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As they fire dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles against Saudi-led coalition forces in Yemeni government-controlled areas, the Houthis are escalating on two major external fronts. This comes at a time when they are already facing internal crises regarding the economy and the tribes of northern Yemen. The temptation is to attribute escalation abroad to an effort to distract from the crises at home.
From Sanaa’s perspective, the regime’s internal and external crises are deeply intertwined to the point that they cannot be separated. This is especially true in the conspiratorial worldview of the Houthis in which “you are either with us or against us” – meaning part of the Houthi project they call “the Quranic March” or part of the “American-Zionist-Saudi conspiracy.” This worldview is based in part on their interpretation of a Quranic verse which states, “And whoever among you allies with them is one of them.” That being the case, the Houthis see their problems as part of a broader conspiracy launched by the evil forces abroad and facilitated by Yemeni “mercenaries” at home.
This view is on display in al-Jawf, where the Dahm tribe recently rallied around a woman claiming to be a victim of the regime’s injustice. According to the woman claiming to be “Mira Saddam Hussein,” she is the secret daughter of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and her assets were confiscated by regime insider Fares Manea during a chaotic moment in the Yemeni civil war. Houthi media presented the tribal activities on her behalf as coordinated with the Saudi special committee, an organization charged with maintaining good relations via patronage between Riyadh and Yemen’s tribes. Whether there is truth to this claim is unclear, but like all conspiracy theories it is easy to release into the media space to muddy the waters and nearly impossible to conclusively disprove.
Regardless of the root of the current Houthi crisis with tribes in al-Jawf, it appears to have uniquely destabilizing potential for the regime given its geographical scope and the number of tribesmen standing in defiance. Having set up camp outside of Houthi territory, the Dahm tribe is leading an anti-Houthi line that seems to be garnering widespread support and has thousands of participants – including from areas under Houthi control.
The timing is what makes this dangerous for the Houthis: their economy continues to sink as the finite solution of looting government institutions and local industry approaches its limits. The lawless kleptocracy that they have created, alongside heavy sanctions, makes any economic improvement in the near term unlikely. This poor economic performance, combined with the fact that tribal loyalty is often bought, should worry the Houthis. Much of the population living under their control has tribal affiliations that might be “activated” as the group has not yet managed to completely decimate tribal structures in Yemeni society in favor of absolute loyalty to Abdulmalik al-Houthi. The resources to buy quiet have dried up precisely when the regime needs them most.
While one might expect this would make it an inopportune moment to escalate on additional fronts, in the past month the Houthis have attacked not only Saudi Arabia but, more recently, the Yemeni government. Three practical calculations, rather than mere distraction, help explain the timing.
The first is deterrence. At a moment of weakness, the Houthis want to kill any perception among the regime’s enemies that trouble at home translates into a reduced appetite for escalation, a perception that might invite attacks against the regime. This also comes after the regime showed relative restraint during the most intense weeks of the Israeli and American strikes on Iran, sitting out as the rest of the axis of resistance rallied and raising speculation that the regime was averse to the associated risks. By initiating conflict now, the regime is cultivating the impression that it is just as radical, reckless, and aggressive as ever.
The second is economic. Escalation against Saudi Arabia may be meant to resolve the group’s money problems in either an absolute or a relative sense. In an absolute sense, if the escalation leads to an agreement with Saudi Arabia that would infuse cash into their economy and provide the resources the regime needs to continue funding their war machine and buying quiet from those dissatisfied groups challenging them. In a relative sense, even if the Houthis cannot reach an agreement with Riyadh, targeting Saudi energy exports may make it more costly for Riyadh to keep financially supporting anti-Houthi forces in Yemen, including the Yemeni government. Absent that support, the group’s control of much of Yemen’s economy would give the regime a major advantage over its rivals, even if its budget remains small compared to that of a functional state.
The third is simple tactical opportunity. With the Strait of Hormuz blocked as fallout from the Iran war, the Houthis have additional leverage over Saudi Arabia’s alternative shipping routes through Bab al-Mandeb and the Red Sea. Still, risk aversion tempers that ambition: The desire to target Saudi oil exports without galvanizing a coalition against them, or upsetting the axis’s quieter backers such as China, limits the scope of actual disruption to these shipments.
From a conspiratorial, zero-sum ideology in which anything bad for the U.S. and its allies is good for the regime, the Houthis have scored points that exceed expectations. The Houthis are exceptionally good at picking targets that maximize extortion while limiting expected blowback, and jumping from one target of opportunity to the next keeps their adversaries guessing. Still, this approach of focusing on the short-term targets of opportunity and very long term eschatological vision leaves a strategic gap that will likely lead group’s structural problems to grow more severe and eventually erupt in an inevitable crisis.
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