KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
The Middle East saw yet another escalatory episode over the weekend, as Israel and Yemen’s Houthis exchanged fire. On July 19, the Iran-backed Houthis launched an unprecedented drone attack on Israel, which hit an apartment building in downtown Tel Aviv, killing one and injuring at least 10 others. It was the first time that the Houthis killed or even harmed an Israeli, despite launching dozens of missile attacks on Israel since October 7. The next day, Israel struck back with an airstrike on the strategic port of Hodeida, marking the first time it attacked Yemen. The Israeli attack killed six, injured dozens more and left ablaze key oil facilities in the area.
USIP’s Garrett Nada, Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen and Robert Barron discuss the significance of these attacks and what might come next.
Nada: The deadly attack carried symbolic weight not only because it was the first time the Houthis killed an Israeli, but also because Tel Aviv had largely been spared attacks by Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis. Israel’s air defenses had previously shielded the economic and cultural center from nearly all sporadic strikes.
Since October 2023, the Houthi have launched more than 200 missiles and drones at Israel. The primary target has been Eilat, Israel’s southernmost city and a strategic port on the Red Sea. But nearly all of the Houthi weapons were intercepted or fell short.
The strike also proved that the Houthis could reach the Mediterranean Sea. They had claimed operations against ships in the Mediterranean in May 2024, but the attacks were not independently confirmed. For years, the Houthis have possessed several types of drones and missiles that could theoretically reach that far, but they had yet to prove the capability until the Tel Aviv strike.
Although the strike was an escalation, it did fit the overall pattern of Houthi attacks. The Houthis, like many of Iran’s militia allies in the Middle East, have specialized in asymmetric tactics that have helped them to challenge adversaries with more sophisticated arsenals and larger forces. The strike on Tel Aviv reflected Houthi resourcefulness and how even Israel’s advanced, multilayer air defenses are not impenetrable.
Although the strike was an escalation, it did fit the overall pattern of Houthi attacks.
The drone that traveled from Yemen to Israel was not particularly sophisticated. It appeared to be a modified version of the Samad-3 drone, which was introduced in 2019 and has been used against Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. The Houthis claimed that the drone used in the Tel Aviv strike was a new model with stealth capabilities, but experts said that small changes could have extended the drone’s range. It flew some 300 miles further than its known range, according to Israel.
The more novel aspect of the attack was the drone’s indirect 1,600-mile flight path. From Yemen, the drone traveled west over the Red Sea to Eritrea, then turned north and flew over Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea and then approached Tel Aviv from the west, according to an Israeli Air Force investigation. Israeli forces had also been more focused on attacks from the north by Hezbollah, from the east by Iraqi militias and from the south by the Houthis. So, an attack from the west was unusual.
The drone appeared on Israeli radar, was tracked for six minutes, but then dropped in and out. The air traffic control operator or operators did not flag the object and were busy tracking a drone launched from Iraq that approached from the east at the same time. Israeli warplanes downed that drone. In response to the Houthi attack, the Israeli Air Force has doubled the number of radar operators and increased aerial patrols.
The campaign against Israel is part of a wider Houthi campaign during the Gaza war that included more than 190 attacks on commercial vessels and U.S. Navy warships as of June 2024, according to the Pentagon. These attacks have raised the Houthis’ domestic and international profile.
For the Houthis, the bar for continued success is low. Traffic in the Red Sea was still down about 50 percent as of July 2024. The Houthis endured U.S.-led airstrikes in Yemen and appeared to be undeterred. The handful of successful attacks on ships and, most recently, Israel, were additional boons.
Still, the Houthis have only sunk or severely damaged a handful of commercial vessels thanks in large part to U.S. warships that have intercepted incoming missiles and drones
Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: Amid the ongoing war in Gaza, precipitated by Hamas’ October 7 surprise attack; the risk of a full-blown war with Hezbollah on the northern border; and a litany of attempted but, until last week, largely intercepted drone and missile strikes on Israel by the Houthis, Israel was faced with a stark calculation by this attack.
