Volume 17, Issue 2 (April 2026)
More Than a Proxy
Complicating Houthi Pathways to Escalation
By Christopher Anzalone, PhD
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The Houthi movement, claiming the mantle of the Yemeni nation-state despite lacking international de jure legal recognition, is the Islamic Republic of Iran’s (IRI) most successful, capable, and potentially lethal regional ally in its battered “Axis of Resistance,” a constellation of non- and quasi-state armed groups that, since the 1980s, have played integral roles as part of what the IRI refers to as its “forward defense.”1 The Houthis, who refer to themselves as both the Yemeni state and Ansar Allah (God’s supporters/partisans), are also firmly rooted within the complex social, political, historical, and regional contexts of Yemen and actively pursue a range of domestic interests and goals that they seek to balance with their external alliances with the IRI; Hezbollah in Lebanon, with whom they have a much longer direct relationship with than the IRI directly; and Iraqi groups allied with Iran, chiefly those currently operating within the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI umbrella) and Brigades of the Guardians of Blood (Saraya Awliya al-Dam) umbrellas.2 This article argues that the Houthis’ pursuit of a complex set of often, but not always, related—but not completely aligned—domestic, regional, and international interests, goals, and their ideal desired end state of international recognition allows for a significant degree of political, ideological, and operational flexibility while at the same time presenting potential pressure points that the United States and its allies and partners can use to complicate the Houthis’ calculations regarding pathways to escalation in the current conflict with the IRI and other Axis of Resistance groups.
Houthi Origins and Evolution: From Nonstate to Quasi-State Actor
The Houthi movement (hereafter referred to as Houthis) is centered on the charismatic leadership of the al-Houthi family, first under its founder, Husayn al-Houthi, and his father, Badr al-Din, the latter of whom was a widely respected religious scholar within the Zaydi branch of Shi’ite Islam, most of whose practitioners today live in northern and north-central Yemen, and the Houthis’ current leader, Husayn’s younger brother, Abd al-Malik.3 The Houthis and other Zaydi Muslims in northern Yemen accused the Yemeni government of long neglecting their home province of Sa‘ada and other areas in the north while also encouraging the spread of Salafi/Wahhabi Sunnism in the Zaydis’ northern heartlands to weaken the sociopolitical and religious authority of Zaydi sayyid families, those claiming to be direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam.4
During a series of rebellions that came to be known as the “Sa‘ada wars,” the Houthis regularly outperformed and outmaneuvered government forces who relied on heavy arms and tactics not ideally suited to combating a dogged, highly mobile insurgency with substantial local support operating primarily in mountainous terrain.5 As their battlefield resilience solidified and successes mounted, Houthi political goals expanded, and they sought to expand their influence by forging alliances with sympathetic tribes and, later, to woo defectors from the government and its supporters, engaging in sustained politicking within the broader context of Yemen’s tribal landscape.6 The Yemeni government alleged that the Houthis were receiving direct support from the IRI, though evidence for this claim was sparse and contested.7
Between March 2013 and January 2024, Yemeni factions including the Houthis participated in the National Dialogue Conference in the federal capital, Sana‘a, as part of a United Nations (UN) and Gulf Cooperation Council-backed effort to reach a negotiated agreement to transition Yemen past the regime of longtime president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was forced to resign after sustained mass demonstrations across the country throughout 2011 and 2012.8 The Houthis, who expanded their territorial holdings during the Arab Spring in Yemen that ousted Saleh and fractured his ruling party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), entered into the National Dialogue conditionally.9 The fragile transition process from Saleh to a new central government under his vice-president-turned-president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, fell apart between August–September 2014 following Houthi-backed mass protests against the end of government fuel subsidies that culminated in the Houthi capture of Sana‘a on 21 September.10
