A series of escalating clashes between U.S. troops and Houthi rebel forces adds even more fuel to a powder keg in the Middle East, with analysts warning that the Iran-backed militant movement in Yemen is the most dangerous of adversaries — an unpredictable force with little to lose and no particular stake in stability in one of the world’s most dangerous regions.
The latest in a steady string of confrontations erupted Sunday when a U.S. Navy destroyer and three commercial ships came under missile and drone fire from the Houthis, who control much of northern Yemen and have launched several attempted strikes on U.S. and Israeli assets in recent weeks. Those assaults began after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that, like the Houthis, is backed by the Iranian military.
The USS Carney shot down several Houthi drones Sunday. The flare-up seemed to signal that the rebel force is willing to escalate a showdown with the U.S., even with the knowledge that the Pentagon could soon be left with little choice but to strike back directly against Houthi targets in Yemen.
Iran has built and armed a network of allies across the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and powerful militias in Syria and Iraq. The Houthis, a Shiite movement locked in a civil war with Yemen’s internationally recognized government backed by Saudi Arabia and other regional players, have stood out as the most aggressive force against Israel and its allies in the nearly two months since Hamas first attacked.
In the days after the Hamas rampage in early October, crowds of Houthi supporters gathered in the streets of Sanaa, the capital the rebels control, waving Yemeni and Palestinian flags and shouting anti-Israel and anti-U.S. chants. Abdel-Malik al-Houthi, the Houthis’ leader, warned Washington at the time that his forces were prepared to fire on U.S. and Israeli targets should Washington intervene in the crisis in support of Israel.
The White House said Monday that the weekend attacks show what agitators the Houthis have become.
“It goes to show you the level of recklessness that the Houthis are operating on,” White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.
Indeed, specialists warn that the Houthis are something of a wild card and don’t necessarily abide by the same cost-benefit analyses that drive the decision-making of other Iran-affiliated groups, such as Hezbollah or the Iraqi militias, both of which have engaged in sharp but more limited engagements with the U.S. and Israel since Oct. 7. The Houthis are among the most battle-hardened of Iran’s regional collaborators, having spent the past decade battling a United Nations-backed government and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition for control of Yemen.
Fearless and reckless
Unlike Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and various other proxies across the Middle East, the Houthis may not fear U.S. or Israeli retaliation in the same way. They also may be banking that the Biden administration will be more reluctant to strike Yemen given that U.N.-backed peace talks seemed close to ending the country’s decade of civil war, and U.S. airstrikes could derail the process.
“What’s different about the Houthis is, they don’t have to be careful,” said Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who closely tracks Iran-linked militias operating across the theater.
“The Houthis are just sitting there in Yemen, much farther away than Lebanese Hezbollah is from Israel,” Mr. Knights said in an interview. “They’ve been bombed for the last eight, nine years. They have a very high pain threshold. All their leadership is extremely well hidden, so the Saudis couldn’t assassinate them during the war. They’re locked down. And they’re actually much more ideologically pure and determined than Lebanese Hezbollah or the militias” backed by Iran.
Mr. Knights described the Houthis as the true “hard-liners” of the Iranian axis of resistance across the Middle East. He said the group has “less to lose” and is “more crazy” than other actors threatening the U.S. and Israel.
Houthi actions back up that argument. Shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the Houthis began launching attack drones and missiles toward Israel. U.S. naval assets in the Red Sea shot down many of them. In at least one instance, missiles fired by the Houthis landed near American ships in the region, though Pentagon officials say the U.S. vessels weren’t the intended target.
Last month, the Houthis shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone operating in international airspace off the coast of Yemen.
All of those incidents led up to Sunday’s clash, which the White House and Pentagon say Iran “fully enabled.”
The U.S. Central Command in the region said it would “consider all appropriate responses” to Sunday’s missile and drone attacks on three civilian cargo vessels and the USS Carney. The Navy destroyer was responding to distress calls from the merchant ships off the coast of Yemen.
At 9:15 a.m. local time, according to U.S. military accounts, the Carney was patrolling in the Red Sea when it detected an anti-ship ballistic missile attack toward the M/V Unity Explorer, a bulk cargo ship owned and operated by a British company but registered in the Bahamas. The missile struck the water near the Unity Explorer, and the Carney shot down a drone launched from a Houthi-controlled area in Yemen hours later.
No U.S. troops were injured and no American naval vessels were damaged, but the seriousness of the incident led to a stark warning from U.S. defense officials.
