Now take that uncomfortably recent chapter of Houthi history and imagine the implications of a similar campaign in a far less stable moment for the Middle East. The current war between Iran, Israel, the United States, and anybody else Iran happens to shoot at has weaponized the entire global economy, and the conditions that made the Red Sea campaign so painful have only grown more severe.

A Trade System Already on the Brink

Iranian attacks have focused on oil refineries, liquefied natural gas processing hubs, extraction operations, and other targets that have caused havoc across global energy markets. Iran has created such danger in the Strait of Hormuz that it is too risky, and too expensive, for ships to attempt a crossing. As a result, a sea lane that handles about forty percent of the world’s seaborne crude oil, and a fifth of its LNG, has been taken out of the global market indefinitely.

World nations are preparing for shortages to last months or even years, while global industry leaders are signaling that they expect energy prices to keep rising. The United States and its allies are doing their best to mitigate the economic impact, and to downplay that impact when it cannot be mitigated, but the damage to the global economy is only getting worse. Iran has proved its ability to strike essential energy facilities despite the presence of Western air defenses, and those strikes carry an implicit threat that Iran can escalate further still.

What all of that means for the Houthis is that the world is already dealing with an extremely vulnerable, extremely unstable trade environment. As the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf are taken out of action, pressure only rises everywhere else. Other sea lanes become even more important, and the cost of disruption in another spot would not simply add to the world’s headaches; it would compound the entire problem. That is precisely where the Houthis come in: an outside faction with the military capability, the geopolitical allegiance, and the proven will to take action against one of the most important trade routes on the globe.

Why the Houthis Would Want In

Say what you will about Iran’s surprising success in this conflict, its ability to blockade access to the Persian Gulf, to hit well-defended regional infrastructure, and to keep the Iranian regime intact despite round after round of decapitation strikes. As impactful as Iran’s wartime strategy has been, the other side of the equation is impossible to ignore: for Iran, its leadership, its military, and its ordinary people, this conflict has been a catastrophe. Whatever successes Iran has achieved have come from the wrong end of a vast military imbalance with the US and Israel.

Iran has been bombarded relentlessly, and it has witnessed the deaths of far too many innocent civilians. A couple of weeks before this analysis was published, strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure were so devastating that cities experienced toxic black rain. Given that level of destruction, why would the Houthi rebels ever want to get involved?

Unfortunately for the rest of the Middle East, the Houthis are quite similar to Iran in the way they think about risk and reward. When a foreign adversary shows up in warplanes over Houthi territory, the group expects that their fighters, their loyal civilian supporters, and even parts of their leadership will be lost. Like Iran, Houthi doctrine prioritizes the survival of the wider organization in a way that dismisses some rather extraordinary costs as the price of martyrdom. The Houthis made that very clear during their prior strikes against the Red Sea and Israel, continuing their campaign long after Israel and its allies had imposed severe costs upon them.

Just as important, the Houthis have specific reasons to be interested in taking part in this particular conflict. They have a longstanding relationship with the Iranian regime at a moment when that regime appears not only likely to survive, but to grow more hardline, more militaristic, and more dependent on the Revolutionary Guard Corps that has sustained the Houthis for years. Not only would that state of affairs be helpful for the Houthis, but the group hardly wants to make itself look bad by sitting on the sidelines during Iran’s moment of truth.

The Houthis also have selfish incentives to act. Even though their Red Sea campaign drew the outrage of world nations, it also legitimized their claim to power in Yemen, both for domestic audiences and the wider Middle East. The Houthis want to be recognized by the entire world as the sole, sovereign rulers of Yemen, and when a group like the Houthis forces the world to bend to their will and gets away with it, their importance is much harder to deny.

Right now, because of the sheer vulnerability of the global trade system, they have the potential to make an impact on a scale that would otherwise be impossible. If they can close down the Red Sea while the rest of the world relies on that shipping lane, one can only imagine what they could demand of the international community in exchange for reopening the strait.

The Case for Patience

If that is the case for Houthi action, then the opposing question must also be asked: why have the Houthis not attacked already? Despite their willingness to accept heavy losses, the Houthis would not want to welcome a battle they were certain to lose. Their forces are diminished after prior rounds of airstrikes, they would be dealing with a multinational maritime security mission in the Red Sea, and it is possible that Houthi leadership does not believe it is ready for a fight like this. They have also been occupied by missions closer to home, trying to consolidate their control over Yemen after some recent upheaval in the last few months.

But although there is a chance the Houthis believe an attack is not worth the risk, their risk acceptance in prior rounds of conflict suggests that this explanation is incomplete. Instead, the answer may come down to the Houthis’ expectations about where this conflict will go next. As much as they could cause havoc across the globe by acting now, they may believe they can achieve even more by waiting for the conflict to play out a little while longer.

