IRAN WAR: What will the Houthis do next?

The Iran war took another turn this weekend as Yemen’s Houthi movement officially entered the conflict, launching missile attacks against Israel and outlining new red lines that could pull more actors into the fight.

In this episode of Conflicts of Interest, ACLED CEO Clionadh Raleigh is joined by ACLED's Yemen expert Dr Luca Nevola to unpack what the Houthis’ decision means for the region. Why did they intervene now after weeks of restraint? Why target Israel instead of the Red Sea? And what does their strategy reveal about the wider “Axis of Resistance”?

They also explore the war's growing complexity — from Hezbollah’s role and Gulf state calculations to the escalating contest over the Strait of Hormuz and the risk that instability spreads further across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa.

As new fronts emerge and strategic red lines are drawn, the question is no longer just how this war began, but how far it could spread.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Houthis have officially announced their entry into the conflict. This is consistent with what we observed when the Gaza crisis unfolded. The Houthis started off the operations with missile attacks against Israel. And those were warning shots. They were not intended to cause damage or casualties in Israel. They were rather a signal of the Houthis entering the conflict. So they are signaling that they are entering the conflict, but they are trying to postpone operations in the Red Sea as long as possible.

SPEAKER_01 0:34

Conflicts of interest brought to you by ACLED.

SPEAKER_02 0:39

Hello everybody, my name is Queen Rolly. Welcome to Conflicts of Interest. Today we have back a now regular, a now regular contributor in Luca Nevola to talk about what happened in the Middle East over the weekend. And of course, the big news is that the Houthis who had been effectively keeping their hands out of this have become involved. So why don't we dive right into that? Luca, I'm sure you haven't slept since Friday night.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Yes. In a nutshell, what's happened during this weekend is that the Houthis have officially announced their entry into the conflict and they have carried out two attacks against Israel. Since the beginning of the conflict, they had expressed uh rhetorical solidarity and support for Iran, but nonetheless they refrained from indicating specific thresholds for intervention or red lines, and they exerted strategic patience. So we were sort of waiting to understand if, when, and how the Houthis would enter the current conflict. And now we have a clear answer based on the announcement that they released on Friday with very clear red lines and thresholds for intervention.

SPEAKER_02 1:56

Do you want to go over those red lines? Because their choice of Israel rather than the Red Sea or Saudi or US areas is important. And I was wondering if you could kind of expand how they what they wish to say with this type of attack.

SPEAKER_00 2:11

Yes. Firstly, on the 26th of March, it was the 11th anniversary of the intervention of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. So the war in Yemen was regionalized on the 26th of March 2015. Now we have reached the 11th anniversary. And Abdul Malik al-Huthi, the leader of the Houthis, he delivered a speech on that occasion. And the speech was overwhelmingly focused on internal issues, domestic issues. So basically, he demanded compensation from Saudi Arabia for the years of war that the Yemenis have endured. And this compensation amounts, in the view of the Houthis, to$57 billion.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Pretty cheeky?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

