Lhe war between Israel and Hamas now extends to the Red Sea. Since November, the Houthis, a Yemeni Shiite rebel group, have carried out at least twenty-eight attacks targeting commercial ships flying the flags of various nationalities in an attempt to impose a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. To respond, the United States launched a military operation in mid-December 2023 against the movement supported by Iran.
A renewed tension which raises fears of a regional conflagration. “Those who, in 2014, were still only a simple militia have developed, with the help of Tehran, a solid arsenal allowing them to multiply drone or missile fire targeting Israeli territory, or targeting civil and military buildings”, explained Elise Vincent in the pages of World, on January 13, 2024.
Taking their name from the Al-Houthi family clan, the Houthis, or Houthis (the two terms being used interchangeably), are the actors in a war which has ravaged Yemen since 2004. The political-military formation faces a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which supports the official Yemeni regime. In this deadly conflict, located on the country’s borders, international issues are added: the rivalry between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, driven by the Saudi Arabia-Iran confrontation, and now the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Tehran being the main supporter of the Lebanese Hezbollah, itself an ally of Hamas.
Iranian agenda
The history of the term “Houthi” in The world is indicative of the extent of the conflict in Yemen over the years. The first time the daily mentioned this group of insurgents, on August 25, 2009, was in a brief signed by Reuters reporting the death of around a hundred rebels killed by government forces in the province of Aram, in the north of country. “This assessment was denied by the spokesperson for the Houthi insurgents. »
A few weeks later, on September 11, 2009, in a column titled “Yemen, the forgotten war”, Gilles Paris returns to this “anonymous civil war” ignored by everyone. “This conflict (…) has undoubtedly already caused nearly 10,000 deaths and caused the displacement of thousands of people,” he writes. The journalist explains the roots. “President of the Yemeni Arab Republic (north) from 1978, then of reunified Yemen since 1990, the irremovable president Ali Abdallah Saleh accuses these rebels of wanting to overthrow his regime (…) and being manipulated by Iran. »
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