Houthi leadership is entirely aware of the cautionary contrast here: Hezbollah, a fighting faction that seems to have entered the conflict at the worst possible time. Hezbollah did not react immediately when this war broke out, and it failed to maximize the value of what could have been a surprise attack. Instead, it launched a relatively small aerial attack against northern Israel and immediately drew the wrath of a full-scale Israeli response.

That response now includes a ground invasion and possibly a long-term occupation of Lebanese lands south of the Litani River, an area more than twice the size of the Gaza Strip, where Hezbollah used to be at its very strongest. While no one can claim to know what is going on inside the heads of Houthi leadership, it would not be surprising to learn that the Houthis regard Hezbollah’s action as an avoidable strategic blunder.

From their vantage point across the Arabian Peninsula, the Houthis have already been rewarded for their strategic patience, and their situation just keeps getting better. Every day that this conflict continues is a day that global markets become more vulnerable to disruption. Right now, nations are still working through their existing supplies of oil, LNG, and other petrochemical products that would usually have been replenished in a few days’ time. Wait another week or two, and nations will start dipping into their reserves, rationing supply, and otherwise trying to balance their situation until things return to normal.

Every day in which the Strait of Hormuz is blockaded is a day when the strategic importance of other trade routes will rise. For the Houthis, there is no reason to act now if they believe the blockade will still be in place in a few weeks’ time. Allow shortages to get worse, allow global panic to rise, and the Houthis will be able to achieve greater disruption with fewer strikes.

Their missile and drone stockpiles are far from unlimited, and they would do well to maximize the strategic value of each piece of hardware in their arsenal. If they happen to get lucky and the war wraps up before that moment arrives, then even better; they will have sat out the conflict and avoided any real damage, while arguing to their friends in Iran that they were trying to play their hand as effectively as possible.

The Military Window Is Widening

There is also the matter of military power swinging back in the Houthis’ direction, where, again, their patience may yet be rewarded. A US Carrier Strike Group that was meant to be stationed on the Red Sea, led by the carrier Gerald R. Ford, was forced to return to a port in the Mediterranean after an onboard fire, meaning it is no longer available to punish the Houthis for an attack.

Then there are America’s regional allies. Had the Houthis tried to threaten the Gulf states in the first few days of the conflict, they would have encountered well-stocked air defenses and Western intelligence that was just waiting for new threats to pop up. Now, air defense stockpiles appear to be at risk of running critically low, and air-defense systems have been repositioned to optimize for a defense against Iran, when the Houthis would be attacking the Gulf states from the opposite direction. US and Israeli intelligence have their hands full, tracking targets, identifying missile and drone launch points, and trying to figure out who is in charge in Tehran on a given day.

If the Houthis wait just a little while longer, their situation could improve even further. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, two of the states most vulnerable to Houthi attacks, are on the verge of joining the war against Iran. The Saudi and Emirati militaries are powerful, and they can deliver heavy damage to an adversary in an initial attack, but they have only a limited ability to carry out a sustained air campaign, as the Houthis found out directly in the 2010s.

Had the Houthis joined the conflict a couple of weeks ago with an attack on easy-to-hit oil infrastructure in the Emirates or Saudi Arabia, they would have run the risk that the US and Israel might have invited the Saudis and Emiratis to handle the Houthis directly, with their support. But if the Houthis bide their time until the Gulf states enter the conflict against Iran, then they will ensure that the Gulf states’ first few days of military operations, when they are at their most effective, would be directed elsewhere. After that, any pivot to suddenly fight the Houthis would be clumsy at best, while the Houthis would have an even easier time attacking the Gulf states once their militaries are focused elsewhere. In short, there is a real argument for the Houthis to keep biding their time, targeting an entry to the conflict at the moment of maximum impact.

The Target List

At the end of a calculation like this, one question matters most of all: if the Houthi rebels did choose to get involved in the war in the Middle East, then just how bad could things get? The Houthis’ relative impact would depend on every other factor already explained, from the trade vulnerability when they strike to the military capacity that nations can spare to deal with them. But in broad strokes, if the Houthis do make a well-timed entrance to the conflict, the results for the entire Middle East could be catastrophic.

Across the last decade, the Houthis have proved their ability to attack oil infrastructure across the Arabian Peninsula, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates. Those targets include vital oil and natural gas fields, refineries, ports, and pipelines, all of which the Houthis could choose to damage or attempt to destroy, depending on whether they want to send a message or deliver maximum harm.

Specific targets include the Saudi port city of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, where Riyadh has redirected most of its crude oil exports in a desperate attempt to ship off as much as possible, as quickly as possible, before the war gets any worse. Iran has already attacked the Yanbu refinery, indicating that Tehran and its allies are all too aware of the value of Yanbu to Saudi leaders. Or, if the Houthis cannot hit Yanbu directly, they can hit the cross-country pipeline that supplies it: 1,200 kilometers along a mostly undefended route, capable of transferring five million barrels of oil per day.

