On May 6, a surprise ceasefire between the U.S. and the Houthis—one that explicitly excluded Israel—brought a pause to the Red Sea conflict. It also handed the militia a rare and unearned diplomatic win. After months of targeting commercial ships and baiting a superpower into war, the Iran-backed Houthis walked away with the one thing they crave more than territory: recognition. They didn’t get there alone. A parallel campaign of narrative laundering, waged by Russian state media, anti-Western ideologues, and opportunistic influencers, had already softened the group’s image. This campaign paved the way for Washington to treat them not as terrorists, but as plausible negotiating partners.
In an article titled “Do Not Make A Houthi For Yourself” published by RT in March, Russian commentator Sergey Strokan argued that U.S. airstrikes in Yemen have constructed an artificial “enemy image” of the Houthis. Strokan portrayed them not as terrorists but as a de facto political force reacting to regional dynamics, and wrote that recent U.S. airstrikes “have all the hallmarks of an intervention.” While framed as a critique of U.S. policy, the piece reflects a broader pattern: the normalization of the Houthis by foreign voices aligned with so-called anti-imperialist narratives. What’s obscured in these accounts is the group’s authoritarian behavior at home as well as its strategic role as an extension of Iranian regional influence.
That same narrative was on full display when the Houthis hosted a high-profile conference in Sanaa on Palestine the same month. That conference, which came a week after daily U.S. airstrikes that started on March 15, drew delegates from Iraq to Ireland. Much like Strokan’s article, the event rebranded a sectarian militia as a resistance movement, wrapped in the flag of Palestinian liberation and served to a global audience eager to ignore the group’s authoritarian core.
Showcasing the Houthis’ growing international reach, conference attendees included former Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi, South African politician Zwelivelile Mandela (Nelson Mandela’s grandson), and former European Parliament members Clare Daly and Mick Wallace of Ireland. Also present was Ma Xiaolin, a Chinese scholar affiliated with Zhejiang International Studies University and a former journalist with close ties to Chinese state media.
But perhaps most telling was the lineup of voices. Christopher Helali, the international secretary of the newly founded American Communist Party, shared the stage with Steven Sweeney, a British journalist and correspondent for the Kremlin-funded RT network, and Jackson Hinkle, a social media influencer and co-founder of the American Communist Party. (Upon returning to the United States, Helali was detained for three hours by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, further cementing his credentials within these circles.) The presence of all these individuals in Yemen revealed the Houthis’ expanding influence not just within Iran’s so-called Axis of Resistance but also within a broader coalition of anti-Western ideologues operating in lockstep with authoritarian regimes. The conference was a glimpse into how fringe networks, backed by state media and ideological machinery, can legitimize militancy on the global stage.
That RT is publishing exonerations of the Houthis is no coincidence. The group’s relationship with Russia has recently evolved into a multidimensional partnership where the Houthis actively contribute to Russian war efforts by recruiting Yemeni civilians to fight in Ukraine, often through deception. Recent reports indicate that the group has negotiated not just with Russia but also China to offer safe passage for those countries’ vessels through the Red Sea in exchange for political support, while benefiting from Chinese-sourced weapons components, Russian satellite intelligence for maritime targeting, and diplomatic cover at the U.N. Security Council.
Taken in this context, the Houthis’ messaging strategy reveals three distinct strategic objectives: It provides retroactive justification for their attacks on international shipping; it manufactures international legitimacy despite their lack of sovereign recognition; and domestically, it isolates the Yemeni opposition by signaling that global powers have effectively accepted Houthi rule as a fait accompli. This represents a classic hybrid warfare tactic, combining kinetic operations with influence campaigns to achieve strategic outcomes that military force alone cannot secure.
The lineup at the Sanaa conference tapped into this coordinated strategy by reinforcing the illusion of global ideological momentum. Pre-recorded speeches came from former British MP George Galloway, Russian ultranationalist philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, and Aleida Guevara, the daughter of Che Guevara, each selected less for diplomatic relevance than symbolic weight.
This meticulously orchestrated event reflects what sets the Houthis apart from extremist groups such as al Qaeda or the Islamic State. While those groups embrace an uncompromising ideology of hostility toward foreigners, the Houthis project a markedly different image: approachable, even likable, especially to a Western audience.
