Houthis attack Israel and announce ban on Israeli vessels in the Red Sea

On June 8, Yemen’s Houthis fired missiles at central Israel as the Jewish state and Iran exchanged fire for the first time since the April 7 ceasefire between the US, Israel, and Iran. The Yemeni terrorist group launched two missiles, one of which was intercepted and one of which fell short. The Houthis claimed to be targeting sites in the Tel Aviv area. Iran fired multiple missile barrages at Israel in the early hours of June 8 in response to an Israeli strike against Hezbollah in Beirut’s southern suburb of Dahiyeh on June 7.

In a statement after the attack, Yahya Saree, the Yemeni group’s military spokesperson, also announced “a complete and total ban on maritime navigation on the Israeli enemy in the Red Sea,” further stating, “We consider that all movements of the enemy to be a military target from the announcement of this statement.” Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) Commander Esmail Qaani had threatened to close the Bab al Maneb Strait, the vital strategic Red Sea chokepoint, in early June. The Houthis previously enacted a blockade on Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat and targeted vessels connected to Israel during the war in Gaza. However, the group had also targeted vessels without ties to Israel or with vague or distant connections.

Saree described the Houthis’ attack and blockade as “in the context of confronting American-Zionist aggression, and in line with the jihad and resistance axis in Iran, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen, and in rejection of the Zionist project seeking to establish ‘Greater Israel’ under the so-called ‘New Middle East,’ which the American enemy seeks to impose upon the peoples of the region, and in pursuit of breaking the unjust and oppressive [US] blockade [on Iranian shipping in the Strait of Hormuz], and within the framework of the principle of unity of fronts and confronting the enemies, and in response to the Zionist aggression against Lebanon, Gaza, and Iran.”

In a speech on June 5, the Houthis’ leader, Abdulmalik al Houthi, reiterated that the Yemeni terror group is in “full coordination” with the other elements of the Axis of Resistance—Iran and its proxies in Lebanon, Iraq, and Gaza.

The Houthis were previously slow to join the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, only attacking Israel on March 28, a month after fighting began. They also opted not to close the Bab al Mandeb Strait at that time, despite threats from the Iranians and their Yemeni partners that such an escalation was a possibility. In recent statements during the ceasefire, Abdulmalik al Houthi has focused on fighting in Lebanon and the situation in Gaza as rallying points for his group to a greater extent than the US-Israeli confrontation with Iran, though he still expresses the Houthis’ support for the Islamic Republic.

Bridget Toomey is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies focusing on Iranian proxies, specifically Iraqi militias and the Houthis.