The Houthi militia of Yemen has vowed to strike back after an Israeli attack killed senior members of the group’s government but appeared to leave its military leadership largely untouched.
The Israeli strike on Thursday hit a gathering of cabinet members, killing the militia’s prime minister, Ahmed al-Rahawi, and “several of his colleagues,” said Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior Houthi political official, in an interview. He declined to provide further details, pending an official announcement.
Among the other cabinet members killed was the foreign affairs minister, Jamal Amer, according to a person briefed by Houthi officials and an associate of the minister briefed by a relative. Hashem Sharaf al-Din, the information minister, was also killed, according to the person briefed by Houthi officials and an associate of Mr. Sharaf al-Din briefed by a relative.
All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because the Houthis — an Iranian-backed militia that rules much of northern Yemen with an iron fist — had not made a formal announcement confirming the deaths.
“The symbolic impact is considerable,” said Ahmed Nagi, a senior Yemen analyst at the International Crisis Group, a research institution. “The Houthis are now anxious that future strikes could extend beyond government officials to include military leaders who actually hold decision-making power within the group.”
In a speech on Saturday, Mahdi al-Mashat, the president of the militia’s governing council, said that the group would exact revenge, and vowed that the Israelis would “no longer taste the flavor of security.”
“Airstrikes will not frighten us, nor will threats intimidate us,” Mr. al-Mashat said. “To the Zionists we say: Our vengeance does not sleep, and dark days await you as a result of the treachery of your criminal government.”
After significantly weakening other Iranian-backed groups across the region, the Israeli military has in recent months turned its attention to the Houthis, carrying out a series of punishing strikes on Yemeni ports and other infrastructure.
The Houthis began shooting missiles and drones at Israel and at commercial ships in the Red Sea after the war in the Gaza Strip began, framing their attacks as a righteous campaign to force Israel to end its bombardment of the Palestinian enclave and allow more aid to enter it. Hamas, the militant group that attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, setting off the war, is also backed by Iran.
“There are those who chose submission, weakness and silence in the face of the horrendous crimes committed by the Israeli enemy — the crime of the century against the Palestinian people,” Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the group’s leader, said in a televised address on Sunday. “But our people, through their faith, their identity and their human conscience, have refused to stand idly by in the face of such atrocities.”
Thursday’s attack did not harm Mr. al-Houthi or other significant military leaders in the group, according to researchers who study the militia. Houthi attacks on Israel and on ships in the Red Sea are waged by a highly decentralized apparatus that was unaffected by the strike, and the militia is likely to escalate now, they said.
In Israel’s leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. al-Houthi has found a resolute adversary.
“Abdul-Malik found his match in Netanyahu,” said Mohammed al-Basha, a U.S.-based analyst focused on Yemen. “They’re both stubborn. They both have religious fervor and ideology that’s very strong.”
And both leaders are playing a long game in which “civilians are going to be caught in the middle,” said Mr. al-Basha, the founder of a risk consultancy called the Basha Report.
At an Israeli cabinet meeting on Sunday, Mr. Netanyahu said that the Israeli strike had “eliminated most of the Houthi government and additional senior military figures,” without providing details.
“We are doing what no one else has done before us, and this is only the beginning of the strikes against the senior leadership in Sana,” he said. “We will get to them all.”
Israel Katz, the Israeli defense minister, also suggested that Israel planned to attack more senior Houthi leaders in the future.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “The Houthis will learn the hard way that those who threaten and harm Israel will get the same back tenfold — and they will not be able to decide when it stops.”
Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemeni research fellow at Chatham House, a research institute in London, said that the Israeli attack brought an end to the Houthi leaders’ illusion that Israel posed no real threat because it didn’t have “any intelligence on them.” Mr. al-Muslimi pointed to the fact that so many senior officials had gathered in one location despite being at war as a sign that the group had not believed it had much to fear.
The death of the Yemeni officials, among them pragmatists tied to Yemen’s former leadership rather than Houthi ideologues, could result in more hawkishness and extremism going forward, Mr. al-Muslimi said.
As anxiety rises in the wake of the intelligence breach, a crackdown is likely to follow, said Mr. al-Basha, the analyst. He said that people linked to international organizations risked being targeted, particularly given that Houthi officials have in the past detained United Nations staff members and accused them of espionage.
On Sunday, the Houthi authorities forced their way onto U.N. premises, seized property and detained 11 people, Hans Grundberg, the U.N. special envoy for Yemen, said in a statement. These actions severely hinder broader efforts to deliver assistance and advance peace in Yemen, he said.
Complicating the Houthis’ calculations is the fact that Iran and the militias it backs across the Middle East have been weakened.
That has left the Houthis “virtually alone in an open confrontation with Israel,” said Mr. Nagi, the Yemen analyst. “They recognize that the cost of retreat would be far higher than that of continuing.”
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem.
Vivian Nereim is the lead reporter for The Times covering the countries of the Arabian Peninsula. She is based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
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