Ansar Allah, the armed movement from Yemen’s north widely known as the Houthis, drove the internationally recognized Yemeni government out of the capital, Sana’a, in 2014, and since then has been adapting the country’s existing republican political structures to its interests. That the Houthis are adherents of the Zaidi sect of Shia Islam has invited comparisons of the movement’s actions to the Iranian regime and the establishment of the Islamic republic following the fall of the monarchy in Tehran in 1979. Some Houthi adversaries have gone as far as alleging that the Houthis have converted to Twelver Shiism, seek to remodel Yemen along Iranian Twelver lines and to become themselves a Yemeni version of Lebanon’s Hezbollah. The available evidence does not bear out these accusations, but instead points to a relationship between Tehran and the Houthis that is far more nuanced. What this relationship is and what it is not, with its domestic, regional and international complexities, can be clarified somewhat by analyzing the ideological and theological underpinnings of both groups, and the power structures that currently govern Sana’a and large parts of northern Yemen. A preliminary reading of the structure of the Houthi regime and an examination of its discourse and imagery shows that the Houthis are in part indebted to the Islamic Republic of Iran for establishing a body of language, symbols of resistance and revolution, as well as an organizational structure to draw on. The following paper examines this, as well as how the ideology of revolution, with its basis in Shia theological concepts and the realities of the regional order, underpins the connections between the Houthis and Iran. This paper does not, however, examine the extent of direct Iranian involvement in the Yemen War, which is the subject of much dispute. International reports have alleged that Iran is involved in illegally supplying the Houthis with arms, fuel and money. Attempts by various media and political actors to describe the conflict, now in its fifth year, as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran usually overlook the Houthis’ other means of support in Yemen. For instance, on the financial front, the UN Panel of Experts on Yemen estimated the Houthis had access to a minimum of 407 billion Yemeni rials (US$1.62 billion at the fixed rate in 2017, the time of the research) annually from the national economy in areas they control, and that they generate revenues from taxes and customs, telecommunications, blackmail of merchants and fuel trading on the black market. Thus, while the authors acknowledge that an assessment of any direct command-and-control links between Tehran and the Houthis deserves greater research, it is beyond the scope of this article.
Almahfali, M. & Root, J (2020, February). How Iran’s Islamic revolution does, and does not, influence Houthi rule in northern Yemen. Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies. https://sanaacenter.org/publications/analysis/9050.