Yeah, which is quite an amount. And it comprises the damages suffered by the Yemenis in terms of infrastructure during the war, but also the lack of revenues, which depended on the impossibility of exporting oil. And eventually the Houthis demanded over$13 billion of unpaid salaries, which the Houthis would like to pay to civil servants, but also to individuals who belong to the military and the security sectors. This was a very clear message directed at Saudi Arabia, and at the same time, the Houthis remarked the fact that they are in a de-escalatory phase, Saudi Arabia and with the US, and that they are not willing to target Muslim countries, even within the boundaries of the current conflict. At the same time, Abdul Malik al-Huthi's message in relation to the current conflict in Iran was very milled in a sense, and he just stressed the fact that depending on the developments in the military theaters, the Houthis could intervene. Then somehow, unexpectedly, on Friday, so just one day later, the Houthis announced their entry into the war. And how did they frame their message? Well, firstly, they stressed the fact that in their view, this war is a war against what they term the Zionist entity or the Zionist plan. So it's a war to prevent what they allege is Israel's plan for a greater Middle East, right? So they didn't frame it only as a war or as an attack or a military operation in support of Iran, but rather as an attempt of preventing Israeli plans in the region and somehow reacting to the ongoing military operations in a number of theaters across the region, in Lebanon, in Palestine, and Iran and Iraq, but also in Syria, for instance. So, firstly, what's interesting is the framing. The Houthis are trying to sell their entry into the war as something they are doing against Israel and in support of Palestine, because the fact of entering the war in support of Iran may not be very popular among Yemenis. Whereas the war or the military operations in support of Palestine receive the support from the Yemeni population at large, even in areas not controlled by the Houthis. Secondly, and they define very clear red lines for their intervention in the war. The first red line is the joining of any other alliance into the Iran conflict. By this they mean that if European countries, for instance, or other countries joined an international coalition to secure the Strait of Hormos, they would intervene. But also, if the Gulf countries intervened in the conflict, the Houthis would resume their attacks. Secondly, the second red line is if the US or Israel will use the Red Sea to carry out operations against Iran or any other Muslim country, then they will intervene in conflict. And the third red line is a very broad and vague reference to potential developments in the military theater. Very importantly, they stress that your military operations will only target Israeli and American targets and not Muslim countries. And this is a clear message towards Saudi Arabia. The Houthis are very cautious in not poking Saudi Arabia, going in direct talks. Saudi Arabia is a lifeline, financial lifeline for the Houthis in the current situation. And so the Houthis are trying not to damage this kind of relationship with Saudi Arabia. And of course, they announced that they could resume the attacks in the Red Sea, but in reality, they only carried out two attacks against Israel. Now, this is consistent with what we observed back in October 2023 when the Gaza crisis unfolded. The Houthis started off the operations with missile attacks against Israel. And those missile attacks were basically warning shots. They were not intended to cause damage or casualties in Israel. They were rather a signal of the Houthis entering the conflict. And I think that the situation currently is more or less the same situation. They have launched these warning shots. It was two attacks on Saturday, then they didn't launch any attack on Sunday. So they are basically signaling that they are entering the conflict, but they are trying to postpone operations in the Red Sea as long as possible. This again is consistent with the pattern of behavior which we have already observed in the past. And I think this relates to the reason why they entered the conflict right now.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

One of the things I find super interesting about this is that this has about four wars going on at once, right? So there's the US and Israel's war in and on Iran, and then the Iran's war seemingly on Israel and the Gulf at large. And then, of course, Israel's contest with Hezbollah. There's been reports over the weekend that Hezbollah is desperate to be included in any peace agreement or any kind of ceasefire because it has also extended its abilities at this point. And then this fourth theater, which is the others that are kind of propping up the instability, such as the Houthis and the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, you know, the ability for this to kind of metastasize into the Horn of Africa. But it's interesting because each of those, each of those scales of conflict have a very different lens through which they're viewing it, and a potentially very different point at which they would determine it sorted or or what they would consider the threshold for continuity to be. And this is interesting on the part of the Houthis what you were just saying there, because why do you think that there was such a shift in that narrative between what you were saying was their domestic concern on one day and then their actions the next?

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Well, I think that the Houthis flagged several times that they had religious and almost humanitarian duty to support the Iranian regime and they were just waiting for the right moment to signal in practical terms that they they were supportive and they and that they were somehow intervening in the conflict. I think that the ongoing negotiations between the US and Iran, sort of negotiations, for the Houthis that this was the right moment to intervene. And if you remember, we already anticipate this scenario where the best moment for the Houthis to intervene in the conflict was during the negotiations to maximize Iran's leverage on the US and extract concessions basically from the US. So I think that the Houthis are seeing basically two levels of benefits from entering right now into the conflict. Layer number one is that they can claim that somehow they have supported Iran and that their entry into the war somehow helped the Axis of Resistance extracting concessions from the US. And this is very similar to what they have already done back in March 2025. In March 2025, Abdul Malik al-Huthi announced the four-day ultimatum where he basically said if Israel doesn't sit at the table of negotiations with the Palestinian team, then we will raise the ban on Israeli ships in the Red Sea. When negotiations actually happened in Doha, the Houthis claimed that it was because of their pressure on the Israeli negotiating team to resume in the Red Sea. So they are somehow stressing the fact that their actions in the Red Sea can be very effective, that they are maximizing pressure. Yes. And I think that's and at the same time, I think that they are sensing that the war might be ending soon. We are in a situation where either the war ends very soon or it will turn in a long-term war of attrition. Either either they escalate as the war drags on, or they will just claim victory as it ends.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

