Fifteen months after Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack shocked the Israeli political and military establishment out of its complacency, it has adopted a new, zero-tolerance policy against any power in the region that challenges its security, extending beyond Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon to include the Houthis far to the south in Yemen. Over that same period, Israel has largely neutralized the direct threat from Iran, “the head of the snake,” which orchestrated and supported all of the attacks on Israel since October 7, with two devastating air strikes in response to a pair of ineffective mass missile and drone attacks by Iran. This has left the rogue Islamic state defenseless and in search of a new strategy as its powerful nemesis, Donald Trump, is about to return to the White House.
Israel has also benefitted strategically from the unexpected fall of Iran’s most important state ally in the region, Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Not only did Assad’s sudden departure eliminate the looming threat from Iran’s growing military presence on Israel’s northern border with Syria, but it also crippled Iran’s “Axis of Resistance” by cutting its crucial land bridge to the weakened Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Israel’s leaders have taken advantage of the power vacuum created by Assad’s fall by militarily occupying a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights border and the north side of Har Hermon, overlooking Damascus. At the same time, an intensive campaign of Israeli air strikes has destroyed the most dangerous weapons that Assad’s army left behind when they abandoned their posts, thereby preventing them from falling into the hands of Israel’s remaining enemies in Syria.
After more than a year of often bitter fighting in Gaza, the IDF has eliminated Hamas’ ability to mount a repeat of its October 7. In the process, the IDF has killed an estimated 17,000 of Hamas’ fighters, and destroyed about half of its tunnel network under Gaza. But it has not yet found a way to break Hamas’ hold over the civilian population of Gaza, to stop it from infiltrating back into areas of Gaza from which the IDF has withdrawn, or from launching an occasional missile at targets inside Israel to remind us that it has not yet accepted its defeat.
THE HAMAS RESISTANCE HAS RETURNED TO NORTHERN GAZA
Since this past October, when occupying Israeli forces withdrew from the area in and around Jabalia refugee camp, Hamas has turned the area into the center of a stubborn resistance that has returned to northern Gaza. Last week, the IDF responded by conducting a major operation at the Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahiya, just outside Jabalia, after it evacuated about 350 patients and hospital staff. Another 95 patients and hospital personnel were safely evacuated during the operation itself.
The operation was launched because, according to the IDF, the hospital had “once again become a key stronghold for terrorist organizations and continues to be used as a hideout for terrorist operatives.” The IDF arrested more than 240 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists who were using the hospital as a base for renewed military operations. That number includes some Hamas operatives who, according to the IDF, “tried to impersonate patients and medical staff, and some tried to escape in ambulances,” as well as Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, who was accused of turning it into “Hamas’ last bastion in Jabalia.” The IDF also said that at least 15 of those arrested at the hospital and the surrounding area participated in Hamas’ October 7 onslaught.
According to a video interview of one of the hospital’s regular ambulance drivers who is also a paramedic, Hamas was using the hospital’s ambulances to transport its fighters. “Hamas military operatives are in the courtyards, at the gates of the buildings, in the offices. They operate ambulances to transport their wounded military operatives and to transport them for their [attack] missions, instead of using the ambulances for the benefit of civilians.”
HAMAS STILL HIDING BEHIND GAZA CIVILIANS
When asked by his IDF interrogator if he had anything else to add, the paramedic said that Hamas has stationed itself in the local hospitals and schools, and, “We, the public in the northern Gaza Strip, are sick of this situation. We have had enough.”
Meanwhile, the IDF vigorously denied accusations by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health that it set fires to parts of the hospital and interfered with its medical operations. On the contrary, the IDF pointed out, that not only did it safely evacuate the patients from the Kamal Adwan hospital, but it also resupplied the nearby Indonesian hospital with fuel, electrical generators, and medical equipment to enable it to better care for the patients who were evacuated from the other hospital.
Israeli forces also uncovered a large cache of weapons, including grenades, handguns, ammunition, and other types of military equipment, in violation of international laws forbidding the use of protected facilities such as hospitals for military purposes.
During the operation at the hospital, the IDF forces had to fend off attacks by Hamas fighters nearby using rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) and anti-tank missiles. They were able to kill all of the attacking terrorists without suffering any Israeli casualties.
