Israel: Strikes Targeting Houthi Leadership in Yemen Continue

In early September, Israel launched an unprecedented strike on Yemen to kill senior Houthi officials near Hodeidah, and called it a necessary act of self-defense. According to Israeli officials, the strike was one of the furthest Israeli operations on the Arabian Peninsula in recent years, carried out with long-range precision aircraft and support from naval intelligence. The strike was said to be designed to disrupt leadership networks embedded with Houthi forces, who had conducted previous drone and missile strikes against commercial vessels in the Red Sea areas, according to Israeli government statements. Yemeni sources, as well as the Houthis, did acknowledge casualties among Houthi movement senior operatives, although there is a dispute over the number of casualties. The Houthis condemned the attack as “open aggression”, claiming it was one instance of “Western-Israeli coordination against the state of Yemen” and vowed to retaliate with retaliatory operations for the broader maritime spaces. For Israel, it was a tactical escalation, as well as a strategic statement; it could not and would not accept threats to its shipping trade or stability of global shipping routes.

The strike was motivated by the rising disruption resulting from Houthi strikes in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, one of the world’s critical maritime shortcuts. The Houthis have engaged in a campaign of harassment involving drones, ballistic missiles, naval mines, and fast boats to attack vessels they assert are affiliated with Israel, the United States, or their allies since late 2023. While not all attacks have been successful, the psychological and economic impact has been significant. As a result of the increased risk, major shipping companies are rerouting traffic around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to shipping schedules, and greatly increasing costs. Insurance rates for vessels transiting the Bab el-Mandeb Strait have increased as well, which affects energy shipments and containerized goods. Israeli officials argued that defensive measures, including naval patrols and anti-missile systems, were not sufficient to restore deterrence since the Houthis are operating with a combination of Iranian-supplied technology and an entrenched local support system. In executing a strike against high-level leadership nodes, rather than simply arms depots, Israel was signaling a shift to the preventive side of the deterrence equation to weaken command and control, while drawing attention to the fact that distance or terrain would not insulate those directing attacks on international commerce.

The global reaction towards the strike is both speedy and divided. The U.S. government reiterated Israel's right to protect itself and its commercial interests and that further risk or worsening can bring U.S. forces into even more of the civil war in Yemen, particularly as U.S. commitments in Europe and the Indo-Pacific are already strained. European governments, which most depended on unthreatened maritime trade, showed some degree of hesitant support to the actions of Israel and demanded restraint. Some of their response can be attributed to the fact that they are aware that the Houthis’ destabilizations pose a threat to the supply chains of the Europeans. The Gulf Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), who have had their share of costly military operations against the Houthis took the changes of Israeli actions with care to send a message to the proxy army of Tehran, but governments of the countries hesitated to publicly support the move to not add to the tensions in the region. Not surprisingly, Iran denounced the strike as state terrorism and gave the warning that it would retaliate against the strike throughout the region. Iranian officials claimed that the Red Sea was being militarised by Israel and became part of the geographic goals of Tehran in the region, with Tehran insisting that this will be met by continuing to support the Houthis with both material and political means.

The overall geopolitical implications are very important. The Red Sea is not a local theater of war. It is an artery linking the rest of the world to the region from where oil, liquefied natural gas, and manufactured goods are exported from the Persian Gulf to Europe and Asia. Even short-term disruptions in shipping could shake up trade relations and add to inflationary pressures that have long been building in the global economy. Egypt is concerned about instability because Suez Canal revenues depend on the continuous passage of commercial ships through the area. Oil and energy markets continue to react nervously to the slightest news of rockets being launched or ships colliding with warships in Yemeni waters. Israel's attack was intended to make a statement about the need to protect commercial shipping and to help the Houthis not act without consequences by attacking commercial ships engaged in international trade, but it also raised the possibility of retaliation against commercial ships that are free to operate in favorable conditions. Houthi officials were quick to make known their preliminary intentions to expand their ambitions not only to Israel-linked ships, but also to other commercial carriers or naval operations of Western countries/allied ports cooperating with Israel. Should these plans materialize, this would increase the risk of loss of maritime trade, increasing the risk of shortages at ports that have already reached capacity limits to offset the effects of a pandemic or Ukraine-related conflicts.

Domestically, the action is both a military action and a political message. Israeli leaders have been under growing pressure for seeming reactive to asymmetric threats emanating from Iran's regional proxy network, so showing their capacity to project force deep inside Yemen allows them to claim the initiative, establishing that Israel is acting rather than being acted upon. Again, the question is, how long can this be maintained? The Houthis, like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Shi’a militias in Iraq, are formidable actors who are part of local politics and can regenerate leadership even after targeted strikes. Additionally, their ideological and logistical ties to Iran virtually guarantee some form of reprisal, whether that reprisal is carried out through attacks on commercial shipping, drone operations, or in a more global attempt at reprisals. For Israel, the crux of the matter is whether such a brazen act of military aggression will deter enemies or lead to even deeper entanglements in proxy wars that absorb scarce resources and strain a defense establishment. For the world at large, the strike serves as a vivid example of how localized insurgencies, amplified by global supply chains and great-power competition. As shipping and energy markets are upended, the Red Sea is, once again, revealing itself to be one of the most contested and fragile places in global geopolitics.