Lawfare Daily: The Houthi War Against Saudi Arabia
The Lawfare Podcast
This episode features an in-depth analysis of the Houthi movement's evolution from a local Yemeni insurgency to a regional power capable of thre
Key takeaways
- The Houthis have transitioned from local rebels to a group capable of projecting power into the Red Sea and targeting global shipping.
- Their expansionist strategy focuses on controlling Yemen's 'triangle of power'—the oil and gas-rich provinces of Marib, Sheba, and Hadhramaut.
Main topics
- Houthi territorial expansion in Yemen
- Red Sea maritime security and shipping attacks
Notable quotes
The Houthis... are incredibly expansionist.
Conclusion
The conflict in Yemen is entering a more dangerous phase as the Houthi
Transcript preview
Speaker 1 (0:00) U.S. voters abroad, have you got your ballot yet? All states are now sending ballots to overseas voters. So if you want to vote this year, you should request your ballot right away. Go to votefromabroad.org and click Request My Ballot. Ask to receive it by email. Questions? Ask our support team directly. Don't miss this chance to shape the future. Don't delay. Votefromabroad.org. Speaker 3 (0:29) They certainly are not going to stop. They're an incredibly expansionist group and any political deal that they've signed, the Houthis have basically looked at these agreements as something that they signed to buy time, which allows them to sort of refit and regroup and then make another try to get some of the things that they actually want. Speaker 4 (0:47) It's the Lawfare Podcast. I'm Daniel Byman, foreign policy editor with Lawfare, with Greg Johnson, non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf State Institute. Speaker 3 (0:58) They feel that Saudi Arabia is vulnerable and they're trying to squeeze. And that if you take that sort of understanding and lay that onto what it is that you're seeing in the news, then I think what the Houthis are doing makes a little bit of sense, both domestically in Yemen, as well as sort of from the broader regional strategic level. Speaker 4 (1:17) Today we're talking about the Houthis and their war against Saudi Arabia and the dilemmas it poses for the United States. The current offensive of the Houthis, both within Yemen and their attacks on Saudi Arabia and on the Red Sea and Bab al-Mandab area, has put Yemen again in the headlines. And Greg, I have a dozen questions I want to go through with you. So let's start with the basics, just to make sure that we're all on the same page as we go forward. Tell us about the Houthis today. If we were having this conversation over a decade ago, at least I think we'd be talking about a more local movement. But how should we think about them and their role in Yemen? Speaker 3 (2:00) Yeah, that's a good question. So obviously they're a group that controls much of northern Yemen. So they control the capital city of Sana'a in Yemen. They've held that really since about September of 2014, so over a decade now. They've been the Saudis for a while, the Emiratis, the U.S., a number Israel, a number of countries have tried to basically bomb them into submission. That hasn't worked particularly well. In recent years, they've started to project power not just inside of Yemen, but actually out into the Red Sea. They fired missiles at Israel in late 23, early 2024. And then I think as many of your listeners will know, they started to carry out several attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea for a period of several months, almost a year. Eventually, that sort of declined. And then more recently, they have. really saw the US-led war in Iran as something that they could take advantage of. And they see Saudi Arabia and particularly the route that it uses to get its oil to market as something that they could press on. And so that's been really driving their offensive over the past couple of weeks where the Houthis have, if you have sort of a map of Yemen in your mind, Western Yemen is right along the Red Sea coast. The Houthis had a few ports up in the north, but what they've done is pushed south. which brings them very, very close to a strategic choke point, the Bab al-Mandab. And so they've been able to take that territory, some of the islands in the Red Sea. And from there, they are able to actually hold at risk many more Saudi oil tankers that are going through there. So what you've seen is a group that's evolved from sort of this local insurgency that basically captured the state or at least part of the state. And now it's a group that has very maximalist claims and wants to continue to project power, not only inside, of Yemen, but out throughout the region and into the Red Sea in a way that is causing some significant costs for Saudi Arabia in particular, but also for the global economy. Speaker 4 (3:58) So if we were handicapping this 20 years ago or 25 years ago, I would say, okay, you're going to tell me about a relatively local group in Yemen that is going to, first of all, become probably the strongest single force within Yemen. Speaker 3 (4:16) In Speaker 4 (4:17) addition, it