The Houthis think they can get legitimacy through negotiations, but haven’t given up on using drones and rockets.
Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have achieved many successes using drones and missiles in recent years. The US, Saudi Arabia and other countries have linked the Houthi drones and missiles to Iran over the past four years.
But the Houthi ambassador to Iran, Mohamed al-Dailami, who was appointed in 2019, gave an interview to Iran’s Tasnim News Agency this week. The Houthis had developed their own weapons and were not receiving drones from Iran, he said.
In January, a drone was spotted in Iran that could reach Israel, reports indicated, raising concerns that the Houthis might threaten Israel.
Western countries have been constantly discussing the issue of “Yemen resistance drones” and claiming that they are being sent on behalf of Iran, Dailami said.
“They forget that it is the Yemeni people who have resisted the attack and aggression of the Saudis and their allies,” he said. “They falsely claim that the Yemeni drones were given to them by the Iranians, and they make this claim while Yemen is completely under siege.”
In recent months, the Houthis have attacked Marib and have sought to exploit reduced US support for Saudi Arabia to pressure Riyadh to end its role in Yemen. Saudi Arabia intervened in Yemen in 2015 to prevent the Houthis from taking over the country.
The resistance of the Yemeni people against aggression is a “national duty,” Dailami said, adding that “the claims, lies, pressures, sanctions and aggression of the enemies will not change the iron will of the Yemeni people.”
He denied that the Houthis had received military equipment from Iran.
“In order to resist these enemies for the past seven years, Yemen has carried out extensive research and operational work, in addition to field battles, in advanced military equipment,” he said.
The Houthis will defeat the Saudis, Dailami said.
“What causes the aggressors to be pushed back is the patience of the Yemeni [Houthi] people,” he said. “They have [attained] very good achievements in the field, and this will sooner or later push back Saudi Arabia and its other partners and eventually turn to negotiations.”
The Houthis apparently think they can get legitimacy through negotiations. Saudi Arabia proposed a ceasefire in March, but the Houthis turned it down.