Houthi Commander Abdul Malik al-Houthi Rises as Red Sea Offensive Reshapes Yemen Conflict

Abdul Malik al-Houthi, the reclusive commander of Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement, has scored his most significant military victory in years. His forces swept through Yemen's Red Sea coastline, tightening their hold on a vital shipping waterway and unsettling oil giant Saudi Arabia.

The offensive, accompanied by attacks on Saudi territory, has positioned the Houthis to dictate terms in the Bab el-Mandeb strait — a chokepoint for global trade, including oil. Al-Houthi has transformed his fighters, once fierce mountain combatants often seen in sandals and chewing the stimulant qat, into a force of tens of thousands. They withstood years of airstrikes by a Saudi-led coalition and built an arsenal that includes drones and ballistic missiles.

A 2022 UN-brokered truce halted heavy fighting but failed to produce a lasting settlement in the impoverished country. The following year, al-Houthi's militants began disrupting Red Sea shipping in support of Palestinians during the Gaza war. They have now opened another front in the Middle East conflict, handing strategic leverage to Iran after it had already effectively closed off the Strait of Hormuz.

As the group's head, al-Houthi has emerged as Iran's most prominent and resilient Arab ally after Israel killed the leaders of Lebanon's Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas. He remained defiant despite U.S. military retaliation for attacks on shipping during the Gaza fighting. He threatened military action if the U.S. and Israel sought to displace Palestinians from Gaza and called President Donald Trump a criminal.

"We reaffirm our steadfast position against American and Israeli-Zionist tyranny, which targets our entire nation under the banner of 'changing the Middle East'," he said in August in a speech marking the Prophet Mohammad's birthday.

In another speech during the Gaza war, al-Houthi, wearing a traditional Yemeni dagger, described Israel's blockade of Gaza as a crime against humanity and accused Arab and other Muslim states of inaction.

Al-Houthi has survived in a country with a history of shifting alliances. After former president Ali Abdullah Saleh switched sides in the civil war, abandoning his Houthi allies for a Saudi-led coalition, Houthi fighters stopped his armoured vehicle with a rocket-propelled grenade in an ambush and shot him dead, sources said at the time.

Since the civil war began — widely seen as a proxy conflict between Riyadh and Tehran — foreign officials who dealt with al-Houthi are not known to have met him in person, according to a source familiar with the matter. Many seeking meetings were asked to travel to the Houthi stronghold of Sanaa, where a security convoy would take them to safe houses and conduct checks before leading them to an upstairs room. There, fearing assassination, al-Houthi would appear only on a screen.

The Houthi movement was formed to fight for the interests of the Zaydi Shi'ites, a minority sect that ruled a 1,000-year-old kingdom in Yemen until 1962 but felt marginalised during the 1990-2012 rule of Saleh, unified Yemen's first president. The Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran, saying they fight a corrupt system in Yemen and regional aggression. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse Tehran of arming and training them, which Tehran denies.

The civil war killed tens of thousands, devastated Yemen's economy and left millions hungry. During its most intense phase, the Houthis launched attacks on Saudi Arabia. In January 2022, they also fired a missile at a commercial hub in the United Arab Emirates. In a 2022 speech, al-Houthi said his goal was to strike any target in Saudi Arabia or the UAE, both U.S. allies and major oil producers that view Iran and its proxies as major security threats.

Al-Houthi, who traces his lineage to the Prophet Mohammad, has asserted that his movement is under siege because of its religion. "We must focus on preserving the authenticity of our Islamic affiliation and identity," he once said.

With al-Houthi largely out of public view, his military spokesman, Yahya Saree, has become the public face of the movement. Standing rigidly in uniform, Saree reads statements in a theatrical cadence, stretching certain words and sharply raising his voice for emphasis. The distinctive delivery has made him instantly recognisable across the region.

In 2024, Saree earned a master's degree in diplomacy and international relations from the Yemeni Academy for Graduate Studies, according to Houthi websites and his personal account on X. His thesis subject was close to his day job: "The Threat of the Israeli Presence in the Red Sea to the National Security of the Republic of Yemen, 2010–2022."

In a statement on September 13, he declared: "We affirm to the criminal Saudi enemy that the continuation of its aggression against our people will be met with more severe and larger operations deep inside its territory, and the consequences will be dire, God willing."