With Iran behind them, too, the Houthis aren’t just armed insurgents; they’re a hybrid proxy force with access to diplomatic protection, military hardware, and long-term strategic investment. For unlike jihadi movements driven by theological purity, the Houthis are political opportunists. They will accept help from anyone willing to give it. That pragmatism has allowed them not only to survive but to thrive. Over the years, they have enjoyed a surprisingly generous reputation among Western diplomats, some of whom offered them gifts, wrote op-eds to soften their image, and treated them with a level of deference rarely afforded to insurgents.
Both Daly and Wallace were used as tokens of Western defiance, delivering troubling endorsements to the Houthis in the conference. Wallace’s speech in particular was laden with anti-Western rhetoric and delivered with a practiced revolutionary zeal. He accused Israel of “only understanding the language of violence,” cast Western powers as the true architects of global terrorism, and portrayed Yemen as a vanguard in the global struggle against imperialism. But perhaps the most telling moment came when he declared, “The future now belongs to China,” praising Beijing’s supposed restraint by claiming that it hasn’t dropped a bomb in 50 years. It was a statement that not only romanticized authoritarian power but also conveniently ignored China’s well-documented human rights abuses: the mass internment of Uyghurs in Xinjiang; the crackdown in Hong Kong; and its growing military aggression in the South China Sea.
The Houthis have consistently manipulated international narratives to their advantage, from the Stockholm Agreement that froze battlefield dynamics in their favor to lobbying efforts to cast them as an indigenous resistance against Saudi Arabia rather than an authoritarian militia. From a strategic standpoint, the Sanaa conference sought to fill the void left by the U.N. agencies that had retreated from Houthi areas due to their increased aggression and unpredictability. U.N. agencies have previously met with Houthi leadership and inadvertently legitimized their claim to power, whether through failed diplomatic initiatives that empowered the group or photo-ops amid times of Houthi aggression and food theft.
Concerns about Palestinian suffering in the context of the Israel-Hamas war—central to the Houthis’ claim of righteousness—are shared by many across the region and beyond. Yet the Houthis, given their own record of internal repression and regional aggression, are ill-suited to serve as credible advocates. The contradiction becomes most apparent when examining the reality on the ground. While Wallace praises their supposed adherence to international law, the Houthis systematically arrest, torture, and disappear minorities, including Baha is, journalists, and political opponents. They’ve detained U.N. staff members on fabricated espionage charges, forcing the U.N. to abandon operations in Houthi territory since February.
The Trump administration’s narrow focus on degrading Houthi strike capabilities in the Red Sea represents a tactical approach to a strategic problem, but it doesn’t address the broader ecosystem enabling Houthi power projection. Left unaddressed, the Houthis’ legitimacy campaign threatens to institutionalize their position as a permanent extension of Iranian power projection capabilities on the Arabian Peninsula. This development would fundamentally alter regional balance-of-power calculations, undermining U.S. security partnerships in the Gulf while expanding Iran’s strategic depth, which is particularly concerning as Tehran continues its nuclear ambitions.
Perhaps most strategically significant is the generational indoctrination program underway in Houthi-controlled territories, a campaign to create an ideologically committed population base through the exploitation of pan-Islamic causes such as Palestine.
Policymakers in Washington are right to focus on the Houthis’ external violence but should expand counter propaganda efforts, specifically targeting the networks that amplify Houthi messaging, including identifying and exposing coordinated inauthentic behavior across platforms. Moreover, diplomatic engagement with traditional allies in the region should highlight the contradiction between the Houthis’ international messaging and their domestic repression. The sanctions should also specifically target individuals who facilitate the Houthis’ international outreach, not just their military leadership. Finally, the United States should invest in elevating authentic Yemeni voices who can provide credible alternatives to Houthi narratives.
Despite U.S. President Trump’s claim following the ceasefire announcement that the Houthis had “capitulated,” senior Houthi officials worked quickly to reframe the pause in hostilities, describing the U.S. as a pragmatic superpower that recognized the cost of continued escalation. But their leader, Abdulmalek al-Houthi, contradicted even that softening, recasting the moment as a Houthi victory: “The American position was not, as the criminal infidel Trump claimed, the result of a plea or capitulation from Yemen.”
The Houthis remain belligerent in Iran’s multi-domain confrontation with U.S. power, one that weaponizes shipping lanes, media narratives, and Western political actors simultaneously. While U.S. naval operations focus on tactical symptoms, the deeper strategic disease spreads unchecked. The precedent being set here extends well beyond the Red Sea; it demonstrates to every would-be disruptor how effectively Western voices can be co-opted to legitimize actions that would otherwise be universally condemned.
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