"The Americans and the British must not believe that they will escape the punishment of our heroic armed forces... All U.S.-British interests have become legitimate targets."
These threats were made quite clear on Friday 12 January by the Houthis' Supreme Political Council, the Yemeni rebels' highest body, and relayed by their official media.
This is the armed group's response to the 73 strikes carried out overnight by the US and British armies against sites in Yemen, killing five people and wounding six, according to a toll put forward by the Houthi military spokesman.
The operation was carried out in response to several weeks of attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthis. Yemeni rebels say they are targeting Israeli-linked boats in "solidarity" with Palestinians in Gaza.
For their part, the United States, the United Kingdom and eight of their allies said in a joint statement on Friday that their goal is to "restore stability in the Red Sea."
Military Power
But the U.S.-British operation materializes fears of a regional spread of the war between Israel and Hamas, which is raging in the Gaza Strip.
Especially since "the Houthis have significant military means," recalls the correspondent of France 24 in Iran, Siavosh Ghazi.
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Airstrikes against the Houthis © France24
The military power of the group, described on Friday as "terrorist" by US President Joe Biden, was estimated several years ago at around 200,000 fighters, AFP recalls. Men who are well trained and accustomed to fighting in the arid and mountainous terrain of Yemen.
After seizing control of the capital Sanaa in 2014 and forcing the internationally recognised government to flee to the south, the Houthis have seized large swathes of the country, particularly in the north.
Born in the 1990s, this Shiite movement has already carried out attacks against Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both members of a coalition that has supported the Yemeni government against the Houthis since 2015.
Since then, their long-range missiles and drones have been considered a serious threat by neighbouring Gulf countries, and their opponents say are developed using Iranian technology.
But, with or without Iran's support, in terms of small projectiles and drones, "nothing is effective," notes Gauthier Rybinski, international columnist for France 24. "Everything related to propulsion can be cobbled together on site, including what can be found on the Internet, and the effectiveness of this kind of machine is quite proven."
With missiles with a range of sometimes more than 1000,<> km, the Houthis are not only targeting merchant ships, but also trying to target the Israeli port of Eliat, Ghazi said.
However, until now, Israeli air defenses have been able to intercept this type of attack without too much difficulty, Danilo delle Fave, a specialist in international security issues, said at the end of November.
'Iranisation' and the mullahs' sponsorship
In addition to their local strike force, the Houthis can count on the support of their Iranian ally. Tehran on Friday condemned airstrikes targeting rebel targets in Yemen, denouncing a "flagrant violation of the sovereignty" of the country.
The Houthis' affiliation to Shiite Islam is frequently cited as a reason for their closeness to Iran. But if it is a sectarian militia of Shiite obedience, their Shi'ism "is not exactly that of the Iranians. The latter are Twelver and the Houthis, Zaydis," corrects David Rigoulet-Roze, editor-in-chief of the magazine Orients Stratégiques (published by L'Harmattan).
This local version of Shiism "is not necessarily well perceived" by the regime of the Mullahs, abounds Gauthier Rybinski on the set of France 24.
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However, in recent years, "the confessionalization of the region, as well as geopolitical rivalries between Saudi Arabia and Iran, have fostered an increasingly marked rapprochement between the Houthis and Tehran, an 'Iranization' of Yemeni Shiism. As a result, the Yemeni agenda is increasingly indexed to the Iranian regional agenda," Rigoulet-Roze said.
This "Iranization" is also a matter of weapons, the spokesman for the US National Security Council reminds us on the other side of the Atlantic: "The Houthis pull the trigger but it is the Iranians who provide the gun," summarized John Kirby on CNN on Friday.
However, proximity to the mullahs' regime is not necessarily an additional factor of escalation, according to Danilo delle Fave of the International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS) Verona: "Tehran does not necessarily have an interest in maritime trade in the Suez Canal being disrupted too much, because some of the oil and gas that passes through it is destined for China, which is Iran's ally."
Popularity and "axis of resistance"
Grieving the deaths of thousands of fighters in a decade, the Houthis continue to attract young recruits to a country of about 30 million people, grappling with one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.
"The Houthis are mobilizing, along with other pro-Iranian proxies in the region such as Lebanon's Hezbollah (...) to participate in a broader way in what is described as 'Muqawama' ('resistance' in Arabic, editor's note) against Israel, in support of Hamas in its confrontation with the Israeli army," explains David Rigoulet-Roze.
By attacking ships linked to Israel and the United States in the Red Sea in the name of the Palestinian cause, the Houthis have gained global visibility and rallied their popular base both in Yemen and in neighboring countries, observers in the region of the world note.
In Yemen, hundreds of thousands of people responded to the Houthis' call to protest in Sanaa on Friday against strikes by the United States and the United Kingdom.
Crowds filled Sabyin Square in the heart of Sana'a. In a forest of Yemeni and Palestinian flags, one can make out the portrait of the leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, but above all, that of the Houthis: Abdelmalek al-Houthi, 44, the son of a prominent cleric, who became the leader of the movement after the death of his brother in 2004.
Over the course of two decades, this quiet man has transformed a group of rebels into a powerful militia that is now challenging the U.S. policeman in the Red Sea.
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