On July 13, an Iranian civilian aircraft carrying a high-level Houthi delegation was heading towards Sana’a, Yemen’s capital. Under an unwritten understanding between the Houthis (or Ansar Allah), who control northern and northwestern Yemen, including Sana’a, and the country’s Saudi-backed government, planes seeking to land in Houthi-held territory were required to obtain prior approval. The Houthi delegation had left Yemen on July 3 on another Iranian aircraft to attend the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader who was assassinated by the U.S. and Israel on February 28 when they launched their war against Tehran.
Extending control
Yemen’s Saudi-backed government had protested the Iranian plane transporting Houthi leaders, arguing it was a violation of Yemen’s sovereignty. It also opposed the delegation taking an Iranian plane back home, and instead offered to facilitate their return on a non-Iranian airline. The government’s main concern was that the flight could also be used to transport personnel of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and military equipment to Yemen. The Houthis, nevertheless, chose to return on a Mahan Air flight. To prevent the aircraft from landing, Saudi-backed forces bombed the runway of Sana’a airport, forcing the plane to land in Hodeidah. This was the trigger.
The Houthis, who took control of Sana’a in 2014, said the strike was a violation of a 2022 ceasefire. They responded by bombing Saudi energy infrastructure and launching an offensive in Hodeidah and Taiz governorates. They also imposed a naval blockade on Saudi vessels in the Red Sea. Within two months, the Houthis made dramatic territorial gains, seizing the entire Red Sea coastline of Yemen and taking the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the narrow chokepoint connecting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, under their control.
A revivalist movement
The roots of the Houthi movement can be traced to ‘Believing Youth’ (Muntada al-Shahab Al-Mu’min), a Zaydi revivalist group founded in Northern Yemen in the early 1990s. Hussein al-Houthi and his father, Badr al-Din al-Houthi, influential Zaydi clerics in northern Yemen, became the movement’s leading figures. Inspired by the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the rise of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in the 1980s, Badr al-Din and his sons started building vast social and religious networks among the Zaydi Shias of Yemen, who make up roughly one-third of the Sunni-majority country’s population. While the Zaydis are seen as part of the Shia branch of Islam, both in terms of theology and practice, they are different from the ‘Twelver’ Shias of Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.
In 2004, Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government, upset with the growing popularity and rebellion of the Houthis, issued an arrest warrant against Hussein. He resisted the arrest, starting an insurgency. In September, government troops attacked the rebels and killed Hussein. But the movement he founded would only grow, forcing Saleh to step down in 2012 and capturing Sana’a from government forces in 2014.
Alarmed by the rise of an Iran-aligned Shia militia across its southern border, Saudi Arabia formed a coalition and declared war against the Houthis in 2015. An intense bombing campaign followed, but the Saudi-led coalition failed to dislodge the rebels, who built a parallel state in northern Yemen. In 2022, amid a broader rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, the Houthis and Saudi-backed forces agreed to a ceasefire.
The Saudis also struggled to build a credible counterweight to the Houthis inside Yemen. The top leadership of the government was based in Saudi Arabia, while in the south, the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council broke with the government and pursued its own separatist agenda, further weakening the anti-Houthi camp. Broader tensions between Saudi Arabia and the UAE also complicated their war efforts in Yemen. But the Saudis still maintained an air and naval blockade on Houthi-held territory.
The ceasefire allowed the Houthis to consolidate their position in the north and northwest, despite economic woes. The parallel state, an ideologically committed base, years of warfare and sustained Iranian support enabled the group to transform itself into a formidable territorial army. Their access to the Red Sea, a key shipping route, raised their profile as a naval force. When Israel launched a devastating war on Palestinians in Gaza following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, Houthis “declared war” against Israel “in solidarity with the Palestinians”. They also carried out attacks on Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. In March 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a major air and naval operation against the Houthis, threatening to destroy the group. Despite the enormous firepower brought against them, the Houthis continued launching missiles and drones at U.S. naval forces. Seven weeks later, Mr. Trump announced an end to the U.S. strikes following an Oman-mediated ceasefire.
After the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on February 28, the Houthis, to the surprise of many, stayed out of the conflict. Iran retaliated by attacking American bases in the Persian Gulf and shutting down the Strait of Hormuz. The Houthis understood that Iran’s closure of the strait strengthened their strategic position: they had the capacity to disrupt maritime traffic through the Red Sea. They also wanted the Saudi blockade of their air space and ports lifted. In the first week of July, as a second round of bombings between Iran and the U.S. was unfolding, the Houthis decided to test Saudi Arabia’s resolve by sending a delegation to Iran on an Iranian plane. Saudi Arabia responded by bombing the runway at Sana’a airport as the delegation was returning, effectively breaking the ceasefire. Then the Houthis moved rapidly up the escalation ladder.
Renewed conflict brings Saudi Arabia under enormous pressure. After traffic through the Strait of Hormuz was disrupted by Iran, Riyadh increasingly relied on its Red Sea terminals to export crude oil. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, connecting its oil fields in the east with the ports on the Red Sea, allowed the Kingdom to skirt the impact of the disruptions in Hormuz to a certain extent. But the Houthis, after the ceasefire broke down, directly targeted Saudi oil infrastructure, apparently in coordination with Iran-aligned Shia militants in Iraq. On September 11, Saudi Arabia announced that the pipeline was shut, following drone attacks from Iraq. In Yemen, in a lightning offensive launched in early September, the Houthis captured the port cities of Mokha and Dhubab and the Perim Island in the Bab el-Mandeb, extending their control along the coast and into the strait.
Two chokepoints
More than 20% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passed through the Strait of Hormuz before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran. The Red Sea, which connects Asia and Europe through the Suez Canal in the north and Bab el-Mandeb in the south, typically carries roughly 12-15% of global trade. This means that Iran and Ansar Allah now have the ability to exert pressure on two of the world’s critical maritime chokepoints. The Houthi capture of more territories along the Red Sea, as government forces collapsed within days, has also given them a clear upper hand in the civil war and allowed them to consolidate their position inside Yemen.
On February 27, before the war, both the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait were open, and Iran was prepared to make concessions on its nuclear programme. On June 17, when the U.S. and Iran signed an MoU, committing Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in return for sanctions relief from the U.S. and a regional ceasefire involving Lebanon, the Bab el-Mandeb was still fully open. Today, maritime traffic through both the chokepoints is disrupted, any regional ceasefire will have to include Yemen, and any final settlement will have to address the Houthis’ demands, while Iran’s nuclear programme has been pushed to the back burner.
Published – September 13, 2026 01:27 am IST
