Who are the Houthis and what do they want?

**Who are the Houthis and what do they want?**

**The Houthis captured key coastal areas in their recent rapid advance**

Yemen’s civil war has intensified in recent weeks after the Iran-backed Houthi movement, which holds much of the country’s north-west, took over large and strategically important sections of the Red Sea coast in a swift offensive.

The area includes the port of Mokha, which faces the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a critical point for global shipping.

Oil prices have climbed amid fears of wider disruption to the world economy, after six months of war between the US, Israel and Iran.

Hundreds of people are reported to have been killed on both sides during the Houthis’ advance, which followed the breakdown of a four-year informal ceasefire. The UN says more than 120,000 people have been displaced by the escalation.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia, which opposes the Houthis and supports Yemen’s internationally-recognised government, has carried out air strikes, while the Houthis have launched drones and missiles at south-western Saudi Arabia. The group has also attacked commercial vessels linked to Saudi Arabia in the Red Sea.

The Houthis are an armed political and religious movement from northern Yemen that represents the country’s Shia Muslim minority, the Zaidis.

They say they are part of the Iranian-led “axis of resistance” against Israel, the US and the wider West, alongside armed groups such as Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.

Officially called Ansar Allah (Partisans of God), the group arose in the 1990s and is named after its late founder, Hussein al-Houthi. His brother, Abdul Malik al-Houthi, has been its de facto leader since 2004.

In the early 2000s, the Houthis rose up against Yemen’s long-time authoritarian president Ali Abdullah Saleh. They sought greater autonomy for their stronghold in northern Yemen. The group took the capital Sanaa after the 2011 Arab Spring, when a popular uprising forced Saleh to transfer power to his deputy.

The Houthis have kept expanding, with troop numbers estimated to have climbed to 350,000 last year, and now control between one-quarter and one-third of Yemen’s territory, but 70-80% of its population - about 30 million people.

The group wants the Saudi blockade lifted, control over all of Yemen and access to Yemen’s oil and gas revenues.

Neighbouring Saudi Arabia feared the Houthis would seize Yemen and turn it into a satellite of its regional rival, Iran.

In 2015 Saudi Arabia assembled a coalition of Arab countries that intervened on behalf of Yemen’s internationally-recognised government.

But years of air strikes and ground combat failed to drive the Houthis from most of the territory they had captured, and also caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. A temporary ceasefire was reached in 2022.

Shortly after the Gaza war began in October 2023, the Houthis started firing drones and missiles at Israel and at merchant ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, saying they were acting in support of the Palestinians.

Western countries sent warships, and the US, UK and Israel carried out air strikes. An Israeli strike killed senior Houthi figures, including the prime minister of its self-declared government.

In 2025 the US and the Houthis agreed to stop targeting each other. However, the Houthis resumed missile attacks on Israel after the US and Israel attacked Iran in February 2026, having paused them after the October 2025 ceasefire in Gaza.

The informal ceasefire between the Houthis and the Saudis began to fall apart in July.

The Houthis declared a “maritime embargo” against Saudi Arabia and began missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports, oil facilities and tankers in the Red Sea. They said they were responding to what the Houthis describe as a years-long Saudi blockade, and to an air strike on Sanaa airport.

That was followed by a rapid Houthi advance in September that seized as much as 130km (81 miles) of the country’s Red Sea coastline, along with the island of Perim.

The advance gave the Houthis major control over the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, but they have insisted they do not threaten international shipping, except for Saudi-linked vessels.

The Houthis’ actions have renewed concern about disruption to global oil supplies. Bab al-Mandab has become an increasingly important route for oil exports from Saudi Arabia since shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula, was reduced because of the US and Israel’s war with Iran.

The situation has also been worsened by Houthi attacks on Saudi oil installations, as well as an attack on the East-West Pipeline blamed on Iran-backed Iraqi militias, and the escalation threatens to draw in Western powers again.

Media reports said both the Yemeni government and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had urged President Trump to strike the Houthis after the offensive. Trump did not do so, saying the Houthis had agreed not to hit US targets.

The UK meanwhile agreed to a Saudi request to send a military aircraft to help refuel Saudi Arabian fighter jets for “purely defensive missions”.

Saudi Arabia and Western powers say Iran smuggled weapons - including drones, and cruise and ballistic missiles - to the Houthis during Yemen’s civil war in breach of a UN arms embargo.

A panel of UN experts concluded in 2024 that the Houthis had been turned into a powerful military organisation because of the transfer of materiel, assistance and training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Iraqi specialists.

And a report in May 2026 by Conflict Armament Research (CAR) - after the start of the Iran war - found that while Tehran had previously shipped finished weapons to the Houthis, it was now increasingly sending parts that its proxies could assemble, and was also sharing increasingly advanced missile technologies.

Iran has denied supplying weapons to the Houthis and says it only supports them politically.