Iran is scaling back its strategy of supporting its axis of proxies in the Middle East to focus on the United States’ direct threats, a senior Iranian official told the Telegraph on Thursday.
How to deal with US President Donald Trump has become Tehran’s primary concern, the official continued.
“Every meeting is dominated by discussions about him, and none of the regional groups we previously supported are being discussed,” the Telegraph quoted the official as saying.
Iran reportedly ordered its military personnel to leave Yemen, leaving the Houthis to fend for themselves as the US continues attacking Houthi military assets.
The reason behind the move was to avoid a direct confrontation with the US if an Iranian were killed in Yemen, the official stated.
“The view here is that the Houthis will not be able to survive and are living their final months or even days, so there is no point in keeping them on our list,” the official continued, as reported by the British news site.
“They were part of a chain that relied on [former Hezbollah chief Hassan] Nasrallah and [ousted Syrian president Bashar al] Assad, and keeping only one part of that chain for the future makes no sense.”
The Houthis in Yemen
Mahmoud Shehrah, a former Yemeni diplomat, said, according to the Telegraph, “After the collapse of Hezbollah and Assad’s regime, the Houthis are now on the front line and they have been conducting very intensive attacks – they are escalating and taking adventure because it makes their political life longer in Yemen, according to their own calculation.”
Shehrah alleged that when the Houthis received missiles and other equipment from Iran, they rebranded them with Houthi names because “they don’t want to show they have links with Iran because of domestic propaganda.”
According to him, the Houthis are not popular in Yemen. “Yemeni streets are full of anger – the Houthis are not paying salaries and have absolute taxation with zero representation so the social base for the Houthis is not very strong, that’s why they rely on the Gaza war.”
Regardless, the Houthis control Sanaa, print money, collect taxes, divert aid, smuggle drugs, sell weapons to terror organizations in Africa, and disrupt international shipping routes in the Red Sea, the Teleraph reported.
Additionally, Yemen’s mountainous terrain helps them hide their weapon stockpiles in caves and underground. “They are not experienced like Hezbollah but are more aggressive and more dangerous at the same time – Abdul Malik al-Houthi has an ambition of leading the axis of resistance,” Sherah said.