is going to deal with an intervention from Saudi Arabia, from the United Arab Emirates, from Israel, from the United States, and emerge pretty strong. Obviously, it's got weaknesses that we'll talk about, but I think quite impressively. What explains the Houthi resilience? What explains their success? Speaker 3 (4:38) Yeah, well, I think one of the things that we often sort of miss when we talk about the Houthis is exactly what you were saying. Like, go back, you know, a quarter of a century, and the Houthis have basically been fighting for that long. I mean, they started fighting the Yemeni central government in 2004. And initially, it looked like the Houthis were going to be defeated. Their initial leader, a guy by the name of Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, was killed in September of 2004. the leadership of the movement basically passed to his very old kind of frail father and then eventually to one of his half-brothers, the current leader Abd al-Malik al-Houthi. So while we think of the Houthis as an organization that has been sort of active in 2023 or 24, maybe we heard about them. in 2015 when Saudi Arabia started bombing Yemen. This is a group that views itself as having won a local war against the Yemeni government. So they fought six successive wars from 2004 to 2010. And they didn't really take a lot of territory and they didn't really do much, but they managed to survive. And for that, and that's a pretty low bar, but for an insurgent group like the Houthis, that was all that they had to do to win. Then of course, the Arab Spring comes, their main rival, Ali Abdullah Saleh, the former president overthrows. And the Houthis are able to basically take advantage of a chaotic situation. From 2011, 2012, the U.S. was trying to restructure the Yemeni military, which basically just broke the Yemeni military and didn't put anything good in its place. So there were all these sort of fractures and fissures in Yemen that allowed the Houthis to basically march on Sana'a and take the city without much of a fight, to be honest. That's 2004 to 2014. So they won this domestic fight. And then Saudi Arabia, with this 10-country coalition, gets involved in 2015, starts bombing the Houthis. This is a war that goes on really from like 2015 to about 2022. And again, the Houthis don't do much, but they managed to survive. So air power alone is not able to defeat them. And so the Houthis look, okay, we fought a local war and we won. And now we fought a regional war against Saudi Arabia and we won that as well. And so then you saw them in 23 and 2024 fighting what they thought was an international war against the United States and Israel. The U.S. obviously carried out about two months of pretty heavy airstrikes in 2025. And again, they destroyed a lot of things. But the Houthis survived, and they view that as a victory. And that's the situation that they're in now. And so essentially, they feel that they have a pretty strong hand, particularly against Saudi Arabia, that they can put a lot of pressure on Saudi. And they're doing this, I think, for a couple of different reasons. One, they're doing this for their own domestic political purposes. So the Houthis would like to take more territory in Yemen. You saw them move sort of south and take some of the Red Sea coast. But they also want to move east and inland and take some of the oil and gas facilities in Maareb and Shabwa and Hadhramud. That's something the Houthis have long had their eyes on because this would give them the economic base to really rule Yemen long term. So they want to do that. But they also want to assist Iran, which has been backing them and has helped them over the years. And as Iran is closed down the strait, the Houthis looked at that and say, hey, we can do a similar thing in Bab al-Mandeb. And we can put pressure on Saudi Arabia and we can get Saudi to give us some financial incentives. We can potentially get some more recognition. We can continue to project power out into the region and show that we really are a force. So this is a group that has just moved from local to regional to international. And even though it hasn't done a whole lot, it's mostly taken advantages of the weaknesses and the divisiveness and the divided nature of most of its domestic adversaries. Speaker 4 (8:19) So you've said a lot there, and I want to kind of drill down on a few of your points. There's so much to discuss. So when we think about the Houthis within Yemen, are there, I'll say, realistic goals? Obviously, everyone in Yemen has ambitions, but are there realistic goals to control the entire country? Or do they just want to dominate parts of it and make sure that their position is secure? Effectively, how aggressive and expansionist are they within the country? Speaker 3 (8:48) Incredibly expansionist. So what it is that they want, and you can see this, and this has been pretty apparent for, you know, about the past eight years, really 2018 on. The Houthis, so again, if your viewer or listeners have sort of a map of Yemen in their head, the Houthis have basically the