Who Are the Houthis and What Is Their Role in Israel-Gaza?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: And as we mentioned earlier, the U.S. launched its fifth round of missile strikes against the Houthis in Yemen today. Walter Isaacson now digs into the roots of this crisis with Middle East expert Elisabeth Kendall.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, welcome to the show.

ELISABETH KENDALL, Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge University: Thank you. It’s great to be here, Walter.

ISAACSON: The U.S. just conducted this week its third military operation against the Houthis who controlled much of Yemen including the capitol after a nine-year civil war. The U.S. put the Houthis back on the designated terrorist organization list. Who are the Houthis and how did it come to this?

KENDALL: The Houthis are a group that emerged in the northwest of Yemen. So, in that bottom corner of the Arabian Peninsula. Now, they take their name from their former leader, Hussein al-Houthi, who was killed in 2004. And they’re now controlled by his brother, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. So, they’re a family group that rules the Houthis, but they’re much more than just a tribe. They’re a religious, political, and military grouping that now involves its religion in its politics. For example, their political arm is called Ansar Allah, which means partisan (ph) supporters of God. And They have a brand of religion called Zaydism, which is a branch of Shia Islam. And that’s important because Shiasm is of course the kind of Islam that’s practiced in Iran. Now, we shouldn’t think of them as just a small rebel group. They actually control territory in which about two-thirds of Yemen’s population lives, and that’s about 20 million people. So — and they’ve been at war for the last nine years in a civil war, and several years before that, since 2004. So, they’re quite a considerable adversary. They should not be underestimated.

ISAACSON: Well, you say at the core it’s because they’re a Shia Islam group. And the civil war in Yemen has been fought between Sunni forces and the Houthi Shia forces. Are we — is that an oversimplistic divide that we in the West make between Sunni and Shia? Or is that really at the core of what’s happening both in the region and in Yemen?

KENDALL: It’s certainly true to some extent to describe this as a sectarian war between Sunnis and Shias. But it is a lot more complex than that. So, on the one hand, we have the Houthis who are backed by Shia Iran. And on the other hand, we have the so-called internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia, which is Sunni and the United Arab Emirates. But ultimately, this conflict inside Yemen was domestically generated before sectarian concerns came to the fore. It’s about control of power, territory and resources. And it’s simply that those sectarian narratives have been glued onto these much more fundamental struggles. So, it’s going to have to be solved at that domestic level in very practical terms if that conflict is to go away.

ISAACSON: Well, they’re in the news right now because Yemen borders the Red Sea and the Houthis have been using their arsenals of drones and military to attack shipping in the Red Sea. And I think there are, what, 17,000 ships that go through the Red Sea every year. I mean, one-fifth of the cargo coming to the East Coast. The United States is there. A lot of the oil goes through there. Tell us what’s happening with these attacks, and is that why the U.S. has been retaliating?

KENDALL: I think that the threat to global shipping and the knock-on effects that that has on our economies has certainly focused the interests of the U.S., the U.K. and others in putting a stop to this in a way that nine years of civil war and the Houthis trying to take over inside Yemen itself never would have gained our attention in this way. But let’s just zoom out slightly. The location of the Houthis down there in the Red Sea is really important because it completes a jigsaw puzzle of Iranian Proxies and partners in the region that, if you look at a map surround Israel. So, we’ve got the Houthis there to the south of Israel. And of course, we have Hamas in the west of Israel, in the Gaza Strip. And then to the north, we have Hezbollah, another Iranian proxy. And then in the north and the northeast, we have Iran backed Shia militias. So, the Houthis are a really important part of completing that circle of pressure on Israel.

ISAACSON: And are the Houthis officially aligned? Do they work hand in glove with Hezbollah and Hamas?

KENDALL: The Houthis are part of the so-called axis of resistance, which is controlled by Iran, or at least partnered to Iran. And I wouldn’t say that they’re very close to Hezbollah and Hamas. It’s simply that they have many of the same aims. And that goes for Iran too. The Houthi slogan is death to America. Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, and victory to Islam. That chimes very strongly with Iran’s own political slogans. But it would be too much to say that Iran has direct command control of the Houthis. Iran’s arms, its supply of weapons, its training and its intelligence have been incredibly important in facilitating what the Houthis are doing. But it wouldn’t be the case that if Iran suddenly stepped away or tried to stand the Houthis down, that this would end, because the Houthis have very good reasons of their own for continuing these attacks in the Red Sea.