The IDF also announced that it had killed “many dozens of terrorists who were seen fleeing [from Jabalia] with weapons in their hands” by waiting for them in ambush, based upon information from the Israeli intelligence services.
ISRAELI TROOPS STILL FIGHTING AS CEASEFIRE TALKS IN GAZA STALL
Despite optimistic reports that recently renewed ceasefire talks with Hamas have been making progress, its new leader, Muhammed Sinwar (October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar’s brother) is still resisting a proposed deal for the release of the hostages, both alive and dead, still being held in Gaza. As a result, while the fighting in Gaza has mostly been reduced to isolated skirmishes, Israeli troops are still fighting and dying there, including, at last count this week, a total of 394 Israeli soldiers killed since the Hamas October 7 attack, Hy”d.
According to a Qatari-owned news channel quoting Egyptian sources, the talks on the hostage release-cease fire deal are on the verge of collapse, primarily because the Netanyahu government refuses to commit itself to an agreement that permanently ends the war in Gaza and returns all of the Israelis held hostage while Hamas remains in place and undefeated.
In a show of strength over the weekend, apparently meant to bolster its position in the ceasefire negotiations, Hamas launched two of its remaining long-range missiles from the northern Gaza town of Beit Hanoun aimed at Yerushalayim, as well as several other Israeli communities. Thankfully, such missile launches against Israel have become relatively rare events because so many of the Hamas missiles hidden in Gaza have already been destroyed. The IDF admits that about half of Gaza’s extensive tunnel network remains intact, and more such attacks by Hamas using its weapons caches still hidden in the tunnels cannot be ruled out,
The Hamas missiles in this latest barrage were successfully intercepted before reaching their targets, and when the IDF quickly responded by attacking the launching site, it caught one of the launchers with a rocket loaded and being prepared to fire, causing it to detonate immediately with a huge explosion, as shown in an IDF video clip.
ISRAELI FORCES MOVING BACK INTO NORTHERN GAZA
Because of the recent resurgence in Hamas activity in northern Gaza, the IDF has moved some of its forces from Rafah, where the fighting has ended, as well as armored corps and combat engineer battalions to Beit Hanoun in order to find and destroy any further Hamas missile launching sites and force concentrations in the area.
Three divisions of IDF troops are currently in a position to resume military operations across Gaza as part of an Israeli effort to increase the military pressure on Hamas to finalize the hostage-ceasefire negotiations whose details are now widely reported to be virtually complete. The Israeli troops are stationed along Gaza’s northern border with Israel, the east-west Netzarim Corridor across central Gaza, a newly cleared buffer zone about a half-mile wide inside Gaza running for the length of the north-south border with Israel, in southern Gaza and on the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian-Gaza border.
Similarly, the IDF’s innovative two-month military campaign against Hezbollah, which began with exploding pagers, followed by the assassination of its longtime leader, has succeeded in demoralizing its fighters and decimating its missile threat. But while a recent ceasefire in Lebanon on Israel’s terms may have neutralized the threat from Hezbollah for now, Israel’s leaders are under no illusion. They know that Iran, despite the loss of its Syrian land bridge, will do everything it can to re-arm and reconstitute Hezbollah as the powerful fighting force that it had been when it joined Hamas in attacking Israel the day after the October 7 assault.
One immediate problem facing Israel is that the Lebanese army, which, under the terms of the November 27 ceasefire agreement, was supposed to take over Hezbollah’s positions in southern Lebanon along the border with Israel, has not yet deployed in those areas. That would make it necessary for occupying IDF forces to stay in those positions beyond the 60-day deadline in late January set for their withdrawal.
ISRAELI TROOPS MAY HAVE TO STAY IN LEBANON LONGER THAN EXPECTED
Israel has warned the other parties to the ceasefire deal that if the Lebanese army cannot meet that obligation, Israeli forces will stay in southern Lebanon indefinitely in order to protect the Israeli communities along the Lebanese border from a resumption of Hezbollah attacks as Iran searches for ways to re-arm its most important terrorist proxy and restore its broken morale.
