Will Houthis play a bigger role in the Middle East conflict?

In a recent speech, the leader of the Houthi rebel group in Yemen proudly announced his group's tally over the past year: The Houthi group, which controls much of northern Yemen, targeted 193 ships passing their country and launched more than 1,000 missiles and drones at their enemies, including Israel, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi announced yesterday. All this was in support of the Hamas group in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, he said.

Previously described as "a ragtag militia in sandals" or "farmers with guns," the Houthi group has also launched ballistic missiles at Israel and recently downed a US drone.

And, so far at least, nothing seems to have stopped the Houthis — not an international maritime task force to protect shipping in the Red Sea, or repeated aerial bombing of areas they control.

"The Houthis are stronger, more technically proficient, and more prominent members of the Axis of Resistance than they were at the war's outset," Mike Knights, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy wrote this month in an analysis.

The so-called "Axis of Resistance" is composed of military groups based in Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, who are all — to one extent or another — backed by Iran and opposed to Israel and the US.

"The Houthis have arguably weathered the year of war without suffering major setbacks … and delivered the best military performance of all the Axis players," Knights explained.

As a result the Houthis are becoming more prominent members of the Axis and their leader al-Houthi is even being touted as potentially taking the place of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel last month, and acting as a sort of symbolic head of the pro-Iran alliance.

"In the absence of Nasrallah, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has moved swiftly to fill the void," confirms Mohammed Albasha, a US-based security analyst who specializes in the Middle East and Yemen. "The Houthis have seized the spotlight."

Will the Houthis become even more troublesome now?

It's highly likely, experts say, pointing to a number of factors.

Firstly, their distance from Israel is an advantage: Unlike some of the other Axis of Resistance groups, such as Hezbollah and Hamas, the Houthis are over 2,000 kilometers away from Israel, Albasha told DW.

"Additionally Hezbollah has been under Israel's scrutiny for four decades whereas knowledge about the Houthis remains limited in comparison," the analyst added.

The Houthis have also been involved in fighting for decades, first as part of an insurgency against Yemen's dictatorship starting in 2004, then from 2014 in a civil war after the end of the dictatorship, and, most recently, against an international Saudi-led coalition that supported their opponents in the civil war.

"Over decades of conflict, the Houthis have decentralized all aspects of their operations, from fuel and food supplies to weapons manufacturing," Albasha continued. Their bases are hidden in Yemen's mountains and in underground tunnels, making aerial strikes less effective, and their "strong track record in ground operations" means no foreign force wants a ground invasion, he says.

The Houthis have also been establishing contacts further afield. They have offices in Iraq and have claimed attacks on Israel in cooperation with Iran-backed militias in Iraq.

Missiles from Iran

The Houthis are probably also getting better weapons support from Iran. "Before October 7, 2023, Iran had been supplying the Houthis with older versions of missiles and drones," Albasha explained. "Now the Houthis are launching modified variants of Iran's Kheibar Shekan [medium-range ballistic] missile. It's only a matter of time before [Iran's] Fattah hypersonic missiles appear in Yemen — if they haven't already."

As Knights argued in his October study, Yemen would be an ideal site for such missiles because of its location and the potential to hide weapons in the mountains.

Given their location close to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, the Houthis also have the potential to strike their neighbors and further disrupt global trade and business. Last week, while announcing missile attacks on Israel, the Houthis' spokesperson said they considered all "American and British interests in the region under the range of our fire."

If Israel eventually attacks Iran's energy production facilities in retaliation for Tehran's recent missile attack, the Houthis may well respond by targeting the energy facilities of US allies. They have previously fired rockets at both Saudi and Emirati oil production facilities.

"That is something to be concerned about for sure," Mick Mulroy, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute and former US deputy assistant secretary of defense, told DW during an online panel last week. "The Houthis could attack neighboring countries' infrastructure and Iran could mine the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians definitely have the capacity to do that and that would essentially shut down energy transport out of the region, sending shock waves economically. And then of course, the Houthis could keep going after ships," he pointed out.

Houthis: 'We don't care'

A further reason the Houthis could become more important is a little more esoteric. It's about the group's attitude.

"With two decades of victories behind them, the Houthis have become more daring," Albasha explained. "Many of their fighters have been at war since their youth and have little to lose. This 'why not?' mentality gives them a strategic advantage, and they may push boundaries others would hesitate to cross," he suggested.

"For Iran, the Houthis can be considered both a burden and a form of leverage," says Ibrahim Jalal, a non-resident scholar and Yemen expert at the Carnegie Middle East Center. "They are leverage because of their unpredictability, but a burden in the sense that they continuously choose to escalate. The Iranian president has even made remarks along those lines, that these guys are mad."

Jalal recounts how at one stage, shortly after the US threatened a military response to the Houthis' campaign against shipping, the Houthis started chanting, "we don't care, make it a major world war," at their rallies.

"And they really do not care, it's a bit insane," Jalal says. "And that reflects their level of disregard for Yemen's civilian population, which has undergone tremendous humanitarian and economic struggles over the past two decades. Now they [the Houthis] are inviting even more trouble, such as Israeli air strikes on civilian infrastructure, which means the population suffers even more."

Edited by: Anne Thomas