Yemen has long become one of the most notorious examples of a failed state. Identified as the most impoverished of the 22 Arab countries, the fall of dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh (February 2012) has led it to be the scene of one of the most serious humanitarian crises on the planet, with 80% of the population living poorly for below the poverty line, and the battlefield of very diverse actors. Among them, the Ansar Allah group stands out, the armed wing of the Houthi movement led by Abdelmalik al Houthi since 2004. Since 2023, without abandoning its attempt to consolidate its power in Sana’a, it has added growing military activism in support (supposed) of the Palestinian cause. , which has immediately provoked increasingly numerous and broader attacks by Israel.
Ansar Allah is, at the same time, an actor with its own agenda, originally representing the minority of marginalized Zaidi Shiites in the mountainous areas of northern Yemen, and a pawn of Iran in its quest for retaliation against the threat that Tehran feels from Tel Aviv (and Washington, through Saudi Arabia). At the internal level, he has managed to bring together many Yemenis who have felt mistreated by both Saleh and his successor, Abdrabbo Mansur al Hadi, thus crossing the identity boundaries that defined him as a marginal group on the national political scene.
Along the way, it has managed to take control of the capital and the important port of Hodeida, on the Red Sea, becoming the main actor in national life, with a military power that Saudi Arabia has not been able to subdue, despite leading since 2015 an alliance in which the United Arab Emirates also stands out, with clear American support. In any case, it is also true that it has not managed to control more than a third of all Yemeni territory and, much less, definitively impose itself on the rest of the forces in presence, from the cells that both Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and Daesh deploy. in the country, to secessionist groups in the south or to the remnants of the Yemeni armed forces loyal to the Presidential Leadership Council, created in April 2022 after the resignation of Al Hadi.
Much of its current potential, beyond its rudimentary productive capacity and the material it has been able to obtain from its own local enemies, is explained by the support that the Iranian regime has given it, both in economic and, above all, military terms. . This explains, without falling into the mistake of thinking that Ansar Allah is a puppet managed by Tehran, that it has been able to develop a strategy of force on two fronts. On the one hand, since November 2023 and with the formal argument of supporting the Palestinian cause in the face of the massacre that Israel is perpetrating both in Gaza and the West Bank, it has carried out attacks against more than a hundred civil and military ships that cross the Bab el Mandeb Strait using both missiles (Shehab-3 and Toophan) and drones (Samad-4 and Shahed) of Iranian origin. And while it is true that they have not managed to close this important sea route, it is also true that neither Operation Prosperity Guardian nor the so-called Poseidon’s Archer, led by the United States, have managed to dissuade the group from continuing to disrupt international traffic in the area and to convince many shipping companies to sail those waters again.
On the other hand, the Yemeni group has entered into a dynamic of direct attacks on Israeli territory, using hypersonic ballistic missiles such as the so-called Palestine 2, with a speed of Mach 16 and a maximum range of 2,150 kilometers. Missiles that have sometimes managed to penetrate the sophisticated Israeli air defense system, and have activated the immediate response of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). A response that has the participation of Washington and is no longer limited to hitting military objectives, but includes others such as the Sanaa international airport and the port of Hodeida.
At this point what seems clear is both that the leaders of Ansar Allah do not feel deterred by the punishment they have received, while they retain sufficient means to keep the pulse without considering the human cost that it may entail for their fellow citizens, and that Israel does not finds a way to stop a dynamic that complicates its military calculations in the middle of the campaign in Palestine, Lebanon and Syria. The IDF has demonstrated that it already has its own means – especially the ability to refuel in flight – so that its fighter planes, loaded with bombs, can travel 2,000 kilometers to their objectives, hit them and return to their bases; all of this without needing the support that the US had to provide until very recently. That gives him greater room for maneuver to make decisions, without having to adjust to Washington’s guidelines. But, even so, it has already been able to verify that its blows have not served to calm its own population or for the Houthis to abandon their attitude. Incidentally, as could be expected, it does not seem that the threats and attacks against Iran serve to force the Iranian regime to force its Yemeni ally to give up its efforts.
In short, the most likely thing is that both parties will maintain and even intensify their war commitment, although this will not help them impose their dictates and will end up leading them to a high-intensity clash.
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