The Houthis are also well within range of targets in Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Kuwait, and Iraq, where limited air defenses are already starting to struggle with the sheer volume of incoming projectiles. In particular, the Houthis can target Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility, where a full one-fifth of the world’s natural gas is exported. Iran has already knocked out about a sixth of Ras Laffan’s capacity for the next several years, essentially disappearing about three and a half percent of all global LNG from the market. Even after Qatar and its allies have beefed up Ras Laffan’s defenses, the Houthis have the ability to target the facility with greater capacity, and from different angles, than Iran can currently manage.

Closing the Red Sea

Then there is the possibility of a Red Sea blockade, something the Houthis have partially achieved already over the past couple of years. When a nation like Iran, or a non-state actor like the Houthis, tries to blockade a global waterway, they do not do it by using ships; they do it by manipulating risk, making a crossing so dangerous that maritime insurance will not cover ships when they make an attempt. No insurance generally means no ship crossings, and the few ships that do try to run the blockade are at even greater risk of being targeted because they cannot hide in a crowd.

The Houthis can threaten the northern entrance to the Red Sea at the Suez Canal, but they can exert direct control over the Red Sea’s southern entrance, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Hit a few ships with missiles, sea drones, or even raiding attack parties on open water, and the Houthis can cause such a market panic that the Bab al-Mandeb becomes impassable. Also on the target list could be Egypt, American bases in nearby Djibouti, energy targets across the African Horn, or even Israel itself.

Time its attacks just right, and the humble Houthi rebels of Yemen might have the power to end this entire conflict. They would hardly be conquering Israel or the United States, but they would not have to. Global trade, finance, energy, manufacturing, and other key sectors are already pushing themselves to the brink, trying to find a way to reconcile this war with their day-to-day business and working overtime to absorb losses as gently as possible.

Close down the Red Sea, devastate Gulf energy installations in an attack from behind, and leaders from across global industry and world governments may decide they have simply had enough. Whether or not Jerusalem would react to those pressures by calling off the war is up for debate, but Washington is a different story. Hit the world hard enough, across all the right pressure points, at just the right moment, and the Houthis have the ability to make this conflict untenable for the rest of the world. Worst of all, the Houthis know it.

In the words of senior Houthi leader and spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti: “Our finger is on the trigger. Yemen joining the conflict is only a matter of time.”

Presented by

Simon Whistler

Simon Whistler is one of YouTube's most prolific educational creators. WarFronts is his deep dive into military history and conflict analysis.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who are the Houthis, and how are they different from other Iranian proxies?

The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, are a Yemeni rebel organization that has enjoyed Iran’s patronage since the mid-2010s, when they seized Yemen’s capital and rose to prominence. They now control most of western Yemen, where the bulk of the population lives. Unlike Iraq’s militias or Lebanon’s Hezbollah, they are not a weapon Iran can simply point and shoot. They run their own proto-state, economy, and ideological movement, giving them their own incentives and decision-making independence that places them somewhere between a proxy and a partner.

What makes the Houthi weapons arsenal especially difficult to suppress?

The group fields multiple types of long-range ballistic missile based largely on Iranian designs, a smaller but potent arsenal of cruise missiles, modern one-way attack drones, and a growing fleet of sea drones. Crucially, the Houthis have their own internal production capacity, allowing them to build more missiles and drones without relying solely on shipments from abroad. Even American military leaders have praised them for their innovation as weapons developers, meaning they cannot be permanently suppressed by destroying an arms shipment or two.

Why have the Houthis stayed out of the current Iran war so far?

Their forces are diminished after prior airstrikes, they face a multinational maritime security mission in the Red Sea, and they have been consolidating control over Yemen after recent upheaval. But their proven willingness to absorb heavy losses suggests their restraint is mostly about timing. They appear to be waiting for global vulnerability to worsen — as Iran’s Hormuz blockade strains alternative trade routes further — so they can achieve greater disruption with fewer strikes from their finite stockpiles.

What specific targets could the Houthis strike, and how damaging could it be?

Their target list spans Saudi and Emirati oil and gas fields, refineries, ports, and pipelines. Named targets include the Saudi port of Yanbu and its 1,200-kilometer cross-country pipeline capable of moving five million barrels of oil per day, and Qatar’s Ras Laffan LNG facility, which exports a fifth of the world’s natural gas. They are also within range of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, Egypt, US bases in Djibouti, and Israel — a breadth that makes a coordinated strike campaign nearly impossible to fully defend against.

How could the Houthis close the Red Sea, and what would that accomplish?

Blockading a global waterway is done by manipulating risk, not by deploying ships. By making a crossing dangerous enough that maritime insurance will not cover vessels, the Houthis can effectively halt traffic, and the few ships that try become easier to target. They can threaten the northern entrance at the Suez Canal and exert direct control over the southern entrance, the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. Combined with Iran’s existing closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a Houthi Red Sea blockade could compound the global trade crisis to the point of making the entire conflict economically untenable for world governments and industry.