Who Are the Houthis Being Hit With US, UK Airstrikes?

The war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has drawn in Yemen’s Houthi rebels, who have controlled northwestern Yemen for nearly a decade. Like Hamas, the Houthis are hostile to Israel and backed by Iran. The rebels have disrupted traffic in the Red Sea by repeatedly attacking ships there, and they’ve attempted to strike Israel with missiles and drones. They’ve said they’re targeting Israel-linked vessels in the Red Sea, though ships with no such direct connection have been affected. The US and UK have launched airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen in response to the ship attacks.

They are rebels who seized control of Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, in 2014, launching a civil war that continues to this day. Part of a clan that hails from Yemen’s northwestern Saada province, the Houthis are followers of the Zaidi branch of Shiite Islam, which accounts for an estimated 25% of the country’s population. After North Yemen and South Yemen were unified in 1990, the Houthis waged a series of rebellions before successfully taking the capital. The Houthis are anti-Western and anti-Israeli. Analysts say they get training, technical expertise and increasingly sophisticated weapons — including drones and ballistic and cruise missiles — from Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group. The US in 2021 revoked its designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group out of concern the label would harm Yemenis’ access to basics such as food and fuel; the Biden administration said in mid-January that it would restore the designation.