The IDF has begun to fortify the strategic areas on the other side of its border with Syria in the Golan Heights and on the northern slopes of Har Hermon that it seized during the days after the Assad regime collapse, in preparation for a long winter. But at the same time, Israel insists that its current military presence in those areas is temporary, as it waits, along with the rest of the region, to see how the geo-political and strategic situation in today’s post-Assad Syria evolves.
Meanwhile, last week the IDF displayed to the media an impressive cache of Hezbollah weaponry and equipment it captured in southern Lebanon. It includes 6,840 RPG rockets, 340 Russian-made Kornet anti-tank missiles and their launchers, 9,000 IEDs and hand grenades, 2,250 unguided rockets and mortars, 2,700 assault rifles, 60 man-portable anti-aircraft missiles, 20 Hezbollah vehicles as well as more than 60,000 pieces of electronic and surveillance equipment computers and documents. All told, the IDF claims to have recovered a total of 85,170 military items captured during fighting with Hezbollah in 30 villages in southern Lebanon during the two months between mid-September, when IDF ground operations in Lebanon began, and November 27, when the ceasefire agreement took effect.
HOW AN IDF INVESTMENT IN INTELLIGENCE LED TO ITS VICTORY IN LEBANON
The IDF also claims that its ability to eliminate the three top tiers of Hezbollah’s command structure over a period of a few weeks, which led to the ceasefire, was due to an unprecedented long-term investment in the infiltration of Hezbollah’s ranks, intelligence gathering and analysis.
The results of that effort enabled the IDF to kill 14 top-ranking terrorist leaders, including longtime Hezbollah chief, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, his successor, Hashem Safieddine, military chief Fuad Shukr, Radwan force commander Ibraham Aqil and all of his sub-commanders. To end Israel’s systematic killing of its leaders, Hezbollah was eventually forced to agree to withdraw to the far side of the Litani River and end its missile attacks on northern Israel in support of Hamas’ war against Israel in Gaza.
At the same time, IDF military intelligence was conducting an intensive study of Hezbollah’s firepower, ranging from mortars to its short- and medium-range rockets, to its precision and long-range rockets.
APPLYING THE LESSONS FROM THE WAR IN 2006
Having learned the lessons from its frustrating inability to locate Hezbollah’s rocket launchers during the 2006 Second Lebanon War, this time the IDF identified where those weapons were located, and how to attack them or follow their movements if they were mobile.
But the IDF chose not to use that information until it had soundly beaten Hamas in Gaza and was ready to turn its full attention to the elimination of the Hezbollah threat. The Israeli attack began with the remote detonation, on September 17, of 5,000 explosive-containing pagers that Hezbollah had been tricked into buying and putting in the hands of its fighters, followed by the triggering of hundreds of similarly rigged explosive walkie-talkies the next day.
That attack was the culmination of a ten-year joint IDF and Mossad clandestine project. It involved the creation of bogus shell companies to sell the devices to Hezbollah in which a small amount of explosives had been hidden and rigged to explode upon receiving a coded Israeli signal.
THE STRATEGY BEHIND ISRAEL’S EXPLODING PAGER ATTACK
In a televised CBS News interview, two unidentified Mossad agents involved in the pager plot explained in detail how it worked.
Because the Mossad version of the pager had to be slightly enlarged to accommodate the explosives, the shell company Mossad set up in Hungary to sell the pagers had to license the Gold Apollo brand name from the Taiwan-based company that made the original model. Mossad also created a false YouTube ad campaign aimed at Hezbollah touting the bigger pager to Hezbollah as superior to the original by being dustproof and waterproof and offering a longer battery life.
The pagers were not designed by the Mossad to kill, but rather to maim the Hezbollah fighters carrying them, for the psychological effect. The charge was also intended to be small enough to avoid injuring any innocent civilians who happened to be nearby when the pagers exploded.
The pagers had been designed to emit a unique ringtone when receiving their detonation signal. Their Hezbollah users had been instructed to push two buttons on the device simultaneously upon hearing that ringtone in order to decode an incoming encrypted message. But the real purpose of the ringtone was to ensure that the Hezbollah fighter would have both of their hands on the device when it exploded, thereby doing maximum damage.
