
What did Houthis achieve in 18 months of attacks on the Red Sea?
He praised the decision of the Houthis, who rule large swathes of northwestern Yemen, including the capital, to militarily respond to Israel's war on Gaza.
'We didn't stop the Israeli aggression, but we posed a big threat,' Abdul Kareem told Middle East Eye. 'Silence on such Israeli barbarism is shameful.'
In November 2023, a month after Israel began pummelling Gaza, the Houthis started a drone and missile campaign targeting what they claimed were Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea.
The action, launched in solidarity with Palestinians, resulted in the biggest disruption to global trade since the Covid-19 pandemic.
New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch
Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters
Over the course of 18 months, the Houthis carried out attacks on over 250 military and commercial ships.
Fearing bombardment, vessels travelling from Europe to Asia avoided the traditional Suez Canal route leading to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
Instead, they opted for the lengthier and more expensive route around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. As a result, maritime traffic in the Gulf of Aden dropped 70 percent in two years.
The enormous trade disruption gave the Houthis leverage in the international arena. But it was also used by successive US administrations as a pretext for relentless attacks on Yemen.
The maritime campaign appears to be over - for now, at least.
This week, in exchange for the US ceasing air strikes on Yemen, the Houthis agreed to stop attacking vessels (though attacks on Israeli ships and territory will continue).
By opening a maritime front in the war, the Houthis gained domestic popularity and a fearsome international reputation. But for many Yemenis, it came at a brutal cost.
Military gains
Military action in solidarity with Palestinians, both in international waters and via long-range missile strikes on Israel, has been a key domestic publicity tool for the Houthis.
That popularity has led to a highly effective military recruitment drive.
'The Houthis capitalised on the attacks against ships and on Israel to increase recruitment in held areas, exploiting the narrative of the fight against Israel and the US,' Eleonora Ardemagni, a senior associate research fellow at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies, told MEE.
The number of Houthi fighters has grown from 220,000 in 2022 to 350,000 in 2024, according to UN experts.
Ardemagni, an expert on Yemeni armed groups, found in a recent report that since 7 October 2023, there had been an uptick in children being targeted by Houthis for recruitment. This has occurred through revised school curricula and summer camps, some of which normalised militarism and violence.
The campaign has also given the group, which has no shortage of foes both domestically and internationally, opportunities to deploy new weaponry and enhance its operational readiness.
'Fighting against Yemen is not an easy adventure'
- Ali, Houthi field commander
The Houthis have tested their use of ballistic and cruise missiles over the past year and a half, as well as uncrewed aircraft and boats.
Ali, a Houthi military field commander in the northern al-Jawf region, believes that US President Donald Trump has been taught a big lesson since launching an offensive on Yemen in March.
'When Trump began the aerial campaign, he said he would annihilate us,' Ali told MEE. 'Now he has ordered the military to stop the air strikes. Fighting against Yemen is not an easy adventure.'
Ali noted that since mid-March, the Houthis had downed seven US MQ-9 Reaper drones and two fighter jets.
'Such a loss was not envisioned in Washington,' he said.
Expanded global networks
With a mixture of Iranian arms and locally produced drones and missiles, the Houthis have put up serious resistance against much more costly American missile systems.
That has earned the Houthis recognition and influence in Iran's so-called "axis of resistance" and beyond.
'The Red Sea attacks promoted the Houthis as a key regional player,' Mohammed al-Samei, a Taiz-based researcher and journalist, told MEE.
As well as reputational benefits, the maritime campaign helped the Houthis build tangible military and financial links with neighbouring partners.
'Russia intensified political and military contacts with the Houthis'
- Eleonora Ardemagni, research fellow
'Because of the Red Sea attacks, they also expanded their network of partners in Iraq and, most of all, in the Horn of Africa - thus shaping weapons-driven ties with actors close for geography, respectively, to the Mediterranean Sea and to the Arabian Sea,' said Ardemagni.
Cooperation was not limited to Iranian-aligned actors, but also included Sunni militant groups such as al-Shabaab in Somalia and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
'Russia also intensified political and military contacts with the Houthis after late 2023,' Ardemagni added.
That activity consisted of delegations between the two sides, Russian intelligence presence in the Houthi-held areas of Yemen, as well as the sharing of Russian satellite data in relation to shipping.
'Attacks were intangible'
Not all Yemenis have supported the Houthis' decision to put the country on a global war footing.
The poorest country in the Middle East has already been battered by over a decade of civil war.
