Israel's Red Sea conundrum: Hit the Houthis or Iran

Over the past year, Israel's military has proved adept at taking down threats to the country's security.

- Dov Lieber, Carrie Keller-Lynn & Saleh Al-Batati

Over the past year, Israel's military has proved adept at taking down threats to the country's security. After the initial shock of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Hamas's top leadership has been largely neutralized. Iran's other big ally in the region, Hezbollah, was set back severely in Lebanon.

Now Israel is setting its sights on the Houthi rebel group in Yemen, who represent a lingering problem, regularly firing missiles at Israel—and it is a problem with few clear ways to handle.

So far, Israel has targeted what it says is energy and transportation infrastructure the Houthis use for military purposes. The next step is to hit the group's top leaders, much as its security forces did with Hamas and Hezbollah.

"We will hunt down all of the Houthis' leaders, and we will strike them just as we have done in other places," said Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz in late December, following Israel's fourth round of airstrikes against the Houthis since July.

The Houthis, however, present a unique security challenge for Israel because of how distant they are from Israel, a lack of intelligence on the group and the fact that retaliatory airstrikes seem to only inflate domestic support for the group while doing little to stem attacks. A U.S.-led coalition also has failed to clamp down on Houthi provocations against global maritime shipping. Yemen is already one of the world's poorest countries, and nearly a decade of warfare with a Saudi Arabian-led coalition has done little to deter the group.

Indeed, since Israel secured a cease-fire with Lebanon's Hezbollah in late November, the Houthis have become the primary security challenge for Israel in its 15-month-long confrontation with Iranian proxy groups that began after Hamas's Oct. 7 attacks. In the past weeks, the Houthis have kept a steady stream of near-daily missile attacks on Israel.