On March 15th, President Donald Trump launched a new wave of “more aggressive” airstrikes against the Yemeni armed formation Ansar Allah (also known as the Houthis). For the prior 17 months, the Islamist rebel group—which governs 70% of Yemen’s population—had undertaken a military campaign to oppose Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which experts describe as a genocide. The Houthis launched drones and missiles targeting Israel and, more significantly, attacked shipping vessels passing through the Red Sea. The naval operations paused during the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but restarted after Israel renewed its total siege on Gaza in March.

The Red Sea campaign has involved attacks on over 100 commercial ships, some with ties to Israel and others without; the Houthis havesunk two of these vessels, and seized another, killing four seafarers in the process. By disrupting the Bab al-Mandab, an integral strait in international trade, the group has caused around 70% of merchant shipping to reroute from the Red Sea to a longer path around the African continent, creating significant pressure on both the region and the global economy as a whole. In response, since January 2024, a United States-led coalition of countries carried out a year of intermittent airstrikes in Yemen that have killed at least 85 civilians, according to the independent Yemen Data Project. This bombardment has significantly intensified under Trump—targeting missile and drone launch sites, the Sana’a airport, as well as government and civilian buildings—and killing, per health officials in Sana’a, at least 123 people since mid-March. The most recent strike on April 15th appeared to target a ceramics factory, reportedly killing seven people and wounding 29 others.

Helen Lackner: Before the civil war [between the Houthis and the disjointed groups in the Gulf-backed coalition that makes up the Internationally Recognized Government (IRG)], Yemen’s various regimes have been systematically pro-Palestine. Yemen was one of the 13 countries that voted against the United Nations (UN) partition plan to divide Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states in 1947. Later, when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was expelled from Lebanon in 1982 [after Israel’s invasion of Beirut], Yemen was divided into socialist and capitalist regimes, but both invited the exiled PLO troops to their countries. The socialist regime was more aligned with leftist Palestinian factions while the capitalist one was closer to Fatah, but Palestinians overall had relations with both Aden [the socialist capital] and Sana’a [the capitalist one].

Even after the civil war, Yemenis have remained committed to Palestine. In Houthi-controlled parts of Yemen, there have been mass pro-Palestine demonstrations every Friday, and while regular attendance is secured through top-down pressure, the marches still do enjoy genuine backing. The people in the non-Houthi controlled parts of Yemen are equally supportive of Palestine, but demonstrations are basically suppressed, in particular in Aden and the areas surrounding it that are controlled by the Southern Transitional Council [STC, a UAE-backed group controlling southern Yemen that has power-sharing agreements with the IRG but holds secessionist ambitions]. When the UAE signed the Abraham Accords in 2020, the second-in-command of the STC at the time, Hai bin Breik said that he was looking forward to his first visit to Israel—a result of the STC’s alliance with the Emiratis. Now, though, due to the Houthis’ defiance of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip, the STC doesn’t dare say anything against any pro-Palestinian statements from their population, even if they are certainly preventing pro-Palestine actions. Being openly pro-Israel in the current Yemeni context would be beyond the pale.

JS: Can you tell us about the Red Sea attacks since October 7th and what has motivated them?

HL: After October 7th, the Houthis tried to fire missiles and drones toward Israel [to oppose the bombardment of Gaza]. But they didn’t have the technical capability to close the vast distance, so they reverted to attacking Red Sea shipping routes, where they have been more successful. Over the past 18 months, they have managed to sink two commercial vessels with attacks that have deterred ships from passing through the Suez Canal, down the Red Sea and around the narrow strait of Bab el-Mandeb next to Yemen.

In these attacks, the Houthis are motivated by three things: solidarity with Palestine; a fundamentalist foreign policy position against the US and Israel; and domestic political considerations. Before October 7th, the Houthis’ popularity among the 70% of the Yemenis they govern was at rock bottom due to their repressive governance, extortionist taxation policies, and poor provision of services, among other things. While none of these other dynamics have changed, the Houthis’ intervention in support of the Palestinians has been very popular, and has given them more leeway among the people. Their military recruitment has skyrocketed, with young men rushing to join under the idea that they will be fighting in Palestine when in fact they will likely be sent to one of the various [domestic] Yemeni fronts that are more at risk of reopening.

JS: Why have countries around the world, including the US, made repeated attempts to stop the Red Sea attacks?

