Israel’s focus remains firmly on its campaign in Gaza and the twin imperatives to “increase the pressure on Hamas to release the hostages, and end Hamas’s power to govern, both politically and militarily,” as IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Effie Defrin told journalists during a visit to Gaza this week.
The IDF still has work to do, but, as an IDF source told The Jerusalem Post, there has been a “decline in Hamas’s capacities, though they can still surprise.”
Regarding Hamas’s Rafah Brigade, against which the IDF is currently engaged in combat along the Morag Corridor between Khan Yunis and Rafah City, “We assume that the missile issue is largely behind us,” the source continued. What remains is close combat to root out the remaining fighters of the brigade, numbering probably 100-150 men.
But while the once formidable missile threat from Gaza has substantially diminished, residents of Haifa and the western Galilee were reminded Wednesday morning that Gaza is not the only active front in the current conflict, when a ballistic missile launched from Yemen set off warning sirens. There were no injuries, and the missile appears to have been destroyed by air defenses. Ansar Allah (Houthis) organization, which controls the Yemeni capital and a large swath of the country, claimed responsibility for the launch.
The Yemen arena is currently the most active of all the fronts opened up in the wake of Hamas’s October 7 massacres by Iran-aligned elements. Iran’s bruised proxy militias in Lebanon and Iraq have chosen for now to leave the fray. The Assad regime in Syria has been destroyed. Iran itself has yet to respond to Israel’s extensive counterstrikes following Iran’s launch of missiles and drones against Israel last October. Hamas in Gaza clings on, with its capacities severely degraded.
Only the Houthis, once dismissed as a barely relevant sideshow, remain fully engaged, with high capacities, and determined to continue the fight. They are the only Iran-aligned force not to have suffered serious setbacks since launching their campaign. They are also the sole member of the pro-Iran axis to have directed its attacks not at Israel alone but also at Western targets.
Since the ending of the Gaza ceasefire on March 18, the organization has launched around 20 ballistic missiles at Israel. But the Houthis’ targeting of Israel is largely symbolic in nature. The more substantive part of their effort, since it commenced in November 2023, has been directed not at Israeli targets but, rather, at international shipping along the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden route to the Suez Canal. Fifteen percent of global seaborne trade prior to the war passed through this route. The Houthis’ attacks have now virtually shut it down.
It has been a year since a US-flagged ship has passed through the Suez Canal. The Trump administration, contrary to its preference for deals to end acts of aggression elsewhere, appears determined to force the Houthis to end their campaign, and appears willing to back up threats with force. At the commencement of the offensive in March, Trump warned the Yemeni Shia Islamists that if the attacks on shipping did not stop, “hell will rain down upon you like nothing you have ever seen before.”
Last Thursday, 80 people were killed in a series of US airstrikes on the Houthi-controlled, strategic port at Ras Isa, Hodeidah province, and the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The strikes were the most intense yet in the US’s monthlong campaign against Houthi targets.
The US are uneasy over the Houthis' growing influence
US concerns regarding the Houthis go beyond the immediate Yemeni context. Over the last six months, evidence has emerged of a growing connection between Ansar Allah and the al-Shabaab organization in Somalia. A February UN report noted that personnel of the two movements met in Somalia in July and September 2024.
During these meetings, according to the report, the Houthis committed to supplying al-Shabaab with weaponry and technical assistance, including drones and surface-to-air missiles. The prospect of the Houthis using the al-Shabaab connection to proliferate chaos and Iranian influence across the Red Sea and into the Horn of Africa is apparently helping to concentrate minds in Washington.
The US air campaign has hit the Houthis hard. It remains questionable, however, whether the volume of damage until now will be sufficient to persuade the Yemeni Shia Islamist movement to cease its attacks on Western shipping and on Israel.
Here, the US faces a dilemma similar to that which Israel faced vis-à-vis Hamas in Gaza. In both cases, the Islamist enemy is largely indifferent to losses of life among its own people, and unlikely to even be inclined to change direction as a result of losses among its own personnel or of its own equipment.
At this point, the US faces options regarding the Houthis similar to those that Israel faced regarding Gaza – namely, escalate or effectively concede. Either a decision must be taken to destroy or severely degrade the enemy, or it must be accepted that the Houthis, while they can be engaged in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire in which they pay the higher cost, cannot at present be defeated.
It is against this background that the recent reports of a possible ground offensive against the Houthis by Yemeni government and allied troops should be understood.
Reports suggesting that such an offensive may be imminent have surfaced in major US and regional media over the last two weeks. An article in The Wall Street Journal on April 15 noted that the idea of the ground action came because of a perception among elements of the official Yemeni government that the US bombing campaign had severely damaged the Houthis’ capacities, creating a window of opportunity.
Such an offensive, if it comes, is likely to be directed against Yemen’s western coastal zone. The Hodeidah port and the surrounding area is a crucial location for receiving imports for the Houthis. The coast is also essential for the prosecution of the Houthis’ campaign against shipping.
US air support would be vital for any such campaign. In the past, specifically in 2015, Saudi- and UAE-backed forces performed poorly and without great success against the Houthis. At that time, however, the US was ambivalent regarding the offensive and unconvinced at the danger of Iranian expansion represented by Houthi advances. This time around, the situation would be different, with the US likely to play an active role supporting any such offensive.
It may well be that the forces associated with the official Yemeni government observed the rapid success of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Syria, which derived largely from Israel’s prior weakening of the Lebanese Hezbollah organization. Without this, Hezbollah would almost certainly have intervened to save the Assad regime, very possibly stopping the advance of HTS before Homs or Hama.
Still, weakened by US bombing or not, the Houthis are a force very different from the hollow army of the Assad regime. Such an offensive, like actions of its type, would be something of a gamble.
For the US and its local allies in Yemen, the choice now is to increase the stakes, or to fold.