While capturing Sana‘a and seizing an increasing amount of territory across multiple governorates to the south, west, and east, including parts of the strategically important Hudaydah, Ta’iz, and Ma’rib governorates in 2015 and 2016, the Houthis moved to woo defectors from opposing factions, including GPC officials and members of the military and security forces, over to their side by continuing the patronage politics used successfully for decades by Saleh.11 Though they were driven back from the southern port city of Aden in 2015, the Houthis still control Yemen’s main Red Sea port city of Hudaydah, which they continue to use, along with nearby strategic islands including Kamaran to project power in the maritime space. The Houthis currently are pressing to shift the long, largely stagnant frontlines on the ground between itself and Yemeni factions opposed to it in key areas, including the Ma’rib and Hudaydah governorates, the former of which is where some of the country’s remaining hydrocarbon resources, including crude oil and liquified natural gas, are located.12
Though they did not initially start out to take over the Yemeni state, the Houthis’ organizational goals in the political sphere have dramatically expanded since their origins in the late 1990s as the “Believing Youth” and the early 2000s during the Sa‘ada wars to their point today, where the Houthis and their government claim to be acting in the name of the Yemeni nation-state. Indeed, all of the attacks that the Houthis have carried out in and adjacent to the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab since the hijacking of the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in November 2023 have been claimed by the Houthi-controlled “Armed Forces of the Republic of Yemen,” an important piece of symbolic framing that clearly demonstrates how the Houthis wish to be seen domestically, regionally, and internationally.
Houthi Strategy and Calculations since the Start of the Iran Conflict
The Houthis waited a full month before entering the ongoing conflict between the United States and Israel on one side and Iran and most of its major non- and quasi-state allied groups in the Axis of Resistance umbrella on the other. They launched the first of four (as of 2 April 2026) separate salvos of ballistic and cruise missiles and one-way attack drones at the Israeli cities of Eilat and Tel Aviv-Jaffa, linking their entrance into the conflict with not only strikes in Iran but also other regional issues including air strikes on Iraqi groups allied with Iran, the war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and continuous Israeli strikes in Gaza and raids in the West Bank.13
The key question is this: Why did the Houthis, who are a key Iranian regional ally and who have benefitted greatly from the transfer of Iranian armaments and other technologies, wait a full month before deciding to enter the conflict, particularly when it was, at the start, unclear how long the IRI could continue carrying out significant missile and drone attacks and mining in the Strait of Hormuz while much of the regime’s upper political, security forces, intelligence, diplomatic, and military (both the Artesh and the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps) leadership echelons and infrastructure were decimated by Israeli and U.S. airstrikes?
In other words, the decision to delay full military engagement in the conflict, sticking to rhetorical support for the IRI and the other Axis of Resistance groups, when considered alongside the widespread assumption that the IRI would have no choice but to quickly capitulate after suffering so many significant losses to its leadership and military and security forces, suggests that the Houthis are wrestling internally to attempt to balance, as much as possible, their domestic, regional, and international goals that are centered on ultimately achieving international recognition of their control of the Yemeni nation-state, ideally de jure recognition but otherwise through a continued de facto acquiescence. These goals are often but not always aligned, forcing the Houthi leadership to consider which set of goals are, during a given time period, the most important to them organizationally and institutionally. Iranian-supplied armaments and other military technology have undoubtedly significantly empowered the Houthis by allowing them to project power far outside of Yemen, including over key maritime spaces in the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandab, and into the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, while also strengthening their hand against domestic rivals on the ground inside Yemen, most of whom remain at loggerheads with each other, a continuing hurdle preventing the formation of a truly united anti-Houthi front that will pose a real threat to their hold on power on the ground.