According to one of the interviewed Mossad agents, the goal in creating the exploding pagers was more about sending a message than actually killing the Hezbollah fighters carrying them.
“If [the terrorist is] just dead, so he’s dead. But if he’s wounded, you have to take him to the hospital, take care of him. You need to invest money and effort,” the agent said. “And those people without hands and eyes are living proof, walking in Lebanon, of ‘don’t mess with us.’ They are walking proof of [Israel’s] superiority all around the Middle East.”
NASRALLAH KNEW THAT HE HAD BEEN DEFEATED
One of the Mossad agents also said in the CBS interview that Hezbollah leader Nasrallah was deeply affected by the message the pagers sent when he witnessed some of them explode in the hands of several people who were next to him in his bunker after Israel sent the triggering signal. The Mossad agent also claimed that the pager attack was “the tipping point of the war,” because two days later, when Nasrallah addressed his followers, you could see by “the look in his eyes [that] he was defeated. He had already lost the war. And when his fighters looked at him during that speech, they saw a broken leader.”
Then, while the Hezbollah leadership was still reeling from the shock, the Israeli air force carried out thousands of precision attacks on Hezbollah missile sites across Lebanon, destroying the bulk of Hezbollah’s massive arsenal of 150,000 rockets and drones. By neutralizing most of the missiles and drones before they could be launched, the IDF denied Hezbollah the opportunity to implement its “doomsday” war plans to destroy Tel Aviv and other major Israeli cities and kill thousands of Israelis.
On September 27, just ten days after the pager attack, Hezbollah leader Sheik Nasrallah was assassinated by a massive Israeli bomb attack on his underground bunker in Beirut. Only then, after Hezbollah was left leaderless and without the bulk of its most potent weapons, did the IDF launch its ground invasion of southern Lebanon, whose victorious outcome was by then assured.
ISRAEL STILL FIGHTING THE TRANSFER OF WEAPONS TO HEZBOLLAH
The IDF forces which remain in south Lebanon are still finding more hidden caches of Hezbollah weaponry and military infrastructure, including tactical tunnels designed for cross-border attacks. The Israeli air force is also continuing its air strikes along the Lebanon-Syria border to stop Iranian-supported efforts to transfer some of the advanced weapons left behind by the disintegrating Syrian army to Hezbollah.
Israel Hayom also reports that the IDF is preparing for the possibility that if all other efforts to smuggle replacement weapons to Hezbollah by land or sea routes fail, Iran might resort to direct air shipments from Tehran to Beirut, requiring Israel to expand its target list to include Iranian flights to the Beirut airport.
Nevertheless, the intensity of the fighting in Gaza and Lebanon has wound down significantly since the Lebanon ceasefire went into effect on November 27.
Hamas has been reduced to a shadow of the powerful military force that blitzed southern Israel on October 7th. Hamas’ 24 trained combat brigades stationed in Gaza before the October 7 attack have been systematically disrupted by IDF attacks, its tunnel arsenals have been depleted and destroyed, and its sources of armament re-supply have been cut off. Meanwhile, the IDF has been vigilant in reacting strongly to every effort by Hamas to re-group and re-organize itself in the areas of Gaza from which Israeli troops have been withdrawn.
Hezbollah has also lost to Israeli attacks most of its top-tier leadership, including its former leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah as well as an estimated 3,800 fighters killed in combat with the IDF, two-thirds of them during Israel’s two-month-long offensive in south Lebanon which started in September. The IDF has also destroyed an estimated 70% of Hezbollah’s powerful arsenal of 150,00 missiles. Hezbollah’s internal security has also been badly compromised by Israeli intelligence, as indicated by the devastating exploding pager and walkie-talkie attacks on Hezbollah fighters across Lebanon last September. As a result, Hezbollah was forced to accept a ceasefire on terms dictated by the Israeli military. This has left Hezbollah’s future, both as Iran’s strongest terrorist proxy force and as a major player in Lebanese national politics, very much in doubt.
In addition, after Iran launched two massive drone and missile attacks on Israel this past April and October that failed to make a significant impact, and then suffered major damage to its air defenses and missile production facilities from the Israeli retaliation, its entire attack strategy against Israel was called into question.
But in the meantime, the once sporadic long-range ballistic missile fire from the Houthis in Yemen has stepped up to become a real challenge to Israel’s air and missile defenses that can no longer be ignored.
HOUTHIS HAVE FOUND A WAY TO PENETRATE ISRAEL’S MISSILE DEFENSES
Over the past two weeks, at least two of the Iranian-supplied rockets penetrated Israel’s multi-layered missile defense system and did significant damage to residential areas in the densely populated heart of central Israel.
One of the Iranian-supplied missiles destroyed the multistory building of the Ramat Ef’al Elementary School in Ramat Gan, but fortunately, it struck during the pre-dawn hours of December 19, when there were no children or school staff in the building.
Two nights later, at 3:44 a.m., a second ballistic missile launched by the Houthis in Yemen evaded several Israeli interceptor rockets to land in a public park in the old port of Yafo, in southern Tel Aviv. The exploding warhead damaged nearby buildings, injuring 16 people who were hit by shattered glass and 14 others who were hurt while trying to reach safety.
Equally important was the psychological damage done by the two missiles by triggering air raid sirens throughout central Israel, waking millions of Israelis who were asleep in their beds, and prompting them to rush to the nearest bomb shelter.
In its response to the Houthi attack on the school in Ramat Gan, the Israeli air force conducted long-range attacks intended to disrupt shipping at the Houthi’s three main ports in western Yemen, damage the main runway and control tower at the Houthi airport in Sana’a, and destroy other key pieces of infrastructure in Yemen including fuel depots and two power stations.
HOUTHIS ARE NOT BEING DETERRED BY ISRAELI RETALIATION
But none of this damage has been severe enough to deter the Houthis from continuing their disruptive long-range missile strikes at Israel’s civilian population centers.
After the missile hit Yafo last week, the fifth Houthi attack on central Israel since December 16, Hezam al-Asad, a Houthi official, posted mocking messages in Hebrew on Elon Musk’s X social media platform. One of them declared, “The failure of all Israeli defense systems means that the heart of the Zionist enemy is no longer secure.” In another, al-Asad said: “There is no longer any use for [Israeli missile] interception systems that cost billions of dollars.”
Much like Hezbollah, the Houthis have launched 170 long-range drone and 200 missile attacks against Israel ever since Hamas’ October 7 attack. In response to earlier Houthi long-range ballistic missile and drone attacks, which were successfully shot down before penetrating Israeli airspace, Israeli military leaders sought to minimize the threat.
But ever since an Iranian-supplied drone fired from Yemen in July was able to avoid Israeli missile and air defenses by flying in from the Mediterranean to strike an apartment building in Tel Aviv, killing one man and wounding several others, the Houthi threat has become much more serious.
IRAN MAY BE SUPPLYING HOUTHIS WITH MORE SOPHISTICATED MISSILES
It appears that more recently, the Iranians may have begun to supply the Houthi with its most advanced long-range ballistic missiles whose warheads are capable of maneuvering in flight. That is the most likely explanation for how two of these missiles were able to evade Israel’s anti-missile interceptors and reach Israel’s main population centers where they did significant damage. As a result, Israel’s political and military leaders can no longer afford to dismiss the Houthi threat so cavalierly.
Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu warned last week, “The Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime and others have learned.” A day later, after a major Israeli retaliatory air strike on the Houthi targets in Yemen, Netanyahu said in a TV interview, “We are just getting started with them.”
“The Houthis are making a big mistake when they continue to attack Israel,” a senior Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
“Today, when we have a ceasefire in Lebanon and less intense fighting in Gaza,” continued the official, “we now have the opportunity to shift our attention and resources toward the Yemeni front, the Houthi front. This is what we are doing these days, and we are also formulating a response alongside our allies led by the United States, and when the time comes, we will make sure that the Houthi forces pay.”
However, despite this bluster from Netanyahu and other Israeli officials threatening to make Houthi forces pay dearly for continuing to use long-range missiles to attack population centers in central Israel, the latest such attack on Monday night, which resulted in a large missile fragment falling onto the middle of Nachal HaKishon Street in a residential area of Ramat Beit Shemesh Aleph, there was no Israeli retaliation against the Houthis in Yemen at all.
According to the IDF, even though the Houthi missile had been intercepted and destroyed by the Arrow system before it entered Israeli airspace, the broken fragments of the missile remained on the same trajectory and still posed a potentially fatal hazard to any people caught on the ground where those fragments landed.
Even though, fortunately, nobody was injured by the fragment which landed in Ramat Beit Shemesh, millions of Israelis across central Israel were roused again in the middle of the night and forced to run to the nearest shelter when the air raid sirens went off.
A short time later, Mohamed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis’ supreme revolutionary committee, went on X to claim credit for the missile launch and promised that the Houthi “pounding of Israel in support of Hamas in Gaza will continue.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s newly appointed defense minister, Israel Katz, responded to the Houthi missile attacks that penetrated Israel’s air defenses last week by publicly threatening to target senior Houthi leaders for assassination, in the same way that Israel killed the heads of both Hamas and Hezbollah, and many of their senior military commanders.
ISRAEL NEEDS BETTER INTELLIGENCE TO TARGET HOUTHI LEADERS
However, because Israeli intelligence services have not focused on the Houthi leaders before, they do not yet have the same high level of information needed to target the individual Houthi leaders effectively, as they had been able to do against the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah.
While launching its missiles at Israel over the past year, the Houthis have also attacked more than 130 merchant vessels in nearby international waters with drones and missiles, effectively closing the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to much commercial shipping, significantly delaying many cargo shipments and increasing shipping costs. The Houthi’s most audacious maritime attack came in November 2023, when it hijacked the Galaxy Leader, a Bahama-flagged, partially Israeli-owned, and Japanese-operated vehicle carrier, and took its 25 crew members into Yemen as hostages.
AN INEFFECTIVE RESPONSE TO HOUTHI ATTACKS ON MARITIME SHIPPING
These maritime attacks have triggered separate reprisals against the Houthis by the U.S. and Great Britain, which launched Operation Poseidon Archer in January, in the name of protecting the freedom of the seas. However, those attacks were ineffective at deterring the Houthis from continuing to harass maritime traffic. According to Brian Carter, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, this “series of reactive half-measures has not achieved decisive effects or meaningfully degraded Houthi military capabilities. The Houthis are not deterred, and have also collected significant insight into the operation of U.S. defenses against their [missile] attack systems.”
But the U.S.-led attacks “didn’t eliminate the [Houthi] leadership at all,” complained Danny Citrinowicz, a research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies. “They didn’t touch the Iranian mission in Yemen, they didn’t touch the chief of staff, they didn’t touch any of the senior officials.”
HOUTHIS ARE THE LEAST EFFECTIVE PART OF IRAN’S AXIS OF RESISTANCE
As a result, the Houthi leadership is currently basking in unaccustomed popularity in the radical Islamic world as the only member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance, including Iran itself, that is still effectively attacking Israel. In addition to being at the forefront of the fight against Israel, Hezbollah is also defying the U.S., Great Britain, and their worldwide trading partners by disrupting the flow of international maritime traffic through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.
As researcher Citrinowicz explained, “You see Hezbollah in a ceasefire. Iraqi militias hardly attack. The Iranians hesitate to respond, and the Houthis are the only ones [actively] pulling the ‘resistance’ forward.”
In fact, according to Kenneth Katzman, a senior fellow at The Soufan Center, a New York City-based foreign policy and global security research center, the relationship between Iran and the Houthis is likely to “grow closer now that Hezbollah has stood down and Assad has lost power. The Houthis are now almost all that remains of Iran’s ‘axis of resistance’ strategy.”
Back in 2011, the Houthis were a poor desert tribal group, that almost nobody outside of Yemen had heard of, when it led a revolt against a corrupt, Saudi-backed Yemeni government of then-president Ali Abdullah Saleh. In 2015, the Saudis led a Sunni coalition that tried to oust the Houthis from Sana’a, the capital city of Yemen with bombing attacks using U.S.-supplied aircraft, along with the deployment of tens of thousands of ground troops. However, the effort failed to dislodge the Houthis, or to reinstate the internationally recognized government of Yemen, led at that time by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, whom the Saudis had been supporting.