Since the Houthis drove the internationally recognised government out of Sanaa in 2014, the country has remained fractured between rival factions backed by different foreign actors.
While a tentative ceasefire was agreed last year, wider peace talks remained stalled and threatened to unravel amid the Red Sea escalation.
'The Houthi attacks on the Red Sea and Israel invited fresh evil to our country again,' Saleh Taher, a university lecturer in Sanaa, told MEE. 'Recovering from the consequences will take decades.'
'Unspeakable cruelty': Yemeni civilians recount horror of US air strikes Read More »
Samei said the Houthis' campaign failed to alter events in Gaza materially.
'The magnitude of the Israeli brutality committed against Palestinians has not changed,' he said. 'Gaza did not benefit from the Houthi intervention.'
Meanwhile, the costs inside Yemen of military escalation have been devastating. Israeli and American strikes have killed and wounded hundreds of civilians. It has also caused widespread infrastructure damage.
An Israeli strike on Sanaa airport this week was estimated to have cost up to $500m in damage, Houthi authorities estimated.
The re-routing of shipping away from the Red Sea also exacerbated food insecurity in Yemen, a country where more than half of the population relies on humanitarian aid.
While some Yemenis backed the Red Sea campaign as a bold act of resistance, others were critical of the costs.
A 2024 survey by the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies found that 76 percent of respondents believed the Houthi attacks would hurt prospects for peace in the broader civil war.
And while the Houthi reputation may have improved among some regional actors, it remains fraught elsewhere.
The group has been re-designated as a terrorist organisation by the United States, further isolating them diplomatically and economically.
Still, in Sanaa, Abdul Kareem remains defiant.
'We knew we would pay the price,' he said. 'We understand that countering aggression is a demanding mission.'
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Gulf Today
2 hours ago
- Gulf Today
UAE begins pipeline project to ease Gaza water shortage
The UAE has begun construction on a major pipeline to carry desalinated water from Egypt to southern Gaza, according to multiple sources. Technical teams sent by the UAE have started transporting equipment needed for the project, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported on Wednesday. The nearly seven-kilometre (4.5-mile) pipeline aims to help alleviate what WAM described as a "water crisis" in the Gaza Strip. WAM said the UAE had launched "several initiatives to drill and rehabilitate potable water wells." Access to clean drinking water is extremely limited across Gaza, forcing its 2.4 million residents to rely on salty, often undrinkable water or irregular aid deliveries. More than 80 per cent of Gaza's water infrastructure has been damaged during the war between Israel and Hamas, according to estimates from the Palestinian Water Authority. After Israeli supply cuts, most Gazans rely on polluted wells or sporadic NGO water deliveries, hindered by limited aid access. "The water crisis in Gaza continues to deteriorate rapidly amid a severe fuel shortage, extensive infrastructure damage, and inaccessible water sources," said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The Deir Al Balah desalination plant in central Gaza resumed full operations at the weekend after being reconnected to the Israeli electricity grid for the first time since spring. Humanitarian organisations have been warning for months of an impending public health catastrophe, particularly in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of displaced people are sheltering. Agence France-Presse


Middle East Eye
2 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Most Americans do not support Israel's war on Gaza, polling shows
Not since 7 October 2023 has support for Israel among Americans been this low. In a dramatic 10 percentage point drop since a poll from September 2024, only 32 percent of Americans said they support Israel's war on Gaza, new Gallup polling results released on Tuesday showed. As of July 2025, 60 percent of Americans said they disapprove of Israel's military action, and 52 percent said they see Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a negative light - a significant shift from a year and a half ago. Netanyahu has also never been viewed this unfavourably in any of its previous polling stretching back to the 1990s, Gallup said, citing a "continued deterioration in his image". The International Criminal Court has an outstanding arrest warrant for Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters The decline in support for the war and for Netanyahu is mainly driven by those who identify as Democrats and Independents, the results showed. The vast majority of Republicans still back Israel and its leadership. The contrast is sharp. Among Democrats, only eight percent of respondents said they approved of Israel's military action. Among Independents, that figure rose to 25 percent. Among Republicans, 71 percent of respondents said they approved of what Israel was doing in Gaza. Of those with a positive opinion of Netanyahu - a total of 29 percent of survey respondents - 67 percent of them identify as Republicans, compared with 19 percent who are Independents, and nine percent who are Democrats. Most who support Netanyahu and the war on Gaza are white males aged 55 or older. They significantly outnumber women of the same race and age