The Houthis’ alliance with the IRI and also Hezbollah in Lebanon, whose media and messaging apparatus the Houthis have modeled their own on down to the choreography of Abd al-Malik al-Houthi’s televised speeches and religious lectures, is also undoubtedly important to the Houthis.14 However, the Houthi command and control structure must also consider how to most effectively sell their decisions to, at the very least, their own domestic supporters. The Palestinian national cause is widely popular in Yemen and is not tied to support for or opposition to the Houthis, making the invocation of the Palestinian cause the easiest and “cheapest” way of framing and marketing domestically their military involvement, first in 2023–24 and, now, since 28 February 2026, due to its widespread popularity across Yemen, including among anti-Houthi factions such as the Saudi Arabia-backed Islah Party.15 Indeed, the Houthis’ public, routinized invocation of Gaza and the broader Palestinian-Israeli conflict seems to have solidified Houthi-Islah negotiations alongside advances in direct Houthi-Saudi negotiations with Omani diplomatic mediation that picked up in April 2023 following the People’s Republic of China’s stewarding of Saudi-Iranian diplomatic rapprochement.16
A second key open question is this: Why have the Houthis not decided, up to this point, to substantially interrupt shipping traffic through the Red Sea or target the Saudi industrial city and Red Sea oil-exporting hub of Yanbu, the former of which they have a demonstrated capacity to do and the latter of which is well within range of its missiles and drones? Doing one or both would significantly compound the regional and international effects of the struggle over and closure of the Strait of Hormuz.17 Though fragile, the Omani-mediated Houthi-Saudi ceasefire continues to be abided by despite the conflict with Iran because it is strategically and economically valuable to both sides. For the Saudis, the Houthis have stopped conducting cross-border attacks, including refraining from missile and drone strikes on oil infrastructure. For the Houthis, the Saudis have stopped conducting air strikes targeting them after launching, with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other Arab Coalition states carrying out more than 25,000 such strikes between 2015–22, have seemingly blessed ongoing Islah-Houthi negotiations, and have agreed to provide nearly $350 million USD in aid to pay for the “operating expenses,” including paying government salaries, a portion of which goes to Houthi-controlled areas.18 The ceasefire with the Saudis benefits the Houthis significantly by providing some economic relief and removing, at least for now, a significant anti-Houthi faction as a unified actor from the Yemeni conflict.19 The January 2026 Saudi assertion of primacy of influence projection in Yemen over the UAE, which saw the kingdom conduct extensive air strikes in January 2026 against the then-UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council, causing it to factionalize and formally cease to exist as a major player, also benefits the Houthis by degrading one of the most effective forces to counter the Houthis in southern Yemen.
Consequently, it is in the Houthis’ interests to maintain the ceasefire with Saudi Arabia amid severe regional turmoil, requiring the Houthi leadership to carefully calibrate their involvement and related decision making to simultaneously signal their capacity and potential willingness for phased escalation while also avoiding restarting a costly tit-for-tat direct conflict with Yemen’s powerful northern neighbor. The Houthis have clearly signaled that they are pursuing a calibrated/phased escalation—or, potentially, a deescalation—strategy, stating, “The Yemeni Armed Forces affirm that their military intervention in this significant and exceptional battle is a gradual/scaled intervention. Relying upon God and seeking His assistance, [the Armed Forces] declare that they will not limit their involvement to the present level. Rather, they will respond to future developments in accordance with the trajectory set by the enemy—whether that be escalation or de-escalation.”20 Abd al-Malik al-Houthi also recently sought to reap the reputational benefits of Houthi missile and drone targeting of Israel, claiming that the Houthis had “restored deterrence” in the region and “prevented” the United States and Israel from using the Red Sea to attack the IRI, while continuing to limit his forces’ engagement in the conflict.21
Conclusion: Complicating Houthi Decision Making and Undermining the Axis of Resistance
Debates on the nature of Houthi decision making run the gamut between seeing the Houthis as merely a proxy/puppet of the IRI to the argument being made here that the Houthis are a key Iranian regional ally that are simultaneously pursuing a range of domestic goals that they hope will ultimately achieve their desired end state of full political control and international de jure or, at the very least, de facto recognition as holders of state authority in Yemen. The Houthis’ organizational hybridity requires them to consider both their domestic, Yemen-centric goals alongside their broader regional goals, bringing to light the inherent tensions between them. The Houthis have a record of choosing to act in concert with the IRI and other Axis of Resistance groups as well as also prioritizing their own domestic goals, such as taking over Sana‘a in September 2014, even if they did not coincide with Iranian state interests.22
The Houthis’ alliance with the IRI is significant, and the former has moved closer ideologically and politically to the latter since the Sa‘ada wars while still retaining both organizational and theological distinctiveness from the latter’s system of “guardianship of the supreme jurist” (velayati-i faqih).23 The Houthis are also the most powerful and expansively capable of the IRI’s Axis of Resistance allies, a fact greatly enhanced by Yemen’s adjacence to several strategically key maritime spaces (listed above), which in turn enables them to assist the IRI in exerting additional pressure from the southwest to not become directly involved militarily in the ongoing Iranian conflict while the IRI can exert direct pressure from the east.