Since that time, the Houthis have proven themselves to be very adept, not only at withstanding the attacks by the Saudi-led coalition but also by retaliating against them through Iranian-supplied drone and missile attacks in 2019 and 2022 that severely damaged major Saudi oil and natural gas installations, a water desalination plant and a power station.
THE HOUTHIS ARE A RESILIENT ENEMY
The more recent retaliatory attacks on the Houthis by the U.S. and Britain, as well as last week’s long-range Israeli reprisal attacks on the three main Houthi shipping ports in Yemen, and its international airport, have also failed to deter the Houthis. If anything, those attacks have encouraged the Houthis to step up their ballistic attacks on central Israel’s population centers.
And that is doubly important because the Houthis, at the moment, are the last member of Iran’s Axis of Resistance which is still following up on Hamas’ devastating October 7 attack on Israel.
It is not that the latest Israeli retaliatory air attack on the Houthis, the fourth in the past year, was not effective. It succeeded in damaging at least half a dozen strategically important Houthi targets in Yemen, including the major Houthi port of Hodeida, which it left in flames. The problem is the resilience of the Houthis, a tribe whose home is in the rugged mountainous terrain of northern Yemen, which has enabled them to absorb a tremendous amount of punishment from their enemies yet stay in the fight.
Over the years, the Houthis have learned how to adapt to aerial bombing campaigns. In reaction to the latest reprisal attacks by both Israel and the U.S., the Houthis have responded by putting their most important weapons manufacturing facilities underground, and they have continued to receive weapons shipments from Iran despite the attacks on its main port facilities.
In attacking Israel and U.S. interests in the Middle East, the Houthis are not just following the lead of their Iranian supporters. Opposition to Israel has always been central to Houthi ideology. The Houthi motto is, “All-h Is Great, Death to America, Death to Israel, A Curse Upon the Jews, Victory to Islam.”
THE HOUTHIS ARE NOT DEPENDENT ON IRAN’S SUPPORT
Also, unlike Iran’s other terrorist proxies, the Houthis are financially independent, raising their funds through taxing the people living under their rule in Yemen, and a sizable amount of smuggling income. The Houthis also practice a different type of Shiite Islam than that preached by the ayatollahs in Iran.
As a result, the bond between Iran and the Houthis is not one of master and proxy, but rather a coalition of convenience between two independent powers who happen to share the same set of enemies. It started in 2015, when Iran began shipping the Houthis its homemade drones and ballistic missiles with which to attack their common opponents, the Saudis and their Persian Gulf Sunni allies.
That arms supplier relationship between Iran and the Houthis has continued to this day. For example, this February the U.S. Central Command announced that it had intercepted a ship sailing from Iran to the Houthis that carried “medium-range ballistic missile components, explosives, unmanned underwater/surface vehicle components, military-grade communication and network equipment, anti-tank guided missile launcher assemblies, and other military components.”
The independence of the Houthis also means that, according to Wolf-Christian Paes, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, “If tomorrow you had, say, a regime change in Tehran or the government in Tehran decided to stop this [war against Israel], it doesn’t mean that necessarily the Houthis would stop.”
Paes adds that even though the Houthis “consider themselves to be part of the Axis of Resistance, this does not mean that they take their orders from Tehran.”
Paes also believes that “Being in constant conflict is actually strengthening [the Houthis] domestic cohesion,” because it serves as a welcome distraction for the Yemeni people who have been living for years in a state of humanitarian crisis. As Paes points out, “People are not asking so much about service delivery and the economy and all of that when you’re in [a state of] war.”
Taken all together, the Houthis may prove to be a more stubborn enemy than even Iran, given the fact that the sudden collapse of most of Iran’s Axis of Resistance has clearly shaken the confidence of its leadership. Israel’s recent victories combined with the sudden collapse of its Syrian ally, has prompted Iran’s leadership to step up its efforts to finally cross the nuclear weapons threshold to re-establish its lost influence over the region. At the same time, Israel’s destruction of Iran’s air defenses during its October 26 retaliatory attack has left Iran’s nuclear infrastructure much more vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack.
