The Houthis’ restrained response to the U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran from its launch on February 28 until March 28, when they finally fired at Israel, has raised pointed questions about the group’s decision-making and true priorities. Their fiery public rhetoric sat in stark contrast to their measured behavior on the ground, and that gap warranted closer scrutiny. Even after launching two missiles at Israel a month after the campaign began, a central question remains: Are the Houthis more committed to their “resistance” ideology or self-preservation?
The Houthis’ words and deeds from the moment marking a shift in the group’s policy and actions shed light on its thinking. At 11:40 PM on March 27, the Houthis warned once more that “our fingers are on the trigger” and claimed they would act in the face of further provocations. Roughly seven hours later, without any dramatic shift in the trajectory of the campaign against Iran, the Houthis launched a ballistic missile at an Israeli military site and claimed responsibility, vowing to continue “until the declared objectives are achieved.” Israeli missile defenses intercepted the ballistic missile, and no casualties were reported. Later that afternoon, the group launched a cruise missile that was also intercepted. The speed of shift in policy and the absence of a clear trigger suggest the group had been pressured into acting haphazardly.
The Houthis framed their intervention as a response to aggression against the entire axis (Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinians), hoping that the inclusion of the Palestine issue would earn their action greater legitimacy both at home and abroad. They also made clear they would not strike Arab countries, and called on the United States and Israel to respond constructively to diplomatic efforts aimed at halting hostilities against Iran. These signals suggest the strike was designed above all to strengthen Iran’s bargaining position in any forthcoming negotiations, while demonstrating loyalty to a regime whose continued patronage the Houthis are keen to secure. Yet the relatively limited scale of the strikes points to a careful balancing act: the Houthis sought to show commitment to the axis without provoking a level of Israeli retaliation severe enough to deepen Yemen’s already dire economic crisis. While they presumably expect some form of Israeli response, they are likely bracing for an exchange they hope will remain limited. To deter Israel from escalating, they may threaten to disturb freedom of navigation through the Bab El Mandab strait.
For all their caution and calculation, the Houthis are first and foremost a religious-ideological organization. The group’s supreme leader, Abdelmalek al-Houthi, addresses the public in the language of an extreme activist Zaydi doctrine, and the movement organizes celebrations around religious and political “resistance” holidays. Beyond the leader’s speeches, the Houthis disseminate their ideology through indoctrination in schools, universities, and summer camps, often accompanied by some form of military training. Now that the group controls northern Yemen and its roughly twenty million residents, this ideology has also become the organizing principle of its political system. The supreme leader sits as the unofficial head of state, presiding over both the bureaucratic government and the parallel shadow regime established to ensure loyalty.
One can reasonably assume that the Houthi regime’s leaders and fighters understand the personal risks their roles entail. From the outset of the group’s armed revolt against the Yemeni government in 2004, numerous members of the extended al-Houthi family were killed in the first summer of fighting alone. Many more have died since, and more may die in the future.
Yet while the Houthis celebrate martyrdom on their websites, Telegram channels, videos, and posters, they do not, generally speaking, actively seek death. In fact, they go to significant lengths to avoid it: They conceal their military installations, weaponry, and personnel to maintain their ability to harm their adversaries and protect themselves. This might be termed a “best-effort” approach: a readiness to die in a high-risk ideological war aimed at inflicting damage on the enemy, paired with every reasonable effort to survive and fight another day.
While the deaths of individuals are an accepted risk and sacrifice of the “resistance” project, high-level assassinations can still undermine the organization’s image and operational capacity. That explains why the Houthis go to great lengths to stage-manage such losses, sometimes concealing the death of a senior official for an extended period and announcing it only once a replacement has been appointed. The goal is to project stability and deter any individuals or groups that might be emboldened by the organization’s losses to challenge it.
This distinction between the personal and the organizational is revealing. The death of an individual can be absorbed and even valorized: Much of the group’s rhetoric centers on its founder, Husayn al-Houthi, who was killed in 2004. The defeat of the organization itself, however, is an entirely different matter.
Even this group steeped in the culture of martyrdom prioritizes its organizational survival above most other considerations. Doctrine may dictate that certain “red lines” (core principles such as refusing peace with Israel) cannot be crossed regardless of cost. But beyond those inviolable commitments, if faced with existential decisions, the group will likely choose the path that allows it to live to fight another day.
Despite their classification as a Shia movement, the Houthis’ Zaydi theology rejects the Twelver Shia principle of Taqiyya, defined as “concealing one’s belief and foregoing ordinary religious duties when under threat of death or injury.” Zaydism instead endorses a more activist and confrontational expression of faith (oriented around the obligation to oppose injustice), and this approach was strongly emphasized by the revisionist theology of Husayn al-Houthi. Yet, strategic withdrawal in the name of survival, drawing on the Islamic precedent of the Hudaybiyya agreement of the Prophet Muhammad, is not entirely foreign to the movement. In a recent Ramadan lecture, Abdelmalek al-Houthi himself appeared to promote this idea by holding up Moses’ flight from Pharaoh’s Egypt as a model of escaping danger in order to survive and fulfill a divine mission.
Fighting the U.S. and Israel alongside the other members of the “axis of resistance” is certainly aligned with the group’s ideology. But doing so in every single conflict between the axis and its enemies does not appear to be one of those inviolable principles that mandate participation even at the risk of organizational destruction. Indeed, the group’s relationship with Iran had not compelled either side to intervene on the other’s behalf in previous rounds of fighting. That said, the group’s recent decision to come to Iran’s defense by attacking Israel indicates that it believes it can thread the needle between managing its dismal internal state and maintaining its role within the axis.
However, one should not mistake a strategic calculation for moderation: the Houthis are extremist radicals who would not hesitate to target anyone who opposes them. Caution and calculation serve their ideology, rather than marking a departure from it. With that in mind, the group is best described as survival-first ideologues.
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