5 things you need to know now about the Houthi rebels The ‘Trump with brains’ is about to end

On Friday evening, the US and Britain, supported by allies, attacked the positions of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Iranian-backed radical Shiite militia controls the north of the country and is waging a civil war against the Yemeni government, which is backed by Saudi Arabia. Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, rebels have increasingly attacked shipping in the Red Sea. Who are the Houthi rebels, what do they stand for and why do they attack ships?

Who are the Houthis?

The Houthis are a political-military movement in Yemen that emerged from the predecessor organization “Ansar Allah” (Partisans of God), founded in 1994 by Hussein Badreddin al-Huthi. They belong to a tribal group from the mountainous north of Yemen, on the border with Saudi Arabia. In religious terms they are Zaidis, an Islamic legal school that is a branch of the Shiites. The Zaidis, who unlike most Shiites do not believe in the return of a hidden imam – the so-called Mahdi – make up just over a third of the entire population in Yemen, the majority of whom are Sunnis.

The origins of the Houthis date back to the 1990s, when dissatisfaction with President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was seen as corrupt, increased. Saleh fought the movement from 2004 with Saudi military support, but was unsuccessful. The Houthis, who now also operate militarily, managed to capture the capital Sana’a in 2014, after which a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates intervened in the fighting to support the Yemeni government. According to the UN, the ongoing civil war in Yemen will have claimed an estimated 380,000 lives by 2022; several million people were displaced.

The Shia Houthis see themselves as part of the “axis of resistance” led by Iran – the Shia hegemony – against Israel, the US and the West as a whole, which also includes the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Palestinian Hamas, various Iraqi militias and the Syrian Assad regime. The Shia Hezbollah militia, which dominates Lebanon politically and militarily, serves as a role model for the Houthi rebels.

In addition to the capital Sana’a and the north of the country, the Houthi rebels also control much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Most of the Yemeni population lives in these regions. The Houthis collect taxes and also print money in the areas they control. In 2010, they numbered an estimated 100,000 to 120,000 members: armed militia members and unarmed supporters. The militia has modern weapon systems, probably of Iranian origin, such as tanks, drones, guided missiles, rockets, speedboats and sea mines. According to its own statements, the country acquired its weapons mainly from stocks of the regular Yemeni army.

Why are they supported by Iran?

As a proxy war, the Yemeni civil war is more closely linked to the conflict between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which are vying for regional dominance. Saudi Arabia, which is Wahhabi and therefore Sunni, wants to prevent all of Yemen from falling under the rule of the Shiite Houthis; The Houthis, in turn, are one of Iran’s spearheads in the region, alongside Hezbollah and Hamas. The militia allows the mullahs’ regime in Tehran to cause problems for Saudi Arabia in Yemen with relatively little effort.

It is of course not clear how dependent the Houthis are on Iran – there are signs that the militia is not directly subordinate to the Iranian command and control system and follows instructions from Tehran less strictly than, for example, Hezbollah. Direct arms supplies from Iran to the Houthis are difficult because the US and Saudi Arabia control both airspace and sea routes. Tehran has therefore been building a local arms industry in Yemen since 2014. Hezbollah, which also trained the Houthis fighters, was involved.

The Houthis have used their arsenal of weapons to hit targets in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in recent years. According to American and Saudi Arabian reports, the ballistic missiles that the militia used to bomb the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh in 2017 came from Iran. Saudi Arabia also claims that Iran provided the Houthis with the cruise missiles and drones they used to attack Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure in 2019.

The blueprints for the rockets that the Houthis have fired into Israel since the start of the current Gaza war come from Iran and Lebanon. However, Iran denies supplying such weapons to the Houthi rebels. The delivery of ballistic missiles would violate a UN Security Council arms embargo against the Houthi militia.

Tehran also denies involvement in the Houthis’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. However, according to the US, the militia would not be able to attack the ships without Iranian intelligence information. “We know that Iran was deeply involved in planning operations against merchant ships in the Red Sea,” White House national security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, according to Reuters.

The British newspaper ‘The Telegraph’ also reported, citing anonymous sources, that around 200 Houthi militiamen had been trained at Iran’s Khamenei Academy of Naval Science and Technology. They were trained for six months at the elite academy in the Zibakenar region under the command of the Revolutionary Guards.

Why is she an enemy of Israel?

The motto of the Houthis, who have imposed a strict Islamic order in their area of ​​control in Yemen, reflects their radical Islamist orientation: “God is greatest, death to America, death to Israel, curse to the Jews, victory to Islam.” The anti-Israel and anti-Jewish stance was clearly visible from the start, for example when the Houthis condemned the Yemeni government as pro-Israel, even though, like most Arab governments, it was clearly pro-Palestinian.

The anti-Semitic sermons of Hussein Badreddin al-Huthi, who was assassinated in 2004, still have a strong influence. In these sermons, which are still available on Ansar Allah’s website and the main television channel, al-Masirah, he promoted the genocide of the Jews, comparing them to monkeys and pigs. According to al-Houthi, the Arab and Islamic countries cannot be “liberated from the evil of the Jews” except “through their extermination and through the elimination of their entity, Israel.”

The radical hostility against the Jewish state gives the Houthi militia great sympathy among the Yemeni population. Experts assume that their rocket attacks on Israel since the start of the Gaza war and the threat to attack all Israeli-flagged ships are more of a kind of domestic political message for their followers and the Yemeni population. They do not yet pose a military threat to Israel. The war in Gaza represents a unique opportunity for the Houthis to demonstrate their pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-American position to their local population.

Why do they attack ships?

Like the rockets they fired at Israel, the Houthi rebels view their attacks on ships in the Red Sea as retaliation for Israel’s attack on the Gaza Strip. According to them, the attacked merchant ships are linked to Israel; the militia announced that it would attack any ship heading to Israel, according to the BBC. It is not clear whether all attacked ships actually went there.

In November, the Houthi rebels captured the supposedly Israeli cargo ship ‘Galaxy Leader’. Since then, their attacks on merchant ships have increased fivefold. Because one of the world’s most important shipping lanes passes through the Strait of Bab al-Mandab, which connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea, these attacks have a powerful impact. Four international shipping companies have already announced that they will no longer send their ships through the strait: Mediterranean Shipping Company, Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd and the oil company BP.

How great is the danger to the merchant marine?

The Houthis’ attacks on merchant ships are now endangering all civilian shipping between the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandab Strait, the shortest sea route between Asia and Europe. About ten percent of world trade passes through this chokepoint, including goods such as grain and oil.

Merchant ships linked to Israel now sail the route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, but this route takes up to 31 days longer. This leads to delivery delays and additional costs. According to information from the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” (FAZ), the French shipping company CMA CGM has already doubled freight rates for container transport from Asia to the Mediterranean. However, experts believe that the Houthi rebels cannot completely close the strait because they do not have the necessary warships.

Switzerland is also affected by the threat of free shipping on the Bab al-Mandab. Swiss industry needs raw materials and semi-finished products for its production; As an export country, Switzerland is dependent on international shipping. According to the Handelszeitung, the Center for Security Studies at ETH Zurich writes in an analysis: “Free shipping is of strategic importance for the highly globalized Swiss economy with its high export dependence and its strong need for raw material imports.”