The Houthi movement has been shaped ideologically by a mix of Zaydi revivalism and different aspects of multiple Islamist currents, including the thought of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Sunni jihadism, and the Muslim Brotherhood, that it combines with domestic politicking among Yemen’s powerful tribes.24 While drawing significant inspiration from Khomeini and subscribing to the “global resistance” framing against alleged U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, the Houthis have also firmly sought to embed themselves in Yemen’s complex sociopolitical environment using a combination of both political-ideological messaging and economic incentives, particularly by adopting and expanding on neopatrimonial strategies of “divide-and-rule” governance favored for decades by the late President Saleh.25 This ideological, political, organizational, and motivational hybridity provides the Houthis with flexibility while also creating pressure points that the United States, in partnership with its regional allies such as Saudi Arabia, can use to complicate the Houthi leadership’s calculations and assumptions about the range of potential effects of full military engagement in any continuation of the conflict with the IRI and the other Axis of Resistance groups.
Endnotes
1. Shahram Akbarzadeh, William Gourlay, and Anoushiravan Ehteshami, “Iranian Proxies in the Syrian Conflict: Tehran’s ‘Forward-defence’ in Action,” Journal of Strategic Studies 46, no. 3 (2023): 683–706; and Afshon Ostovar, “The Grand Strategy of Militant Clients: Iran’s Way of War,” Security Studies 28, no. 1 (2019): 159–88.
2. These Iraqi armed groups include Kata’ib Hezbollah (Party of God Brigades), Asa’ib Ahl al-Haqq (League of the Righteous), Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba (Movement of the Party of God, the Most Eminent People), and Kata’ib Sayyid al-Shuhada (Brigades of the Commander of the Martyrs).
3. Husayn al-Houthi was killed in September 2004 by the Yemeni central government during a rebellion against President Ali Abdullah Saleh. This rebellion was one of several small-scale conflicts that later became known as the “Sa‘ada wars” (starting in June 2004) between the Houthi movement and Saleh’s government that ultimately saw the rise of the Houthis as a major sociopolitical and military power. See “Yemeni Forces Kill Rebel Cleric,” BBC News, 10 September 2004.
4. Shelagh Weir, “A Clash of Fundamentalisms,” Middle East Report, 13 September 1997.
5. Christopher Boucek, War in Saada: From Local Insurrection to National Challenge, Carnegie Paper no. 110 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2010).
6. Marieke Brandt, Tribes and Politics in Yemen: A History of the Houthi Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
7. Babak Rahimi, “Iranian Leaders Weight Support for the Houthi Rebellion in Yemen,” Terrorism Monitor 7, no. 35, 20 November 2009; and Andrew McGregor, “Shi’ite Insurgency in Yemen: Iranian Intervention or Mountain Revolt?,” Terrorism Monitor 2, no. 16, 10 May 2005.
8. “National Dialogue,” United Nations Office of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, last updated 18 November 2025.
9. “Statement by the Houthis, 2012,” Human Rights Information and Training Center, 2012.
10. Peter Salisbury, “Yemen Rage Boils Over ‘Unliveable’ Price Hike,” Al Jazeera, 1 August 2014.
11. Joshua Rogers, “Becoming the State: How Ansar Allah Took over and Adapted Formal Institutions at the Local Level,” in The Huthi Movement in Yemen: Ideology, Ambition and Security in the Arab Gulf, ed. Abdullah Hamidaddin (London: I. B. Tauris, 2022), 217–32.
