How the Houthis turned their weaknesses into strengths

Yemen’s Houthis remain the last component of the Iran-backed “axis of resistance” that is willing and able to launch significant attacks on Israel’s heartland. How has this seemingly ragtag group of Yemeni rebels managed to rule 20 million people, intimidate Gulf neighbors, fire continuously on Israel, and disrupt international shipping in the Red Sea? The answer is that they have resourcefully and adaptably exploited ostensible disadvantages in order to promote their regime’s interests.

First, the Houthis’ extremist religious-political movement has managed to garner little public support. The Haqq Party, Husayn al-Houthi’s attempt at national politics in the 1990s, secured less than 1% of the national vote in all of the elections in which it participated. Rather than abandoning their radical vision, the Houthis then focused on building a supremely loyal network of relatives and radical ideologues. This core of the Houthi regime solidified during the Saada Wars (2006-2010), when the Houthis fought a guerrilla war against Yemen’s government; it is no coincidence that most of the regime’s leaders, now in their late 30s to 40s, were in their ideal fighting years during this insurgency, shaping a hardened leadership.

Despite their continued unpopularity, the Houthi regime is sustained by a relatively small collection of loyalists with familial ties and ideological commitment to the group. This “tyranny of the minority” has withstood immense military, economic, and political pressure without major internal fractures or defections. While disputes among leaders have been reported, they have ultimately been resolved in ways that promote regime cohesion and continuity.

Second, Yemen has been the poorest country in the Arab world since well-before the civil war erupted there a decade ago. This would presumably pose a major challenge for an insurgent regime that needs to fund both an extended military campaign and prevent rebellion or starvation vis-à-vis the 20 million people living under its rule. However, the Houthis have managed to play Yemen’s economic misery to their advantage.

By playing up Yemen’s dismal economic state and the impact of the Saudi-led campaign on the population, the Houthis helped usher in tens of billions of dollars in aid into their territory. They then systematically siphoned this aid off through a variety of means, from establishing front companies to brazen acts of theft.

In addition, the Houthis leverage the misery of everyday Yemenis to force them into submission. Since there is barely any private sector economy within Houthi-controlled areas, the majority of the public is either living off of government salaries or aid, and the regime exploits this dependency to promote loyalty, or at the very least compliance. For example, if a teacher in primary school does not want to indoctrinate her students with the radical Houthi curriculum or Yemeni parents do not want to send their young children to Houthi military camps, they will likely be removed from the beneficiary lists and made ineligible for humanitarian aid regardless of need. Yemen’s crushing poverty enables the Houthis to push their opponents into a dilemma: obey or starve.

Third, the Houthis’ location on the far end of the Arabian Peninsula, over a thousand kilometers away from major Middle Eastern hubs, had relegated them to the sidelines of global affairs. As they share no border with Israel, their efforts to become a player in the Palestinian issue, notably by demanding the release of Hamas prisoners held in Saudi Arabia in exchange for the release of Saudi military officials captured in Yemen, had little impact and went largely unnoticed.

However, they have since discovered that their positioning also has advantages. The perception of this group as largely irrelevant enabled them to build up massive amounts of long-range firepower (supplied by Iran) without the global community taking much notice or interest.

No less significant, their proximity to the Bab al-Mandeb strait has provided them with a clear line of sight to fire on maritime traffic moving through a major chokepoint of the global economy. Since 2023, they have attacked global shipping in the name of Palestine, and this has forced much of international shipping to reroute away from the Red Sea and instead around the horn of Africa.

The international response to these attacks has so far has been ineffective. This is also partially attributable to the group’s location over 1,000 kilometers from major American or Israeli bases, which complicates efforts to launch effective airstrikes on the Houthis’ strategic assets.

Opponents of the Houthis face an adaptable regime, but its resilience is not limitless. Sustained pressure on multiple fronts—economic, military, and political—could force the Houthis into a major misstep in the domestic or international arenas. That mistake, if made while the regime is already facing massive pressure on other fronts, could ultimately lead to the wily regime’s demise.