group. The lowest level of support for Israel and Netanyahu came from the 18-34 age group who identify as non-white. Their favourable opinions were in the single-digit percentages, creating a dramatic gap between them and older white men. All of this comes as several US allies around the world - backed by NGOs and the United Nations - have either strongly condemned Israel's conduct under Netanyahu or, in some cases, referred to it as a genocide, and mass protests in support of Palestinian rights have upended the US political landscape. Israel has killed over 60,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children. Gallup - a global analytics and advisory firm best known for its survey expertise - carried out a similar survey just a few weeks after the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel in October 2023, which sparked the war, and back in November 2023, half of the American public was on board with Israel's military response. " Since then, disapproval has outpaced approval in each survey, peaking at 55 percent in March 2024 before dipping to 48 percent in two readings later in the year," Gallup found. November 2023 was when South Africa filed its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice - a harbinger of what was to come. Iran Gallup also looked at American attitudes toward the Israeli bombing of Iran - an event US President Donald Trump termed "the 12-day war" last month. The questions posed by Gallup include the "US assist" to Israel, which consisted of bunker-busting bombings of Iran's three main nuclear sites. That was a one-day attack. A majority of 54 percent of Americans said they disagreed with the conflict with Iran. But only 18 percent of Republican respondents said they disapproved of the attacks, compared to 60 percent of Independents and 79 percent of Democrats. Starving child in Gaza was killed minutes after receiving aid, former US military contractor says Read More » An overwhelming 78 percent of Republicans said they were on board with the move, compared to just 31 percent of Independents and a mere 12 percent of Democrats, highlighting a drastic gap. This is despite Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, also having floated a possible attack on Iran, while carrying out heavy bombings of its proxies - the Houthis - in Yemen. Gallup did not include those who said they had no opinion on the matter. As for the demographics, it was once again white males aged 55 and older who made up the majority of support for Israeli and US attacks on Iran. Of those aged 18-34, only 15 percent felt the same. Respondents who identified as non-white did not appear to make up even one quarter of the support for any of the conflicts. The poll results are derived from a random sample of 1,002 adults, aged 18 and older, across all 50 US states, during the period from 7-21 July, Gallup said. The margin of error is +/- four percentage points.


Middle East Eye
3 hours ago
- Middle East Eye
Trump, Starmer, Macron: A theatre of inhumanity
The images are finally breaking through the propaganda fog. Starving children - ribs sharp beneath thinning skin - have made the front pages, from The Daily Express to The New York Times. Aid agencies are now echoing what Palestinians have been shouting for months: this is not a humanitarian crisis. It is a man-made famine. It is genocide, and it is being broadcast in real time. According to Doctors Without Borders, cases of severe malnutrition among children under five in Gaza have tripled in just two weeks. A quarter of the children and pregnant women examined were malnourished. Since May, famine deaths have surged - over 50 in the past week alone. The World Food Programme confirms Gaza receives just 12 percent of the food it needs. A third of the population is going days without eating. Babies are starving, mothers faint and aid convoys are shot at or turned away. Now, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) has issued an urgent alert: the "worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip". New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Famine thresholds for food consumption and acute malnutrition have already been breached. Starvation and disease are accelerating. Without immediate intervention, the outcome is clear: mass death. So how did the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world respond? With cruelty in three dialects. Social engineering at gunpoint US President Donald Trump delivered the blunt-force version: snarling, smirking and fundamentally uninterested in anything that cannot be monetised or golfed on. As skeletal children flickered across screens, Trump lied without blinking and denied there was a famine in Gaza. His team sabotaged ceasefire talks in Doha, blamed Hamas for selfishness and walked away - back to the clubhouse. Trump's indifference is total, playing golf while Gaza withers, he reveals the full rot of his worldview: entitlement, cruelty and a billionaire's disdain for those beneath him Hamas had proposed exactly what the international community demanded: UN-led food distribution, withdrawal of Israeli troops from civilian areas and a permanent ceasefire in exchange for hostages. But that was far too humane for Washington and Tel Aviv. They preferred their aid weaponised, their food politicised and their victims punished for surviving their tons of bombs. The so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a failed Israeli-American "humanitarian" scheme, was put in charge of feeding Gaza. Instead, it helped map out killing zones. Leaked documents detail $2bn "transit camps" to "re-educate" Palestinians - colonisation rebranded in PowerPoint - not relief, rather social engineering at gunpoint. Even Israel's military admits there was no evidence Hamas stole aid. Still, Gaza starves - not by accident, but by design. This is policy, and if anyone was still unsure, Netanyahu clarified: "In any path we choose, we will be forced to allow the entry of minimal humanitarian aid." Not enough. Not urgent. Minimal. Starvation, then, is not collateral; it is a strategy. Relief, drip-fed, outrage managed. This is rationed agony. Suffering, meted out with precision. Trump indifference Meanwhile, in Scotland, teeing off as Gaza collapsed, Trump was not only dodging genocide; he was running from Jeffrey Epstein's shadow. Palestinians - like the trailer park teens in Epstein's Rolodex - do not exist in Trump's gated universe. He sees only property values and dinner reservations. Everything else is expendable. Gaza famine: We hold British institutions accountable for enabling this horror Read More » Trump's indifference is total. Playing golf while Gaza withers, he reveals the full rot of his worldview: entitlement, cruelty and a billionaire's disdain for those beneath him. But he was not finished. Between rounds, Trump moaned: "We sent $60m… nobody acknowledged it… makes you feel a little bad." Apparently, Palestinians should send thank-you cards for the starvation, for the tents torched in the night and the children torn apart by US-made bombs. This is Trump's empathy: crumbs followed by tantrums - the logic of a mob boss. You clap or you get nothing. Trump does not just deny famine, he mocks it and downgrades it to "probably malnutrition". He lies again about Hamas stealing aid, even as Israeli officials admit otherwise. He wants praise for food that never arrived and impunity for the policies that blocked it. Then there is British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, the master of the soft veto. Where Trump bellows, Starmer tiptoes. While tens of thousands chanted for a ceasefire, he released a polished video offering to treat a few injured Palestinian children in Britain. A gesture? Or a stage prop? Behind the sober tone lies staggering complicity. Starmer has done nothing to stop arms exports to Israel, including F-35 jet components. He talks about airdrops as if tossing food from 3,000m is more than a photo op. These drops kill as often as they feed. Starmer plays the reasonable man - all poise, no pressure - as if a well-worded statement could hush the cries from Rafah When asked why Britain will not act, officials shrug: we must follow America. And yet, when Trump abandoned Ukraine, Britain led alone. The difference is not capability; it is will, or rather, its absence. What could Starmer do? Plenty: suspend arms exports, freeze Israeli assets, sanction GHF-linked firms, join South Africa's genocide case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and even recall the ambassador. He could say the word: genocide. But instead, he plays the reasonable man - all poise, no pressure - as if a well-worded statement could hush the cries from Rafah. He performs concern while the bodies accumulate just behind the curtain. Macron's illusion Then comes French President Emmanuel Macron, cloaked in silk and the language of peace while selling his illusion. He announced France would recognise a Palestinian state. Dramatic? Until you read the fine print: no borders, no capital, no end to occupation, no teeth. It is the same vision floated by Canada's prime minister: a "Zionist Palestinian state" - defanged, demilitarised and designed to grease normalisation deals with Arab states. It is not a state, but a hologram, a soundbite, a mirage. Gaza genocide: The West finds new language - but does nothing to stop Israel Read More » While the Israeli army storms the occupied West Bank, while the Israeli parliament pushes annexation, Macron offers paper recognition. His "support" is sleight of hand, a magician's flourish to distract while the real work of ethnic cleansing proceeds unimpeded. If Macron were serious, he would sanction Israel, freeze reserves in French banks, support the ICJ case and stop arresting French citizens protesting genocide. But seriousness was never the point; performance was. And now, Starmer is following suit, offering to recognise a Palestinian state - not as an unconditional right to the whole of occupied Palestinian land, but as a bargaining chip, dangled only if there is no ceasefire, to politely urge Israel to reconsider its course. Where Macron offered a mirage, Starmer offered a shadow of one - not solidarity, not strategy, just PR in slow motion. Trump sneers, Starmer stage-manages and Macron suavely deceives. As Gaza starves and aid workers plead for a ceasefire, these men deliver rehearsed lines, not rescue. They offer theatre in place of leadership, gestures in place of justice, and euphemisms in place of courage. While Israeli ministers call openly for Gaza's erasure, these men retreat behind velvet curtains, pose for cameras and nod gravely. They are not statesmen. They are performers. Their suits are tailored. Their cowardice, too. Trump is only different in style, not in substance. Where Macron and Starmer lacquer their complicity in diplomacy and euphemism, Trump bellows his out like a wrecking ball - no disguise, just arrogance live-streamed. But the core is the same: a shared, deliberate disregard for Palestinian life, a common indifference to suffering and a unity of inhumanity. The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.