In 2025, Ari Heistein wrote, “Defeating the Houthis Will Require More Than Killing Their Chief.” A year later, we asked him to reflect on the Houthis’ Red Sea gains, the limits of killing leaders, and why another ceasefire would only buy them time to rearm.Image: Mehr News Agency via Wikimedia CommonsSince you wrote this piece, the Houthis have launched their most successful offensive in years, seizing much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. You described the group as a quasi-state with entrenched control over ports, the economy, and security services. How much of this recent battlefield success do you attribute to that institutional strength, and what does controlling more of the coastline mean for the threat they pose to international shipping?The Houthis’ unified control over the state and its institutions is one of their key advantages in the current fight. Controlling the state means controlling the economy — leverage that allows them to minimize dissent and maximize recruitment through a variety of means, despite what I estimate to be very limited popular support. They also aim to use that control to build genuine support over time through the indoctrination, radicalization, and military impressment of the millions of Yemeni children living under their rule.We also ought to acknowledge the battlefield advantages of a unified command structure operating under the Houthis’ chief of staff, Yusuf al Madani. The contrast with anti-Houthi forces is stark: The latter are a collection of strange bedfellows that do not appear to be well coordinated or even aligned on basic aims. The anti-Houthi coalition’s “team of rivals” dynamic, combined with the divide-and-rule political culture cultivated by the late strongman Ali Abdullah Saleh, breeds suspicion and existential competition rather than cooperation.As for the group’s expanded reach toward Bab al-Mandeb, I don’t see it as a game changer. It allows them
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In 2025, Ari Heistein wrote, “Defeating the Houthis Will Require More Than Killing Their Chief.” A year later, we asked him to reflect on the Houthis’ Red Sea gains, the limits of killing leaders, and why another ceasefire would only buy them time to rearm.
Image: Mehr News Agency via Wikimedia Commons
Since you wrote this piece, the Houthis have launched their most successful offensive in years, seizing much of Yemen’s Red Sea coast. You described the group as a quasi-state with entrenched control over ports, the economy, and security services. How much of this recent battlefield success do you…
