Houthi Yemen: A Potent, Ramshackle Wild Card

The war that began on October 7 between the terrorist group Hamas and the state of Israel is many things. It is, of course, part of the Palestinian-Israeli struggle, but also a new episode in the history of Islamism and Islamist terrorist organizations. It is many other things. It is also a test, a test for Iran’s strategy of developing a diffuse network of proxies – states, militias, terrorist groups – which it can use to project power, against Israel and against the Americans and other adversaries. As such, it is a bloody “feasibility study” or deadly “proof of concept” in how this strategy actually works. During the last major confrontation between Israel and a major Iranian proxy – the Tammuz 2006 War between Hezbollah and Israel – the Iranian network was far less developed than it is today. In 2006 American troops were still in Iraq, Syria was whole and at peace, and the old dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh still ruled in Yemen.