In early September 2026, Ansar Allah—better known as the Houthis in the West—launched its most consequential offensive in years. On September 3, the movement began diversionary attacks against government forces. By September 10, its fighters had seized Mokha, the historic Red Sea port city roughly 80 kilometers north of the Bab al-Mandeb strait. The following day, in what Euronews described as an 18-hour blitz, Ansar Allah forces swept through Dhubab and took Perim Island, which sits inside the strait itself, splitting it into 2 shipping channels, and then seized the Hanish Islands, an archipelago roughly 100 miles to the north. By mid-September, Ansar Allah forces controlled Yemen’s entire Red Sea coastline, Perim Island, and the Hanish Islands, covering approximately 5,400 square kilometers of newly gained territory.
These victories gave the movement commanding positions over the Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow passage carrying roughly 12 percent of world trade and serving as Saudi Arabia’s principal oil export artery since Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Ansar Allah remains the de facto authority in Sanaa and much of the populous west, while the internationally recognized government nominally administers other areas.
The advance increased the movement’s ability to threaten ships with shorter-range weapons, mines, drones, and boarding parties, and exposed the hollowness of the internationally recognized government’s military position. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally pressed President Trump for U.S. military strikes on Ansar Allah positions as they approached Mokha—a request Trump rejected, according to multiple U.S. outlets.
Behind Ansar Allah’s surprising geopolitical gains stands an ancient religious tradition. Zaydism is one of the 3 surviving major branches of Shia Islam, alongside Twelverism and Ismailism. Twelverism—the dominant branch, comprising the majority of Shia Muslims worldwide and the state religion of Iran—holds that authority passed through a line of 12 divinely appointed Imams, the last of whom went into occultation in 874 CE and is expected to return as a messianic figure at the end of times. Ismailism, sometimes called Sevener Shia, split from the Twelver line over which son of the sixth Imam was the rightful successor; its most prominent surviving branch today follows the Aga Khan as the living Imam.
Zaydism takes its name from Zayd ibn Ali, a great-great-grandson of the Prophet Muhammad through Ali and Fatima and through Husayn ibn Ali. Where Twelvers believe the Imam must be divinely appointed and Ismailis follow a hereditary living Imam, Zaydis hold that any learned descendant of Ali can lead by rising in arms against tyranny.
Zayd put that principle into practice when he rebelled against Umayyad Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik in Kufa on January 6, 740 CE. Zayd was wounded on the second day of fighting and died shortly after. Even Abu Hanifa, the founder of the largest school of Sunni jurisprudence, gave financial support to the revolt and called on others to join—an indication of how widely Zayd’s cause against Umayyad oppression was respected across sectarian lines.
Zaydism did not spring fully formed from that martyrdom. It took shape gradually, through centuries of theological refinement. Al-Qasim al-Rassi (785-860 CE) gave the movement its systematic theology and jurisprudence in the 9th century. His grandson, al-Hadi ila al-Haqq Yahya, carried that inheritance into governance, answering an invitation from Yemen’s highland tribes and establishing a Zaydi imamate at Saada in 897. He shaped the Hadawi school of doctrine and law that became the dominant expression of Yemeni Zaydism and that his descendants, the Rassid dynasty, maintained intermittently for more than a thousand years.
Zaydi states also appeared around the Caspian Sea in the same era, though those communities were eventually absorbed into Twelver Shiism, leaving Yemen as the tradition’s principal surviving home. Today Zaydis remain concentrated in the northern and northwestern highlands, in the belt running from Dhamar up through Sanaa, Amran, Hajjah, and al-Jawf toward Saada, precisely the heartland where Ansar Allah draws its deepest support.
For centuries, Zaydi imams ruled parts of northern Yemen through shifting alliances with tribes, their authority expanding and contracting as rival claimants and Ottoman interventions repeatedly disrupted the state. When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, Imam Yahya Muhammad Hamid al-Din moved quickly to fill the vacuum. He entered Sanaa in November 1918, consolidated control over the northern highlands, proclaimed the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen around 1920, and secured international recognition through the Treaty of Hudaydah in 1926, making it the first independent Arab state in the modern era.
