Husiler Kendi Gündemini Dayatıyor: İran Uçağı ve Hudeyde Saldırısı

The Houthis are increasingly setting their own agenda

In early July, an Iranian civilian aircraft landed in Houthi-controlled Sana’a, breaching a Saudi air blockade in place for nearly a decade. Then, as the Saudi-led coalition publicly threatened strikes of "unprecedented force" against targets such as Hodeidah port and Sana’a airport, Houthi forces launched their deadliest ground assault in years south of Hodeidah, briefly overrunning government positions before a counterattack repelled them. The developments show what the war on Iran clarified about Yemen's Houthis: a movement long dismissed as a mere Iranian proxy has emerged as an increasingly autonomous partner of Tehran, calibrating its involvement in regional activism and consolidating its domestic power base. The faction launched its first attacks of the war on Israeli territory on March 28, a month after initial U.S.-Israeli airstrikes began. The Houthis then conducted limited strikes until the April 7 ceasefire, when it also paused its military actions. On June 8, as violence flared back up, the Houthis fired two missiles at Eilat and warned of a “total ban” on Israeli-linked commercial shipping on the Red Sea. Interestingly, the Houthis had until then refrained from deploying their greatest weapon: the campaign against Red Sea shipping that they pursued during Israel’s war on Gaza. That was despite Tehran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz as leverage against Washington. Israel's 2025 bombardment undoubtedly weakened the Houthis, hammering critical infrastructure, degrading its missile and drone capabilities and killing senior and political , leaving the movement under severe military and economic pressure, compounded by a U.S. terrorist designation and sanctions. However, weakness alone doesn’t explain the pattern. The Houthis’ initial restraint during the war also reflected that, rather than fully committing their assets to aid Iran, the movement prioritized investment into domestic control. The Houthis’ recent Hodeidah offensive makes that principle even more visible. Their use of force applied inside Yemen carries fewer risks with Washington and Riyadh than force applied at sea, which could jeopardize the diplomatic roadmap they have spent years securing. With that constraint in mind, the Houthis have prioritized consolidation. Prior to the latest flare-up in Hodeidah, the Houthis paraded their General Mobilization Force structure, modeled on Iran's Basij paramilitary militia and built to cement control and project an image of strength across its territories in northern Yemen. Since the Gaza ceasefire of late 2025, the Houthis have quietly rebuilt their missile capabilities and have even developed their domestic production capabilities in contrast to their past dependence on missiles produced in Iran. A May 2026 study by Conflict Armament Research, examining over 800 missile and UAV components recovered from Red Sea seizures in 2024 and 2025, described the shipments as self-assembly kits: Iranian-coordinated packages with Tehran's designs and designations, arriving in parts for assembly in Yemen. CAR asserts that this evidence indicates ongoing Iranian supply networks. The design makes the shipments harder to detect, thus helping to ensure a steady stream of components to the Houthis. And it requires a Houthi workforce able to turn crates of components into functioning anti-ship and air-defense weapons, suggesting that the group is expanding its technical capabilities. This dual dynamic — strategic value to Iran coupled with increasing Houthi autonomy — underpins the faction’s approach. They have been careful not to trade away their gains, including the Oman-brokered Houthi ceasefire with Washington in May 2025 to pause the Red Sea campaign. The late but eventual entry into the Iran war signals a view that their assets should be deployed on their own timetable. However, the group has already threatened Saudi Arabia, itself left vulnerable by Iranian strikes, and the Houthis are using that as leverage in Yemen’s stalled peace process — the U.N.-mediated roadmap, agreed in principle in late 2023, that envisioned Riyadh paying public-sector salaries, sharing oil revenue, and the reopening of Sana’a International Airport and Hodeidah port in exchange for a lasting ceasefire. The threat of renewed military action allows the Houthis to press Riyadh to implement those roadmap concessions that they might otherwise struggle to achieve through negotiations alone. And having watched Iran confidently threaten Hormuz instead of crumbling under U.S. pressure, the Houthis are likely to sense an opening of their own to threaten the Bab Al-Mandeb in the future. As Danny Citrinowicz, a prominent Iran analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Israel, has argued, the prospect of a joint Hormuz–Bab al-Mandeb blockade may increase the Houthis' strategic value from Tehran's perspective. Critically however, it may also strengthen the movement's leverage within that partnership, given the Houthis’ demonstrated ability to decide when and how to employ that threat. Citrinowicz also argues that Riyadh's détente with Tehran could limit the kingdom’s willingness to challenge Houthi rearmament, particularly if flights between Sana'a and Tehran become more frequent. That could leave Saudi Arabia in a strategic bind. The Houthis have repeatedly exploited Saudi risk aversion in the past, and a more constrained Riyadh would hand the movement additional leverage to extract concessions in Yemen's stalled peace process. Despite being broadly aligned with Iran in its confrontation with Israel and its claim to speak for the region's dispossessed, the group has older grievances of its own. The Houthis see themselves as heirs to the Zaydi imamate in northern Yemen that fell in 1962 and as champions of communities they argue were marginalized thereafter. This history helps explain why the movement’s regional activism is often deployed at its own convenience. Nowhere is that clearer than in the group's posture toward Israel's expanding footprint in the Horn of Africa. When Israel became the first country to formally recognize Somaliland in December 2025, followed by the gradual establishment of diplomatic ties between the two, the Houthis read it as encirclement. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi responded sharply, declaring in a televised address on June 25 that any Israeli presence or military activity in Somaliland would be a legitimate military target and that the Houthis would confront such developments "by all available means." After all, an Israeli foothold on the opposite shore threatens the Red Sea leverage on which the group's regional standing rests. Heightening those fears were reports that the United Arab Emirates has gradually built a military base in Somaliland, reinforcing perceptions of Abu Dhabi's increasingly close alignment with Israel and the United States during the Iran war. The war has confirmed that, while the Houthis remain aligned with Tehran and dependent on its supply networks, the faction is increasingly setting its own terms, while banking its gains rather than risking expending them needlessly. Today, Saudi Arabia lacks any appetite for war, the anti-Houthi camp is fractured, and Israel's confrontation with the group is unresolved. The likeliest outcome, therefore, is a continuation of Yemen’s current “no peace, no war” situation, in which the Houthis consolidate what they hold and cash in their leverage when it suits them. For Washington and Riyadh, the implication is uncomfortable. The fragile and increasingly tattered U.S.–Iran Memorandum of Understanding, which doesn’t mention the Houthis, has gifted the group breathing room to rebuild. And the Yemen war roadmap's concessions are no longer inducements to disarm. They are gains the Houthis expect to collect while keeping the Red Sea card in reserve.