IRAN’S NUCLEAR PROGRAM AT A CROSSROADS
According to a report by veteran New York Times diplomatic reporter David Sanger, this new Middle East regional strategic situation has set off a vigorous internal debate during the last days of the Biden administration over the best way to prevent Iran from crossing that threshold. Its choices are between, “an openness to negotiations, or an attack on its nuclear enrichment program — overt or covert, or perhaps initiated by Israel.”
In an interview with CNN foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria, President Biden’s national security adviser said that there is a “real risk” that, with its Axis of Resistance in tatters and Donald Trump publicly threatening to reimpose his policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran by reimposing tough economic sanctions on Iranian oil exports, Iran’s leadership could decide that they may “need to go for a nuclear weapon right now.”
That concern is more than just speculation. The U.N.’s top nuclear inspector has confirmed that Iran has recently accelerated its efforts to produce large quantities of 60% enriched near-bomb-grade uranium which could be rapidly turned into a significant number of nuclear weapons.
Trump’s intentions concerning Iran were also discussed openly by his designated national security advisor Michael Walz, during a November interview with CNBC. He said, “The change you’re going to see [when Trump takes office on January 20] is more focus on Iran. ‘Maximum pressure’ not only will help stability in the Middle East, but it’ll help stability in the Russia-Ukraine theater as well, as Iran provides ballistic missiles and literally thousands and thousands of drones that are going into that theater.”
Biden’s national security advisor Sullivan also said during his CNN interview that he has also discussed Iran’s worrying surge in uranium enrichment with Trump’s incoming national security team, and with the Israeli leadership, which is once again considering launching a pre-emptive strike before Iran crosses the nuclear threshold. That was confirmed by a recent statement by recently fired Israeli defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who said that the Israeli military still has “a window to act against Iran” before it takes the last few steps needed to produce an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
On the other hand, New York Times reporter Sanger speculated that the recent change in the military balance of power between Israel and Iran in Israel’s favor could provide a powerful incentive for Iran to avoid an attack by returning to the negotiating table. Sanger notes that both “Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and Mr. Trump have voiced a willingness to negotiate a new nuclear deal, though neither has said a word about its terms.”
Former Bush administration Defense Department official Eric Edelman also suggests that Iran may be much more receptive to negotiating a new nuclear deal now because its leaders realize that it is “incredibly vulnerable. . . They now have coming to office a former [U.S.] president who they apparently tried to assassinate, and a prime minister in Israel who has every incentive to want to strike, partly to restore his own reputation.”
The combination of economic and diplomatic pressure, plus the new vulnerability of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure to attack could combine to create the last chance to end Iran’s nuclear program peacefully at the negotiating table.
WHY ISRAEL SHOULD WAIT FOR TRUMP TO TAKE OFFICE
Meanwhile, the Houthis do not seem to have been deterred at all by the Israeli and U.S. reprisals and have responded to them with mocking defiance. What is needed to deter the Houthis more effectively, Citrinowicz suggests, is a little patience, at least until Donald Trump re-enters the White House. At that point, Israel and the Trump administration could come up with a new strategy for dealing “a fatal blow to the [Houthi] leadership . . . [by] work[ing] together with the countries of the region, and certainly the Saudis.”
By forming a more assertive coalition against the Houthis, Israel and the U.S. could keep up a high-tempo bombing campaign that could really hurt the Houthis, similar to what Israel did to Hezbollah. They could also target the Houthi leaders for assassination, driving the survivors underground and seriously disrupting their military organization’s command and control.
Another way to neutralize the Houthi threat would be by enforcing a blockade on the flow of Iranian missiles and drones that the Houthis have been using to launch their attacks.
As Paes notes, “Every missile that doesn’t make it to the Houthis doesn’t need to be defended against. Smuggling a ballistic missile is not easy, certainly not on a [a vessel the size of a primitive Red Sea] dhow.”
But failing to come up with a more effective strategy to stop the Houthi attacks now means that the threat that it poses will only grow over time. “Even if the war in Gaza ends tomorrow, the genie is out of the bottle,” said Citrinowicz. “They’ll attack the Saudis tomorrow, and the next day they will attack Israel again over something that happens in the West Bank. They will do it again and again,” until someone makes them stop.