The kingdom passed from Yahya, who was assassinated in 1948, to his son Ahmad bin Yahya, who ruled until his death on September 19, 1962. His son Muhammad al-Badr succeeded him but held power for only 8 days before republican officers, inspired by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Arab nationalism, staged a coup on September 26-27, 1962, toppling the final imam and establishing the Yemen Arab Republic. The coup provoked a civil war between Egyptian-supported republicans and Saudi-supported royalists that continued until the Yemen Arab Republic was recognized internationally in 1970. This was not a simple Sunni revolt against Zaydism, as northern Zaydi and tribal networks remained influential in the republican era.
What followed was a slow reawakening. Yemen’s unification in May 1990 joined the Zaydi-influenced north and the predominantly Shafi’i south, and the political pluralism that came with it created legal space for a Zaydi revival. Saudi-backed Salafi institutions simultaneously pushed into Saada and began displacing local religious customs, accelerating the process. Zaydi activists built parties, schools, and summer camps in response, and it was out of this milieu that Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi emerged—first as al-Haqq’s most prominent parliamentary representative from 1993 to 1997, then as the founder of the Believing Youth, a network explicitly designed as a Zaydi counterweight to Wahhabi youth organizations.
When President Ali Abdullah Saleh aligned with Washington after September 11, Hussein viewed that alignment as a civilizational betrayal of the north. The Yemeni government killed him in September 2004, triggering the first of 6 rounds of fighting between his movement and the state, the Saada Wars of 2004 to 2010. Each round that the government failed to win left the Houthis stronger and better armed. His relatives and lieutenants survived all 6, joined the 2011 popular uprising, and entered Sanaa in September 2014, building the authority that now governs most of northern Yemen, and controls the straits that connect the Red Sea to the world.
The Houthis remain a Zaydi-rooted movement but have built a broader coalition across sectarian lines. Their ideology combines Jarudi revivalism, Yemeni nationalism, tribal politics, and revolutionary symbolism. Jarudiyya is the branch of Zaydism closest to Twelver Shiism, which rejects the first 3 caliphs, holding that Ali’s succession was divinely designated.
They claim a privileged relationship with the Prophet’s family as sayyids, yet have recruited Shafi’i Sunnis and installed southern Sunni politicians in visible civilian posts, while appealing to Sunni communities through sovereignty, anti-corruption, anti-intervention, and pro-Palestinian solidarity messaging. Zaydi and Hashemite commanders retain control over intelligence, weapons, and strategic decisions. For their part, Sunni officials administer civilian affairs beneath a parallel network of Houthi supervisors
Contrary to the conventional wisdom espoused by Iran hawks in Washington and Tel Aviv, Ansar Allah is not merely an Iranian cut-out. The 1979 revolution offered Zaydi revivalists an example of a successful Islamic uprising against monarchy and Western power. Hussein admired Ayatollah Khomeini’s resistance, adopted elements of Iranian statecraft, and looked to Hezbollah as an organizational model. Iranian assistance grew dramatically after the Saudi intervention in 2015, with the IRGC supplying weapons technology, training, intelligence, and diplomatic support. For example, a July 2025 seizure alone intercepted roughly 750 tons of Iranian munitions including drone components, missile warheads, and radar systems bound for the movement.
Though the relationship defies the proxy label. Iran did not create Ansar Allah, and the two follow different strains of Islam—the aforementioned Twelver Shiism in Tehran, Zaydism in Saada. Iran’s own envoy to Yemen, Amir-Saeid Iravani, told Al Jazeera publicly that the group “does not operate as a proxy in any meaningful command sense.” The Middle East Council on Global Affairs documents that when the 2026 Iran war began, Ansar Allah exercised calculated restraint rather than full escalation by choosing to preserve operational capacity and their Red Sea leverage as a deterrent of last resort rather than expend it on Iranian timetables.
Even so, the group broadcasts an inheritance that is partly Iranian. Ansar Allah’s slogan reveals both Iranian inspiration and a distinctly Houthi ideological project. Ansar Allah declares “Allah is great, death to America, death to Israel, curses on the Jews, victory to Islam,” positioning itself as one of the loudest political movements confronting World Jewry and its Arab proxies in the Middle East.
This modern antisemitism has ancient roots in Zaydi governance. Classical Zaydi dhimma law required Jews to pay a special jizya tax and submit to restrictions on dress, housing height, horse-riding, and public conduct. Particular rulers pushed far beyond even those terms. Imam al-Mutawakkil Isma’il (1644-1676) escalated persecution after the Sabbatean movement of 1666, when a mass messianic excitement centered on a self-proclaimed Jewish redeemer led Zaydi scholars to question whether Jews still qualified for dhimmi protection. Accusations that Jewish communities had aided the Ottoman Empire during the Qasimid revolt also played a role in growing skepticism of Jews. The imam consulted Zaydi fuqaha (Islamic jurists) on whether Muhammad’s reported injunction against 2 religions in Arabia applied to Yemen, and on their ruling that it did, demanded Jewish conversion. When most Jews refused to convert, he subjected community leaders to public humiliation. He fell ill before completing the expulsion he had ordered, and charged his successor to carry it out.
Imam al-Mahdi Ahmad (1676-1681) did exactly that. In 1679 he demolished synagogues across Yemen, confiscated property, and expelled the entire Jewish population to Mawza in what remains the most notorious episode in Yemeni Jewish history.
The Orphans’ Decree added a uniquely intimate form of punitive action against the Jewish population. Rooted in an 18th-century Zaydi fatwa that drew on the Prophetic hadith: “Every person is born to the natural religion of Islam, and only his parents make a Jew or a Christian out of him.” The decree obligated the Yemeni Zaydi state to seize custody of Jewish children orphaned of both parents and raise them as Muslims. Scholars at Cambridge have noted it “has no parallel in other countries.” Enforcement varied by ruler and region, but the decree was most aggressively applied during the reign of Imam Yahya (1918-1948), when most recorded cases occurred. Families responded with early marriages to remove children from orphan status, concealment within tight-knit urban Jewish quarters, and in the most desperate cases, the arduous journey out of Yemen entirely.
Between June 1949 and September 1950, Operation Magic Carpet— formally Operation On Wings of Eagles—airlifted approximately 49,000 Yemenite Jews to the newly founded State of Israel after the Imam of Yemen agreed to permit most of the community to leave. The operation ended a Jewish presence in Yemen that had endured for more than 2,500 years. A remnant community stayed behind, but under Ansar Allah rule that ancient continuity was severed entirely. In March 2021, the Houthis expelled 13 members of the last 3 Jewish families in Sanaa.
With the last Jewish families gone, Ansar Allah took its war against Israel abroad. Since 2023, the Houthis have attacked ships and launched weapons toward Israel while claiming to defend Gaza. Their actions won admiration among many Arabs who saw little meaningful action from their own governments.
By anchoring their modern military campaign in the deep bedrock of historical Zaydi anti-imperialism and religious governance, Ansar Allah has demonstrated that sustained defiance against Israel and its international backers depends not on modern diplomatic consensus, but on an uncompromising commitment to civilizational identity and armed struggle against World Jewry.
Gentiles in the Collective West could learn a thing or two from the plucky warriors of Ansar Allah.
NEXT:
Yemen’s Unraveling: A Return to Two States?
Global attention remains fixed on Donald Trump's aggressive posture toward the Houthi rebels in Yemen after the U.S. president has approved strikes against the militants in the last few weeks. Additionally, there is increasing speculation that Trump could expand this conflict to Iran — a key ally of the Houthis.
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The Houthis are living proof of the old saying “Hard times create strong men…”
wow - Alistair Crooke just quoted you. Quite the compliment