Riding a wave of regional popularity, the Houthis exaggerate their autonomy from Iran

“It is true that we are part of the resistance axis, along with Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran, but our decision-making is autonomous.”

In a recent interview with Marianne Weekly, Mohammed al-Bukaiti, a Houthi leader, dismissed allegations that the Yemeni rebels are acting under the control of Iran, which trains, finances and supplies them with increasingly sophisticated weapons.

The Houthi leader played with the vagueness surrounding Houthi-Iran relations, which are difficult to analyze in depth because of the latter’s secrecy.

“It is wrong to say that the Houthis are completely autonomous, just as it is wrong to say that they are subordinate to Tehran. They are a fiercely nationalist Yemeni organization,” said Thomas Juneau, a Gulf specialist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.

Relations between the Houthis and Iran have been a subject of debate for years, but it has taken a completely different turn since the start of the war in Gaza, in which the Houthis are playing a leading role.

The Houthis have carried out almost daily attacks on ships in the Red Sea since November and incurred the wrath of the US and its allies. Are the rebels acting in their own interests and those of Yemen? Or are they acting more in Iran’s interests? The answer is undoubtedly both but to different degrees.

Ideological link

The strength of Hussein al-Houthi, the movement’s former leader and brother of the current leader, who was killed in the fight against government forces in 2004, rested in his ability to link the concept of anti-imperialism to the idea of Zaydist renaissance, amid a popular discontent with Yemen’s cooperation with the US in its war on terrorism.

Paradoxically, this nationalist initiative created fertile ground for the development of relations with Iran, which became increasingly interested in the rebel group from that time onwards.

“Apart from possible feelings of Shiite solidarity based on a common historical origin and certain shared religious principles, which are particularly evident in Hussein al-Houthi’s lectures, these anti-imperialist narratives constitute the main ideological link with Iran and Hezbollah,” wrote researchers Marieke Brandt and Alexander Weissenburger in Encyclopaedia Islamica in 2022.

The Islamic Republic began supplying Ansarullah with arms when Saudi Arabia first intervened in Yemen in 2009, in support of Ali Abdallah Saleh’s regime against the Houthi insurrection. Tehran saw this as an opportunity to destabilize its Saudi rival.

The Iran-Houthi relationship took on a new dimension after Saudi Arabia’s destructive campaign against Yemen in 2015.

In particular, Tehran has enabled the Houthis to gain partial autonomy by teaching them to manufacture some weapons, notably short-range missiles and drones.

“Some longer-range drones can be produced locally, but the Shaheds, which in my opinion have most likely been used, are widely imported,” Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told L’Orient-Le Jour in October. “The systems used to target Israel on Thursday would not therefore include any major locally produced components. That said, we cannot know whether they were delivered before the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran in March.”

The Houthis are even less able to free themselves from this dependence now, given that their popularity has soared since they stepped up their attacks in the Red Sea.

With an army estimated to range between 100,000 to 200,000 fighters, the movement is now recruiting like crazy. Its missile attacks on Israel, although intercepted before damage was done, and mainly its attacks on cargo ships supposedly linked to or heading for Israel, and its almost daily exchanges of strikes against US ships, have been praised across the region.

“It is about limited US strikes without escalation, which allow the Houthis to mobilize anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment in Yemen and the Middle East. All this serves Iran’s interests,” noted Juneau.

Plausible deniability

In view of these successes, and while Tehran’s role in coordinating the actions of “the resistance axis” benefits from the vagueness surrounding its plausible denial, it is more important than ever for the Houthis to claim their autonomy — particularly since they often accused the Yemeni government of being in the pay of the Saudis and the Emiratis.

But recent developments indicate that the Islamic Republic’s influence over the Houthis is greater than the latter would like to admit.

Their response to the series of US-British strikes against their sites in Yemen over the past month or so has been a particularly measured retaliation on their part, as they have often proved that going into battle against more powerful adversaries does not frighten them.

Recent reports alleged behind-the-scenes pressure from Tehran to avoid regional escalation. According to an Iranian source quoted by the Middle East Eye, the US contacted Iran via a Saudi channel, informing Tehran that it was about to strike the Houthis in Yemen, and urged it to restrain its allied group during the strike.

Washington made it clear that the strikes would initially be measured, but that in the event of a strong reaction from Iran, a major US response would follow, the same source reported.

The Biden administration also urged China to put pressure on the Islamic Republic to curb Red Sea attacks by its allies, according to US officials cited by the Financial Times on Jan. 24. This wish seems to have been heeded since Beijing asked Tehran to help curb attacks on ships around the Bab el-Mandeb strait, Reuters reported two days later.

“It is plausible [that Iran is putting pressure on the Houthis] in the sense that Tehran wants to avoid such a conflagration, and that the Houthis seem prepared to accept a slightly higher degree of violence with the US than Iran,” said Juneau. “But above all they are partners, with broadly aligned objectives.”

Iranian influence on the Houthis is certainly incomparable to that exerted within the Shiite militias in Iraq, who infiltrated the army and parliament, or Lebanese Hezbollah, who takes orders directly from Iran’s supreme leader.

But it seems that in terms of regional policy, Iran has at least facilitated, if not dictated, the group’s integration into the “resistance axis.”

Hezbollah militarily supported the Houthis in Yemen during the 2015 war, and the latter has an office in Beirut alongside Hamas and other members of this axis.

In his filmed speeches, Houthi leader Abdul Malek al-Houthi is increasingly adopting the visual codes of Hassan Nasrallah’s speeches, mixing smiles and firmness, and wearing a silver ring with black onyx on his finger.

There is also little doubt that the Houthis entered into peace negotiations with Saudi Arabia without consulting their Iranian ally, even though the initiative was presented as 100 percent Saudi-Houthi. The talks were initiated after the reconciliation between Riyadh and Tehran, signed on March 10 under the aegis of Beijing.

“The Houthis and the Iranians have been on the same page, have been in that marriage for over 20 years,” said Yemeni analyst Hisham al-Omeisy. “So when they work already on the clause of the deal, they will make sure there is nothing there that might antagonize the Iranians.”

This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour. Translation by Joelle El Khoury.