What To Do About the Houthis

Kirsten Fontenrose, 

President, Red Six International

Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council

Advisory board member at Reconnaissance Research

More than 120 countries condemned the Houthi drone and missile attacks on the UAE that took place in January and February of this year. The US has not designated the Houthi militia in Yemen as a terrorist organization, but a new resolution was introduced this week at the UN to designate the Houthis and sanction them.  

The Houthis meet the legal threshold for designation.  The Biden administration removed the US designation on the bet that the gesture of goodwill would make the Houthis more amenable to a political settlement of the Yemen war. This bet failed and the Houthis further armed themselves with Iran’s help. 

Redesignation is a political question for Biden. The humanitarian aid community opposes designation because it makes it illegal to coordinatewith the Houthis to deliver assistance. Designation would also make it illegal to provide arms to the Houthis. But designation does not grant the US military any new authorities. Any operation to target Houthi leaderswould have to be approved by the President. The Houthis calculate that President Biden will not want to enter the war by approving direct action. Designation, therefore, would merely be a political statement supporting the UAE.

If Biden does not designate, the Houthis will be further emboldened to attack. The Emiratis will read a refusal to designate as an indicator of US apathy toward Gulf security and a betrayal of the partnership.

To avoid emboldening the Houthis, or worsening the humanitarian situation, or alienating valuable partners, one option Biden has is to refrain from designation but approve frozen arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia.  

Biden may want to place a choice before his political party.  Which is a higher priority: delivering aid in Yemen or blocking arms sales to the UAE?  He can grant them one of the two. Those who press him to grant both should be ready to accept accountability when the inevitable happens – continued, escalated attacks by the Houthis and other Iranian proxies against US partners and US troops, and the collapse of US influence in the Gulf. 

Anyone who thinks this is hyperbole need only look at the vote this week on the UN Security Council draft resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  In a move that surprised Washington, the UAE abstained.  The UAE expected this favor to be returned on Yemen, and it was.  Russia has blocked new UN action on Yemen since at least 2018, when the UK had the pen on a new resolution that would have placed an arms embargo on the Houthi organization. The need for action like this became even more apparent in October of 2020 when the UN arms embargo on Iran expired, enabling advancements in Iranian weapons production thatbenefit the Houthis.

Rotating into the UN Security Council this March at the helm, the UAE isusing this role to draw global attention to the relationship between Iran and the Houthis. They are calling for action with resolution 2624 andneeded Russia to back it or stay out of the way.  

Recently Russia has expressed a desire for a new, “more inclusive’ UN resolution that doesn’t call out the Houthis or specify the return of the Hadi government. Russia’s end state in Yemen has been to keep the US mired in a nasty internal political divide about whether to support our Gulf partners, and to ensure whatever government comes to power in Yemen is amenable to buying Russian weapons and allowing Russian use of ports and runways.  But that end state was running headlong into their desire to strengthen security relationships with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, so Moscow was open to a new tack. 

Even if a backchannel deal was reached between Abu Dhabi and Moscow before the Ukraine vote at the UN, it was a gamble for the UAE to trust Russia to uphold their end of the deal.  This risk tolerance on the international stage illustrates the centrality of addressing the Houthi threat to Emirati interests.

What is needed is a multilateral effort around ending Iran’s support of militias acting against internationally recognized governments. This should not be difficult to build. World powers and nations in Iran’s neighborhood are united in opposition to Iran’s export of drones to groups like Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, and the Houthis in Yemen. 

But the question governments should be asking is: Do we address just this manifestation of the problem, or do we address the root problem itself?  Iran’s missile and drone programs feed not only the Houthi weapons program but also those of Hezbollah, militias in Iraq, and likely other groups in the future.  

The thrust of international diplomacy should be:

1) Make it clear to the Houthis that they will be treated as international terrorists immediately if this persists, not only by UN process, but to include options by member nations that Houthi leaders will become legitimate military objectives for kinetic and covert operations by more than Coalition forces;

2) Disincentive the Iranian regime’s use of missiles and drones as foreign policy tools.  This could mean sanctioning members of the new government in Tehran who work on these programs (applying sanctions directly to the decision-makers and not broadly to the population).  It could also mean clarifying that military options to remove production facilities are on the table.  

Regardless of the outcome of nuclear talks in Vienna, Iran will continue to dedicate funding to their missile and drone programs if left unaddressed, and to share the results with militias. The export of these items is central to the value proposition Iran presents to the armed groups that carry out its foreign policy around the region.  In addition, Iran believes it must develop delivery systems (missiles and rockets) in parallel with their nuclear program to maintain deterrence. A nuclear program without a delivery system is science. A nuclear program plus a delivery system is a weapon of mass destruction.