Houthi Red Sea offensive elevates enigmatic Yemeni commander's standing
A 2022 UN-brokered truce halted heavy fighting in the war but failed to lead to a lasting settlement in the impoverished country.
Highlights:
- Abdul Malik al-Houthi stays out of public view
- Foreign officials are not known to meet him in person
- Commander survived as Israel killed other militant leaders
- Houthis have evolved as a fighting force from tribal insurgency
Abdul Malik al-Houthi, an elusive figure who commands a battle-hardened force, scored his biggest military victory in years when his Iran-aligned Houthi militant group swept through Yemen's Red Sea coastline and tightened their grip on a vital shipping waterway, rattling oil superpower Saudi Arabia.
The offensive, which has been accompanied by attacks on Saudi Arabia, has put the Houthis in a strong position to call the shots in the Bab el-Mandeb strait by potentially halting global trade in one of the world's most important conduits for goods and commodities, including oil.
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Al-Houthi has transformed his men, fierce mountain fighters often in sandals and hooked on the green leaf stimulant qat, into a force of tens of thousands who withstood years of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen's civil war and built an arsenal including drones and ballistic missiles.
A 2022 UN-brokered truce halted heavy fighting in the war but failed to lead to a lasting settlement in the impoverished country.
The following year, al-Houthi's militants surfaced to disrupt Red Sea shipping in support of Palestinians in the Gaza war. Now they have grabbed the spotlight by opening another front in the Middle East conflict, giving strategic leverage to Iran after it already effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz.
As head of the group, Abdul Malik al-Houthi has emerged as Iran's most prominent and resilient Arab ally after Israel killed the leaders of Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas.
Enigmatic with a reputation as a fierce commander, al-Houthi remained defiant despite military retaliation for his group's attacks on shipping during the Gaza fighting. He threatened military action if the and Israel sought to displace Palestinians from Gaza and called President Donald Trump a criminal.
"We reaffirm our steadfast position against American and Israeli-Zionist tyranny, which targets our entire nation under the banner of 'changing the Middle East'," he said in August in a speech to mark the Prophet Mohammad's birthday.
Not known to meet foreign officials in person
In another speech during the Gaza war, al-Houthi, appearing with a traditional Yemeni dagger in his belt, described Israel's blockade of Gaza as a crime against humanity and accused Arab and other Muslim states of inaction.
Al-Houthi has survived in a country with a history of complex, shifting alliances.
After veteran former president Ali Abdullah Saleh switched sides in the civil war, abandoning his Houthi allies in favour of a Saudi-led coalition, Houthi fighters stopped his armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade in an ambush then shot him dead, sources said at the time.
Since the start of the civil war — widely seen as a proxy conflict between Riyadh and Tehran — foreign officials who dealt with al-Houthi are not known to have met him in person, said a source familiar with the matter.
Many seeking meetings were asked to travel to the Houthi stronghold Sanaa, where a security convoy would take them to safe houses and conduct security checks before leading them to an upstairs room, where al-Houthi, fearing assassination, would appear only on a screen.
War created one of world's worst humanitarian crises
The Houthi movement was formed to fight for the interests of the Zaydi Shi'ites, a minority sect that ruled a 1,000-year-old kingdom in Yemen until 1962 but felt marginalised during the 1990-2012 rule of Saleh, unified Yemen's first president.
The Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran and say they are fighting a corrupt system in Yemen and regional aggression. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Tehran of arming and training them, which Tehran denies.
The civil war killed tens of thousands, devastated Yemen's economy and left millions hungry.
During its most intense phase, the Houthis launched attacks on Saudi Arabia. In January 2022, they also launched a missile attack on a commercial hub in the United Arab Emirates.
In a speech in 2022, al-Houthi said his goal was to be able to strike any target in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, both allies and major oil producers which view Iran and its proxies as major security threats.
Al-Houthi, who traces his lineage to the Prophet Mohammad, has asserted that his movement is under siege because of its religion.
"We must focus on preserving the authenticity of our Islamic affiliation and identity," he once said.
Military spokesman takes the stage
With al-Houthi largely out of public view, his military spokesman, Yahya Saree, has become the public face of the movement.
Standing rigidly in his uniform, Saree reads statements in a theatrical cadence, stretching certain words and sharply raising his voice for emphasis. The distinctive delivery has made Saree instantly recognizable to audiences across the region.
In 2024, Saree earned a master's degree in diplomacy and international relations from the Yemeni Academy for Graduate Studies, according to Houthi websites and his personal account on X.
His thesis had a subject close to his day job: "The Threat of the Israeli Presence in the Red Sea to the National Security of the Republic of Yemen, 2010–2022."
In a statement on 13 September, he declared: "We affirm to the criminal Saudi enemy that the continuation of its aggression against our people will be met with more severe and larger operations deep inside its territory, and the consequences will be dire, God willing."
