Abdul Malik al-Houthi, an elusive figure who commands a battle-hardened force, scored his biggest military victory in years when his Iran-aligned Houthi militant group swept through Yemen’s Red Sea coastline and tightened their grip on a vital shipping waterway, rattling oil superpower Saudi Arabia.
The offensive, which has been accompanied by attacks on Saudi Arabia, has put the Houthis in a strong position to call the shots in the Bab el-Mandeb strait by potentially halting global trade in one of the world’s most important conduits for goods and commodities, including oil.
Al-Houthi has transformed his men, fierce mountain fighters often in sandals and hooked on the green leaf stimulant khat, into a force of tens of thousands who withstood years of air strikes by a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen’s civil war and built an arsenal including drones and ballistic missiles.
A 2022 UN-brokered truce halted heavy fighting in the war but failed to lead to a lasting settlement in the impoverished country.