For Israel, a combination of Hamas, Hezbollah and now — from further afield — Houthi threats, is a further manifestation of what the Israelis have termed Iran’s “ring of fire” around the country — an Iranian strategy of arming and training proxies and partners to threaten Israel at arm’s length from its own direct involvement. Israel is already contending with approximately 60,000 Israeli residents still displaced from the north since October 7 — an evacuation decision initially taken by the government in order to provide protection from a potential Hamas-style onslaught of the northern communities by Hezbollah, but now leaving a three-mile zone of primarily military targets for Hezbollah to train its sites on. Additionally, tens of thousands of its population remain displaced from the country’s southern communities near Gaza.
Israel is contending with the dual challenge of not exacerbating an existing sense of insecurity among its own public while reestablishing deterrence.
In this context, Israel is contending with the dual challenge of not exacerbating an existing sense of insecurity among its own public while reestablishing deterrence against emboldened Iranian proxies and, by extension, Iran. Viewed in this light, Israel’s decision to strike the Hodeida port in the wake of the drone attack on Tel Aviv could be viewed as designed to meet both a tactical and strategic goal.
In the former case, Israel’s direct hits on what it described as “military targets of the Houthi terror regime” at the port targeted the entry point for Iranian-supplied weapons to the group. In the latter case, Israel sending fighter jets to strike over 1,600 miles from its borders could serve to send a clear message of deterrence and perhaps warning to Iran that its reach remains long and accurate, and that neither its appetite nor capacity to protect its borders is diminished.
Indeed, in the wake of its retaliatory strike, Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, made it clear in his remarks that the action was a message to the region: “The Houthis attacked us over 200 times. The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required."
Barron: In its 30-year history, the Houthi movement has been mostly a Yemeni domestic actor, strong but localized in its power and aims. For more than a decade, the Houthi insurgency has been one part of the Iranian-Saudi regional proxy struggle — receiving arms from Iran and occasionally attacking targets in Saudi Arabia and the UAE — but has been considered a bit of a side-show by many. As a resource-constrained, primarily Yemeni domestic actor, the Houthis have not been viewed as a powerful pillar in Iran’s strategy to create a regional “axis of resistance” against the U.S., Israel and Western-aligned partners.
The Gaza War has changed that. Since the war began, the Houthi strategy of attacking ships in the Red Sea as retribution has raised the group’s profile immensely. The Houthis have demonstrated they can wreak havoc on global trade flows and distract Iran’s regional rivals in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel and the United States.
Yemen’s strategic location and the Houthis’ potential to gain control of the entire country have seemed to have raised the group’s stock in Tehran. Going forward, questions abound around how the Houthis will leverage the tools gained during this period in the future; whether Iran will place greater emphasis on Yemen in its “Axis of Resistance” and see the Houthis as complimentary to Lebanon’s Hezbollah; and how other regional actors (Saudi, UAE, Israel, the United States, etc.) will counter.
For Israel, the Houthis’ gains and maneuvers are unwelcome developments in the cascade of crises and dilemmas that have accompanied the war. On the one hand, the Houthis are 1,000 miles away and not the greatest security threat Israel faces, with Hamas, West Bank stability and Hezbollah being higher priorities. But on the other hand, a stronger foothold for Iran in Yemen and more advanced technology in the hands of the group represent “over the horizon” threats of greater consequence than Friday’s drone strike in Tel Aviv.
The Houthis’ gains and maneuvers are unwelcome developments in the cascade of crises and dilemmas that have accompanied the war.
Following the attack, the Israel Defense Forces put out a statement saying that “we are fighting a multi front war. Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the militias in Iraq and Syria, as well as the Houthis in Yemen, all the Iranian proxies, and Iran itself.” Israel will find common cause against these threats in Arab Gulf and Western capitals — where all are viewed with similar hostility — but it may also be a tight-rope: Israeli, U.S. and Gulf attacks playing into Houthi and Iranian messaging around anti-imperialism and resistance.
Whether, and how, an alliance to counter Iran and its proxies can emerge is a central question for the months ahead. The April 2024 exchange between Iran and Israel — in which Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Jordan assisted in countering Iran’s attack — was seen by some as a “new paradigm” in regional alignment. But whether something broader and more concrete that can address threats — from Iran, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and beyond — can be developed in the context and aftermath of the Gaza War is anyone’s guess.