Yemen’s people and leaders are getting tired of the Houthi problem

The deputy chairman of the Presidential Leadership Council in Yemen has sounded the “alarm” about the continued Houthi threats to Yemen, according to an article at Al-Ain in the UAE.

The UAE has supported Abd al-Rahman al-Mahrami in the past. He spoke about the current Houthi threat in Aden while meeting with a UN envoy, the article said.

His comments come after a ship sank in the Red Sea after being hit by a Houthi missile two weeks ago. In addition, the Houthis continue to attack ships. He also said the “patience of the Presidential Command Council with the violations of the terrorist Houthi militia is running out, and that its support for the peaceful political option in the peace process will not last long.”

This means that some Yemenis are tired of the way the Houthis have hijacked the country to turn it into a platform for Iran and Iran’s proxy war against Israel, the US, and the region. “The [Houthi] militias’ continued hostilities towards the positions of the armed forces, the mobilization of fighters on various fronts, and the targeting of commercial ships and international shipping routes threaten to detonate the situation and undermine all peaceful efforts,” he said.

He also slammed the increase in smuggling of Iranian weapons to the Houthis. He says this violates a 2018 agreement and other trends that were supposed to bring peace to Yemen.

“The Yemeni vice president called on the United Nations and the international community to reconsider the seriousness of these militias in seeking peace and to exert a lot of pressure on them in any future settlement,” the Al-Ain article said.

Why are the comments significant?

The comments are important because the Houthis have had relative impunity until now to continue attacking ships and causing unprecedented damage to Yemen. Yemen is a poor country, but Iran seeks to use it as a platform to attack the region rather than help it prosper and bring peace.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have backed peace efforts after years of war that began in 2015 when the Houthis tried to take Aden. Now, it seems some Yemenis are tired of the negative attention the Houthis bring to the country.

Seth Frantzman is the author of Drone Wars: Pioneers, Killing Machine, Artificial Intelligence and the Battle for the Future (Bombardier 2021) and an adjunct fellow at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies.