The Houthis’ lightning advance across the southern reaches of the Tihamah – Yemen’s arid coastal plain – appears to have taken most observers by surprise.
Until recently, the anti-Houthi coalition known as the National Resistance held significant territory along Yemen’s Red Sea coast. In a matter of days, much of this has fallen to the Houthis.
According to some estimates, the Iranian-backed rebels have captured as much as 130km (81 miles) of the country’s strategically important coastline.
It’s the group’s most impressive military coup for several years, proving that despite a civil war that has lasted 12 years, devastating Saudi air raids and attacks by American, Israeli and British forces, the Houthis remain a force to be reckoned with.
With their opponents stunned and demoralised, it’s unlikely the Houthis will be dislodged any time soon.
“Now that they are there, they’re going to be entrenched,” Hisham al-Omeisi, senior analyst at the Brussels-based European Institute of Peace, told the BBC. “And it’s going to be a lot more costly to push them out.”
Of course, the Houthis are not alone. They enjoy the backing of Iran, support that has become even more important for Tehran in the wake of the setbacks and defeats experienced by other parts of its so-called “Axis of Resistance” – Lebanese Hezbollah, Hamas in Gaza and the Assad regime in Syria.
“So they redirected their support to the Houthis,” al-Omeisi said. “And of course they need that support.”
Even though most analysts agree that it’s a mistake simply to describe the Houthis as Iranian puppets, events of the past few days raise an uncomfortable new reality.
Seven months after the US and Israel launched their huge, combined assault on Iran, the regime in Tehran now exerts authority over not just one, but two of the world’s most important maritime passages: the Strait of Hormuz, at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, and the Bab al-Mandab, gateway to the Red Sea (and the Suez Canal).
“Now Iran, directly and through proxies, controls two of the most strategic choke points in the Middle East and the world,” says Farea al-Muslimi, a research fellow at London’s Chatham House think tank, “controlling more than 35% of the fuel and oil trade globally.”
“This is as much leverage as a nuclear bomb,” he says.
If the Houthis have also taken control of several key islands in the Red Sea, including Perim – which sits in the middle of the narrowest point of the Bab al-Mandab – then the group’s ability to interfere with international shipping will be greatly enhanced.
As the group’s actions in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza proved, shipping in the Red Sea is highly vulnerable to Houthi missiles, drones and small attack boats.