12. “Yemen: 19 Soldiers Killed and Wounded in Houthi Attack on Hodaeidah,” YemenOnline, 23 February 2026; “Houthi Drone Strike Kills Soldier, Wounds Others in Yemen’s Marib,” YemenOnline, 12 January 2026; and “Yemen: Houthi Drone Strikes Target Residential Areas in Marib,” YemenOnline, 12 November 2025.
13. The statements of the Houthi-controlled Yemeni Armed Forces since 28 February 2026 consistently invoke the Palestinian national cause and the ongoing regional conflict currently engulfing Iran, the Arab Gulf states, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Territories (Gaza and the West Bank).
14. On Houthi multimedia messaging and the influence of the Houthi-Hezbollah direct alliance in the media sphere, see Hannah Porter, “Propaganda, Creativity, and Diplomacy: The Huthis’ Adaptive Approach to Media and Public Messaging,” in The Huthi Movement in Yemen, 139–58.
15. Ibrahim Ali, “Did the Gaza War Deepen the Houthi-Islahi Rapprochement or Bring It to the Surface?,” South24, 11 January 2024; Laurent Bonnefoy, “Sunni Islamist Dynamics in Context of War: What Happened to al-Islah and the Salafis?,” POMEPS Studies, no. 29 (Washington, DC: Project on Middle East Political Science, 2018); and “The Islah Party Expresses Its Appreciation for the Ongoing Support from Saudi Arabia, Describing It as an Important Contribution to the Battle to Restore the State and Build Its Institutions,” Islah Party, 15 January 2026.
16. Ali, “Did the Gaza War Deepen the Houthi-Islahi Rapprochement or Bring it to the Surface?”; “Saudi Officials Visit Yemen’s Capital for Talks with Rebels,” NPR, 10 April 2023; and “Delegation from Yemen’s Houthi Rebels Flies into Saudi Arabia for Peace Talks,” PBS News, 15 September 2023.
17. “Saudi Boosts Yanbu Crude Oil Exports as It Works around Hormuz Halt, Data Shows,” Reuters, 24 March 2026. A drone strike on Yanbu and an intercepted missile targeting Saudi oil facilities there were launched directly by the IRI and not the Houthis; see Yousef Saba and Maha El Dahan, “Iran Struck Saudi Arabia Oil Pipeline Just Hours after Ceasefire, Source Says,” Reuters, 8 April 2026.
18. “Saudi Coalition Airwar, 2015–2022,” Yemen Data Project, accessed 24 April 2026; and “Saudi Arabia to Provide $347 Million for Yemeni Budget Relief,” Reuters, 25 February 2026.
19. Fatima Abo Alasrar, “Saudi Arabia Takes Full Control of Yemen’s South,” Stimson Center, 12 January 2026.
20. “Statement Issued by the Yemeni Armed Forces,” Houthi Movement, 28 March 2026.
21. Abd al-Malik al-Houthi, speech, 8 April 2026.
22. Ali Watkins, Ryan Grim, and Akbar Shahid Ahmed, “Iran Warned Houthis against Yemen Takeover,” HuffPost, 20 April 2015.
23. Mohammed Almahfali and James Root, “How Iran’s Islamic Revolution Does, and Does Not, Influence Houthi Rule in Northern Yemen,” Sana‘a Center for Strategic Studies, 13 February 2020.
24. Bernard Haykel, “The Huthi Movement’s Religious and Political Ideology and Its Relationship to Zaydism in Yemen,” in The Huthi Movement in Yemen, 30.
25. Sarah Phillips, “Yemen: Developmental Dysfunction and Division in a Crisis State,” Developmental Leadership Programme Research Paper 14 (2011); and Anthony Chimente, “ ‘State’ and Coercive Power in Yemen: The Huthis and the Tribal-
Sectarian Field,” in The Huthi Movement in Yemen, 181–98.