Airstrikes alone won’t neutralize the Houthis
The U.S. has ramped up its military campaign against Yemen’s Houthi movement, launching waves of air and naval strikes aimed at deterring the group’s attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Yet after months of sustained bombardment, the Houthis remain undeterred. Their anti-ship missile and drone assaults continue to imperil one of the world’s most critical maritime corridors.
The Pentagon has reiterated that it does not intend to entangle itself in Yemen’s protracted civil war, focusing narrowly on securing international waters. However, this tactical compartmentalization belies the inextricable links between the Houthis’s actions and Yemen’s broader conflict — and by extension, the wider regional power struggle.
At its core, the Houthi movement is a byproduct of Yemen’s long-standing state collapse and sectarian fragmentation. Emerging from the wreckage of decades of weak governance and economic freefall, the group has proven remarkably resilient. Iran’s material and logistical support has been instrumental, but the Houthis' staying power is equally rooted in the domestic despair of Yemen itself. U.S. airpower can degrade weapons stockpiles and delay operations, but it cannot eliminate the socio-political fuel that sustains the Houthis’ insurgency.
Washington’s current approach echoes a well-trodden path of military interventions that fail to achieve decisive political outcomes.
Since 2015, the Houthis have withstood a relentless Saudi-led air campaign, transforming from a parochial insurgency into a disciplined paramilitary organization with cross-border ambitions. Their expanding capabilities, from ballistic missiles to increasingly sophisticated naval drones, underscore the limitations of airpower as a standalone tool. History suggests that aerial bombardments rarely extinguish ideologically motivated insurgencies, particularly those deeply embedded within a broken state.
The Houthis’s survival is not merely a testament to Iranian patronage but to Yemen’s profound vacuum of governance. As long as Sanaa and the northern highlands remain economically and politically estranged from the Yemeni state — and by extension, the Gulf Cooperation Council — the Houthis will have ample space to consolidate their grip.
The deeper Yemen sinks into humanitarian catastrophe, the more fertile the ground becomes for Houthi recruitment. With an adult literacy rate hovering around 70 percent — still far below the Gulf Cooperation Council average of more than 90 percent — and over 80 percent of the population dependent on humanitarian aid, the country remains a textbook case of state failure. Yemen’s social fabric is further frayed by entrenched gender disparities — over 30 percent of girls are married before the age of 18, and only 55 percent of adult women are literate — further limiting economic participation and perpetuating cycles of poverty.
These grim statistics are not abstract. For many young Yemenis, especially in Houthi-controlled areas where the state provides few alternatives, the militias offer structure, purpose and a paycheck. The Houthis have deftly leveraged Yemen’s economic vacuum, framing themselves as guardians against foreign aggression and stewards of what little public order remains.
While Washington’s priority has been to protect freedom of navigation, the Houthi threat intersects with a larger geopolitical contest. For Tehran, the Houthis represent a low-cost, high-reward node of influence on Saudi Arabia’s doorstep and along a maritime chokepoint crucial to global trade. Iran has little incentive to de-escalate, particularly as it seeks to leverage proxy groups across the Middle East to counterbalance Western and Gulf Arab power.
Yet Tehran is not the only actor with stakes in Yemen’s trajectory. China and Russia, though often depicted as bystanders to the Houthis’s campaign, have deep commercial interests in the stability of Red Sea shipping lanes. A sustained disruption threatens not only Western-linked supply chains but also Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative and Moscow’s energy exports to Asian markets. A broader diplomatic coalition — one that includes Moscow and Beijing — could apply coordinated pressure on Iran to limit its support for the Houthis, particularly if framed as a collective interest in safeguarding global trade rather than a purely Western security concern.
Ultimately, if Washington hopes to neutralize the Houthi threat, it must grapple with Yemen’s internal fragmentation. Only a Yemeni government capable of delivering credible governance and economic development can erode the Houthis’s popular support. A post-conflict Yemen aligned more closely with Gulf Cooperation Council economic frameworks, focused on infrastructure investment, job creation and integration into global markets, would stand a far better chance of undercutting Houthi influence than missiles alone.
The challenge for the U.S.is not simply to degrade a militant network, but to prevent Yemen from remaining a sanctuary for armed non-state actors. As history shows, absent a viable political and economic alternative, the Houthis — or groups like them — will persist.
The Trump administration and its partners can choose to prolong the current campaign of attrition, bleeding the Houthis’s capabilities over time. Yet airstrikes alone risk becoming an expensive holding pattern, one that suppresses symptoms without addressing the disease. Without a broader strategy that combines military containment with diplomatic and economic initiatives, the Red Sea will remain a theater of instability — and the Houthis will remain a durable force. The administration must think beyond missiles and consider what happens when the bombing stops.
Faisal Saeed Al Mutar is founder and president of Ideas Beyond Borders.
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