ISAACSON: What are their good reasons or reasons of their own?

KENDALL: Well, they have domestic reasons, regional reasons, international reasons. At a domestic level, this is very opportune for the Houthis. It enables them to position themselves as the defenders of Palestine, as the heroes of the Palestinian people at a time when there aren’t very many political power bases, regimes or governments speaking up for the Palestinians. So, that’s made them quite popular, not just with their base, which is, by the way, very tired after almost a decade of war, but also more broadly in Yemen and the Arab world. And then regionally, it works for the Houthis because they managed to gain more leverage over Saudi Arabia. Saudi doesn’t want to antagonize the Houthis at a time when it’s trying to extract itself from a very awkward and expensive war that it’s been pursuing against the Houthis in Yemen. And it is on the cusp of being able to do that. And then finally, internationally, well, the Houthis have gained massive publicity for themselves and for the Palestinians. And they’ve ensured that what might have seemed to us like a faraway problem in Israel is really brought into our attention zones by this attack on our global shipping and its knock-on effects ultimately on our wallets.

ISAACSON: Well, I just read a really good article you wrote on all of this. And I think you mentioned that the Houthis were planning attacks on the Red Sea even before the October attack by Hamas on Israel. So, would this have happened without that? Or is this really a reaction to what’s happening in Gaza?

KENDALL: It’s hard to say whether this was part of a well-planned strategy that Iran had in mind with its partners that was going to ramp up gradually beginning with the 7th of October attacks by Hamas on Israel. There are some signs that that might have been the case. As you say, the Houthis were militarizing the Red Sea, a couple of islands, and bringing in the kinds of weaponry that was required for these Red Sea attacks just before Hamas acted in October. And what is very striking is that the different partners in Iran’s so- called axis of resistance have gradually ramped up their activity in the way that makes them look like they’re being reactive and proportionate because they’re responding to what Israel’s been doing and what America is now doing, it makes — it frames them as not as the aggressors, but as the defenders. So, it could be parts of rather a smart strategy, or it could simply be opportunistic.

ISAACSON: As we said, the news right now is that in the past day or so, it’s been decided to put the Houthis back on what is called, I think, the specially designated terrorist organization list. That’s what the Biden administration is doing, I think, in alliance with the United Kingdom. What does that mean to put them on that list? And why did the Biden administration take them off the list when Trump had them on a similar mterrorist list?

KENDALL: So, Trump did have them on that terrorist list. But we must remember that Trump only put them on that list a couple of days before he left office. So, it was almost like it was a gift to the Saudis as he parted from office. And also —

ISAACSON: Let me stop you there to explain why that would be a gift to the Saudis.

KENDALL: So, of course, the Saudis had been fighting the Houthis in a war since they entered the Yemen civil war in March 2015 and had been advocating for America to put them on that terrorist list. And America had resisted that right up until Trump’s last days in office. And one of the reasons why the U.S. had resisted is probably the advice of different humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, that this would be absolutely catastrophic for the population of Yemen, which had already suffered greatly. There was a situation, which is not much better now, where about 80 percent of the Yemeni population needs humanitarian assistance. Now, if you designate the Houthis, then that makes it really hard for humanitarian organizations to get that vital aid and medicine in, because most of the population affected lives in the Houthi areas. And —

ISAACSON: So, is it a good idea for them to be — for the U.S. and the U.K. to put them back on a terrorist list?

KENDALL: So, it isn’t a good idea. It’s not because the Houthis don’t deserve to be on a terrorist list. It’s because of the knock-on effects of that. It doesn’t hurt the Houthis. For them, it’s a badge of honor. It hurts the general population who’s already suffering. And it also might have knock-on effects in scuppering the domestic peace process inside Yemen. There has been an uneasy truce. in Yemen since 2022. It’s not officially a truce, but it has more or less held. And now, the United Nations is just about brokering a political process for Yemenis to make peace with one another, and the Houthis are a key part of that. Now, if the U.S. places the Houthis on a terrorist organization, it’s difficult to see how the United Nations can include them as a legitimate political authority in the domestic peace talks. If those peace talks don’t go ahead, then Yemen circles back into a civil war. So, there’s a lot at stake.

