Since November, the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched more than 200 drones and missiles at Israel and dozens more at international cargo ships passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Until July 19, Israeli and US defense systems thwarted all the Israel-bound attacks. But early that morning, a Houthi drone managed to get past the system.
The Iranian-made Samad-3 drone reached Tel Aviv after a 10-hour, 2,600-kilometer trip and launched an aerial strike, killing an Israeli man asleep in his bed. About 12 others sought treatment for shrapnel or shockwave wounds or acute anxiety.
It wasn’t long before Israel responded with its first-ever attack on Yemen.
Soon after the outbreak of war on October 7, Israelis had to start rolling a new name on their tongues – Houthis.
These insurgent rebels in faraway Yemen had always posed a problem for countries such as its northern neighbor, Saudi Arabia.
On July 20, Israeli fighter jets struck the Houthi-controlled Hodeida Port in western Yemen, where imported Iranian weapons enter the country. The airstrike killed six, wounded about 80 and set ablaze fuel depots at the port.
The following day, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile toward the Israeli southern resort city of Eilat. It was intercepted outside of Israeli airspace by Israel’s Arrow 3 defense system.
Where is this dangerous back-and-forth leading?
ISRAEL21c asked Brandon Friedman, senior research fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.
A high price to pay
“The Houthis are financed, trained and armed by Iran, and act in concert with Iran,” Friedman explains.
“They’ve said publicly that their attempted attacks on international shipping, Eilat, and other parts of Israel over the last nine months are to stop Israel’s war in Gaza.”
This is a result of Iran’s efforts to unify the fronts against Israel, he adds. Both the Houthis and Hezbollah are escalating their aggression as Israel gets closer to achieving its military goals in Gaza.
Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel in the early hours of April 14, with a barrage of up to 400 missiles and drones designed to inflict maximum damage.
Virtually all its projectiles were, however, intercepted in a coordinated operation by Israel with the United States, European allies and some Arab nations. It has been hailed as “a greater miracle” than the Six- Day War.
Although human error on the Israeli side enabled the hit on July 19, Friedman said, Israel has done a remarkable job of developing and successfully deploying a multilayer missile defense system.
And it has allowed the United States and United Kingdom to take the lead in confronting Houthi attacks on ships sailing through the Bab al-Mandab strait.
“Israel has been very alert to Houthi cruise and ballistic missiles and drones for the last nine months,” he says, but defense seemed to be the best strategy.
Furthermore, it seemed unlikely that Houthi missiles or drones could reach more than 2,000 kilometers away.
“Israel didn’t directly strike back until now, and I believe that has to do with the loss of life,” says Friedman.
“When someone got killed, Israel decided to send a message that there will be a high price to pay. The non-response until then speaks more to Houthi failures than to Israel turning the other cheek; on the contrary, we’ve successfully defended our borders.”
The significance of that success should not be overlooked, he tells ISRAEL21c.
“In 2009, I went to a conference on missile defense, and experts from across the developed world said it was pie in the sky, not practical or possible. Yet Israel has demonstrated repeatedly over the last nine months that it is both practical and possible to intercept sophisticated cruise and ballistic missiles.”
Revolutionary, revivalist worldview
Friedman emphasizes that few people have firsthand experience with the Houthis; his own area of expertise is Saudi Arabia.
This is directly relevant because the Houthis were established as a revivalist Shi’ite Zaydi Islamist movement aimed to counteract the influence of Saudi Arabian Sunni Wahhabi Islam.
For the millions of Israelis who took shelter against Iran’s massive attack on April 14, it’s probably incomprehensible that once upon a time, El Al ran a daily flight from Tel Aviv to Tehran. But that used to be the case, before ties between Iran and Israel took a sour turn.
To make sense of these tumultuous relations, ISRAEL21c spoke with Prof. David Menashri, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University and a leading Israeli scholar on Iran.
“In 2015, the Saudis launched a military intervention in Yemen to prevent the Houthis from becoming another Hezbollah. The Houthis really won that war and became a threat to Saudi Arabia’s southern border just as Hezbollah has been on Israel’s northern border.
“Over the years, the Houthis have harmonized their religious ideology with Iranian revolutionary ideology,” Friedman continues.
“Though there are important differences between them, the Houthis share a revolutionary, revivalist ideology with Iran that defines their worldview.”
What now?
The choreography of the dangerous dance between Israel and Yemen will shift depending on a host of factors, Friedman explains.
“The key question moving forward is to what degree Israel holds Iran responsible for the Houthi attack. This is an ongoing debate in the Israeli security establishment: Do you attack the claw of the bear or the bear itself?”
He believes Israel is now at a sensitive turning point.
“The prime minister will deliver an address in the US – the Israeli reaction to attack may have been calibrated with that in mind — and there are hostage negotiations underway,” he points out.
“If there is a hostage deal that brings a pause in the war, the ‘unity of fronts’ would presumably go quiet on the Houthi and Hezbollah front.”
But if the Gaza war situation continues without a hostage deal, he continued, “there is the potential of war with Hezbollah in Lebanon and I would expect Houthi attacks from Yemen will increase along with attacks from Iranian militia partners in Iraq.”
In other words, stay tuned.
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