HL: A very large percentage of the world’s trade—and in particular trade from China to Europe—goes through the Suez Canal, and the 10-day delay by going around the Cape of Good Hope has made things very difficult for a lot of companies and countries. Israel has certainly suffered due to the attacks. For example, the Eilat Port [Israel’s south port that faces directly onto the Red Sea] declared bankruptcy. But the costs for Israel have been blunted because Emirati companies have struck agreements to transport the cargo overland through the Arabian peninsula, revealing the collusion of GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] states. Instead, the very sharp drop in Suez Canal traffic has impacted Egypt the hardest, costing $7 billion in revenue in 2024 alone, even as some of the big shipping and insurance companies that have adjusted, rerouted, and hiked premiums are actually doing extremely well. Aside from the economic costs, the attacks also matter due to their political symbolism: the idea that one of the world’s major maritime passes could be controlled by a group of rebels doesn’t sit well with the Global North.

JS: We know that under President Biden, the US led Western nations in bombing Yemen starting in January 2024. How has this campaign against the Houthis changed under Trump?

HL: In January, Trump changed the classification of the Houthis from a Specially Designated Global Terrorists to a Foreign Terrorist Organisation. This will have two main impacts. The first is that this is going to make it very difficult for various humanitarian organizations to transfer cash due to restrictions on the banking system, reducing their capacity for humanitarian action. The second will be the difficulty [diaspora Yemenis will face in] sending remittances, which play a very big role in the survival of thousands of Yemeni households, and not only in Houthi-controlled areas. This will be compounded by the cuts to USAID [United States Agency for International Development, which the Trump administration has gutted]. Those cuts are of course not unique to Yemen, but will have an especially pronounced impact there since the US was financing on average half of the total humanitarian response [last year] across both the Houthi- and IRG-controlled Yemen.

As for the renewed airstrikes under Trump, they are both about Red Sea control and pressuring Iran on a nuclear deal, since Trump’s approach seems to take the Houthis simply as an annex to Iran. The resulting bombs have targeted the same places in Yemen that the Saudis and Emiratis, and more recently the Brits and the US, already targeted. Under Trump they’re using bigger bombs—targeting not just a single site but multiple structures nearby—but this doesn’t represent a fundamental change. And still, like before, there’s little evidence to support the US claims that they’ve killed many senior Houthi leaders; the death toll figures released by independent organisations like UNICEF are incredibly low. What I have seen is that the campaign has already cost the US $1 billion, and that these bombings have continued pretty much every night since March 15th, even in the absence of headlines.

JS: How has the Houthis’ regional and global position changed in the wake of the Red Sea campaign and the American retaliation? Have they come to occupy a more central role, especially in the wake of other members of the Axis of Resistance—Hezbollah in Lebanon, Bashar al-Assad in Syria—being weakened?

HL: The legitimacy that the Houthis have derived from standing up for Palestine has given them leverage within the region. In the last year, not a single word has been spoken against the Houthis by the Saudis or anyone else in the Arab world, because those populations are staunchly pro-Palestinian. For example, when Yemen’s Internationally Recognized Government tried to disconnect Houthi banks from the global banking system in the summer of 2024, the Houthis threatened to bomb Saudi Arabia if this was implemented, and the Saudis promptly pressured the IRG to reverse course. It did just that; it had no other choice.

The Houthis have also, as you suggest, become more prominent among Iran’s allies—especially with Hezbollah and Syria weakened. But while Iran was likely behind the improvements in the range of Houthi missiles and drones, I believe it is not thrilled with what the Houthis are doing. Iran has been seeking diplomacy recently—talking more to the Saudis, the UN Special Envoy, and others—but like everyone else, they can’t really say anything, even quietly, when the Houthis act independently. And even if the Iranians asked the Houthis to scale back their attacks, I’m not sure they would listen.

JS: How might all of this come to bear on Gaza?

HL: The Houthi attacks have managed to direct international attention to Gaza, but it seems they won’t put a stop to what Israel is doing there. Perhaps if the costs were greater to the states of the Global North—now they are mainly borne by Egypt—then it might have forced the West to pressure Israel, but at the moment, Western countries have continued to talk about freedom of navigation in the Red Sea while pretending that it has nothing to do with the war in Gaza. There is a complete unwillingness to understand that the Palestinian issue has broader resonance in the Arab world, and nobody is willing to heed the Houthis saying that they would put an end to these actions if the war ended. So we continue to be in the situation where the absence of international action against Israel creates a void that only the Houthis—who have regularly committed severe humanrightsabuses of their own—are filling. They remain the only ones who are willing to take material action in support of international law and in defense of Gaza.