ISAACSON: Well, it does seem that if they’re part of the U.N. designated peace process, that it’s the Houthis who’ve disrupted this by suddenly starting to attack international shipping in the Red Sea.

KENDALL: That is true. But the Houthis are trying, and to some degree they’re actually succeeding in separating entirely what they’re doing in the Red Sea from what’s happening inside Yemen. They’re pitching their Red Sea attacks as something that is 100 percent geared towards bringing world attention to the plight of the Palestinians. And they say that if Israel and America stop their aggression in Gaza and against Palestine, then they will stop their attacks. That’s what they say.

ISAACSON: Do you believe that at all?

KENDALL: Well, I think we can’t completely dismiss it. There’s a genuine empathy and sympathy with the Palestinian courts. But we ought to also be skeptical. It works very well for the Houthis politically for all the reasons I outlined. And I also think it’s important to mention here that there’s not that much evidence that the Houthis are willing to settle for a power sharing agreement inside Yemen. They’re always flexing their muscles whenever they’ve signed an agreement before they’ve had deal remorse, and they’ve always gone back to try to get more. And so, this could be just another example of that, where they have no intention of sharing power, they simply want to keep finding excuses to carry on. Well, what I should say is that I don’t think they want all-out war with the U.S. That could be existential for them. And I don’t think they expect it, because like many people, like many commentators, nobody thinks the U.S. is going to put boots on the ground in Yemen. And nor do the Houthis think that. But some kind of low-level conflict, tit for tat strikes, that works well for them. That feeds into their narratives.

ISAACSON: Well, you just said that tit for tat strikes work well for the Houthis. But the U.S. recently has gone through its third attack on the Houthis. Is that helping or hurting the Houthis these last few weeks of U.S. and allied military strikes on the Houthi forces?

KENDALL: Yes, an excellent question, because the rationale, of course, is that these strikes are supposed to hurt the Houthis. But there are several reasons why that’s not really the case. The first is that the Houthis are very adept at hiding their weapons. They’ve also suffered many, many airstrikes, over 25,000 airstrikes during the course of the civil war by the Saudi-led coalition, and they still kept going. So, it’s very likely that they can weather these airstrikes. And at the same time, they have been framing the United States as an aggressor, as an imperialist power that wants to be at war with Islam. So, these strikes now play to that narrative. And whilst the Houthis can be relatively assured that the Americans won’t want to go in with ground forces, they can just keep going, because they have a different war logic from ours. They’re very tolerant of high casualties. They are not that concerned about recycles of misery that their actions inflict upon their populations. And they have war almost as a way of life because they’ve now been at war for almost a better part of 20 years with a couple of years off in between. So, they can just keep going.

ISAACSON: I don’t quite understand what could — how this could possibly work out for the West or the U.S. in the sense that the Saudis, for what, nine years have been trying very hard to push back the Houthis, to beat them. And the Saudis have used enormous numbers of missiles. They’re in the region, and it hasn’t worked at all. Can the Houthis be defeated by a few random attacks by U.S. drones when the Saudis couldn’t do it?

KENDALL: No, I don’t think they can. You paint a very realistic picture. We have tried all sorts of other measures. Sanctions haven’t worked. Curbing the flow of funds to the Houthis hasn’t worked. Just putting the multinational maritime force in the Red Sea as a warning and a threat, and a way of batting away missiles, that hasn’t worked, which is why the U.S. has now had to ramp up to this kind of direct military action. Are there any other things that we could do? Maybe. Maybe we could try harder with mediation. Oman would be a good route because Oman has not joined the Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis and has open channels to both the Houthis and Iran. And perhaps we could ramp up our indirect military action. Things that the Houthis couldn’t point to the United States and say that was them. And maybe also spend more time building up local forces in Yemen who have spent the last nine years trying to push back against the Houthis. Ultimately, though, I think it’s quite hard to see any of this working without taking away this moral high ground that the Houthis have claimed rightly or wrongly, which is that they are defending Palestine. So, unless something is done to solve that overall conflict between Israel and Palestine, I think the Houthis can just keep going.

ISAACSON: Dr. Elisabeth Kendall, thank you so much for joining us.

KENDALL: You’re welcome. Thank you for the opportunity.