So it's it sounds like quite a sophisticated geopolitical strategic thinking on the part of the Houthis, to be honest, but at the at the bottom of it is a realization that they're, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, Lika, their only export is instability.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Well, I mean, that's the only leverage that currently they have in order to negotiate.

SPEAKER_02 12:04

And that's worrying, I guess, if you were Saudi Arabia, which is effectively you're propping up a state that is making it very clear that the only thing they can produce here is continued instability until they are like as a dependent.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yes. This is definitely uh something that uh we've been discussing for the past months and years, right? As Saudi Arabia tried to stabilize and normalize the situation in Yemen, right, since April 2022, the risk has always been that the Houthis would remain as a long-term threat due to their long-range drone and missile capabilities. So the issue with normalizing the Houthis is really the fact that they remain an actor that is difficult to understand and difficult to predict. But at the same time, it seems that there are just few other alternatives in Yemen because all military solutions have proven not to be effective.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

Seems like a mini-Iran problem, because effectively Iran is a much more well-developed and larger state with some of the exact same pitfalls to letting it continue as it was, and in fact, confronting it as as uh as many countries have chosen to recently. And the combination means that there are no good answers, they're just very costly trade-offs, no matter what what path you choose.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

Yes, definitely. And I think I mean the events during the past week demonstrate that if you remember at the beginning of the war, most analysts argued that Iran's end game was basically to survive. But now I think that we are past that. The Iranian regime already survived, and now they are basically claiming to be the victors of this conflict. And this is making it increasingly difficult for the US to find new ways to rebalance the equation, right, and the balance of power in the region and extract concessions from Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.

SPEAKER_02 14:14

So this narrative of winning, winning when a war is nowhere near, I would say, complete. So I agree with your thought about how it's either going to go on for the next few weeks or it's going to be something that is a thorn in the side of everybody for several years through attrition. But there's a new stage that's about to start with the arrival of US troops in the region. And there's been some discussion, of course, about what those troops are are intended to do. And that discussion centers on Carg Island. So objectively stopping Iran from exporting fuel out of the region. But that doesn't, if anything, that exacerbates the global oil crisis that is starting to really bite down across the world. But it also doesn't deal with the fact that it's control of the strait that is the main issue. And controlling the strait involves effectively being able to remove Iranian influence from several key junctures in that very pivotal and difficult piece of geography. There's apparently there was uh a really interesting paper written in 2002 about how of the seven islands that are in that area, three of them are really pivotal for for strait control, and that is Abu Musa, Greater Tum, and Lesser Tumb. Although there are many other like Teshem, which we've mentioned in previous podcasts. I wonder what your thoughts are about that particular strategy of taking or trying to control extremely difficult geography in order to financially choke the regime, which also won't be an immediate thing. Although there are some reports this weekend that within Iran, despite the narrative that they are winning, there is going to be some very difficult issues over water, food, and of course the banking system and whether or not it will continue to function.

SPEAKER_00 16:11

Yeah, um I'm just wondering if controlling strategic island would be enough to effectively impose US or international control over the Strait of Homers. Because if we have a look at the situation in the Red Sea and bearing in mind that, of course, it's a different geography, but the Houthis were capable of imposing basically their control or at least imposing a crisis on commercial shipping just by launching drones and ballistic missiles from uh the interior of the Yemeni territory. Um so even if you physically control the Strait of Hormos and the chalk point, I think that somehow Iran would still be able to endanger commercial shipping through the strait and in this way put pressure on insurance companies, on increased war risk premiums and whatever else that will push commercial companies to avoid shipping through the Strait of Homas. So I really doubt that this will be an effective measure.

SPEAKER_02 17:15

Which of course raises the importance of the Red Sea even more than uh it currently is, which is already pretty high. That's a really great point you mentioned there, which is that there's all sorts of ways to create an unstable strait that doesn't involve having physical control over some of those key islands. But if the Iranian regime were to fragment or crack in some ways, that would make that issue evil worse rather than better. I mean, at least at this point, if you have a regime to negotiate with, you can come up with some sort of scenario for the for the strait. If you don't, you effectively are leaving yourself open to a lot of Houthi-like elements in that region.

SPEAKER_00 18:02

Yeah, no, no. I mean, I and again, drawing in parallel with what we have already seen in the Red Sea, even there there were rumors that specific factions of the Houthis were exacting fees from some shipping companies to transit through the Red Sea. And the Houthi regime is very centralized. It has control over most of its factions. So, I mean, the situation would probably be worse in case of fragmentation in Iran.

SPEAKER_02 18:29

There was an element that I think we mentioned in the podcast we had on Friday about the one-month anniversary, but there's now pirates taking control of Iranian vessels in the horn, just to add Somali pirates, I believe, just to add a little bit of an extra bit of spice to this situation. So it seems like Iran may feel like they have control over that very pivotal piece of geography, but it is one piece of a very, very complicated scenario.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

Yeah, I mean, and and this speaks to the fact that this is creating instability region-wise. Region-wide. Because I mean, piracy was basically defeated back in 2023 when the Gaza crisis erupted. And it's now revamping as a consequence of the instability created by the Houthis in the Red Sea and now by the Iran conflict.

SPEAKER_02 19:24

Yeah. I totally agree. It's it's uh it's interesting, I think, about at this, you know, potential ceasefire or or some sort of negotiation that happens between some of the main players leaves some other very central elements, whether it's the Gulf countries or the Horn, really still in a state of flux about the kind of future that they want to create or what kind of control they have over that, over the which I think we're still seeing them come to terms with, and we don't know the shape of that yet.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:56

And I mean, talking about the Gulf countries, there have been some interesting developments, interesting in a negative sense, regarding the Iranian approach to the attacks against Gulf countries, because so far, at least publicly, the Iranians have claimed that their attacks were not preempted, only retired retaliatory attacks. So a sort of an I for an I strategy. And have been applying this I for an I strategy very thoroughly, right? So they were targeting all infrastructure for all infrastructure. Over the weekend, they have targeted aluminium factories in retaliation for Israel, targeting the steel factories in Iran. But at the same time, Arakchi, the Iranian foreign minister, also announced that they might move beyond this approach and adopt a more offensive approach. So including also preemptive strikes in case the war escalates.

SPEAKER_02 20:51

That's really fascinating. I think another conversation we should have in the future is about even if Iran continues with this narrative of it winning, what role it hopes to play in the Gulf, given how it's how it's antagonized and attacked its neighbors. Seems like it's it's obviously not the biggest concern at the moment, as they're trying to keep the regime from um from buckling under the pressure of the external attacks. But it will come at a very high price.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

Of course. Also, I mean, there's already a discussion among Gulf countries precisely on this point, because I would argue that in the first weeks of the conflict, most Gulf countries had a very defensive approach geared towards damage control mostly, and they wanted the war to end as soon as possible to return to the previous status quo. But this approach has gradually evolved into something different. Their standard is that most Gulf countries still would like the war to finish as soon as possible, but they also want guarantees. And they are having conversations. Conversations with the US making it clear that an end to the war should also bring concessions from Iran and should result in a more humble Iran, less prone to military adventurism in a sense. And this is apparently not the result right now. So the war could continue for a while to extract these kind of concessions, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to understand how the US could put more pressure on Iran.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

I just can't imagine a situation where the poles of agreement are moving apart so quickly and so determinedly without any end insight.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

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