Who are the Houthis of Yemen/ What power do they have and what does launching a missile towards Israel mean?

On Saturday, Yemen's Houthi rebels said they had fired ballistic missiles toward Israel, marking their entry into the month-long war in the Middle East. Earlier, the Israeli military said it had detected a missile fired from Yemen.

The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah (Supporters of God), are one of the main factions in Yemen's civil war. The group emerged in the 1990s when its leader, Hussein al-Houthi, founded the Faithful Youth Movement to revive a branch of Shiite Islam, the Zaidis.

The Zaidis had ruled Yemen for centuries, but were marginalized after a civil war in 1962. The Houthi movement was founded to represent the Zaidis and resist radical Sunni Islam, particularly the ideas of the Saudi-led Wahhabi movement.

The civil war began in 2014, when Houthi forces seized the capital Sanaa and overthrew the internationally recognized government. In 2015, the intervention of a Saudi-led coalition escalated the war into a wider conflict. Although a ceasefire was signed in 2022, it expired after just six months and fighting continues at a lower intensity.

The Houthis are supported by Iran, which has bolstered their equipment and technology since 2014, providing them with, among other things, naval mines, ballistic and cruise missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The organization is part of Iran's so-called "Axis of Resistance," an alliance against Israel and the West.

US sources are constantly monitoring the improvements in Houthi missiles, both in range and accuracy. Initially, the weapons were assembled with Iranian components that arrived secretly in Yemen. In the past, the Houthis have used drones and missiles against commercial shipping.

The launch of missiles against Israel shows that the Houthis do not hesitate to expand their activities beyond Yemen, turning the region into another front in the already tense geopolitical situation.

This warning increases the risk of a wider regional conflict, given the Houthis' ability to strike targets beyond Yemen's borders, including oil facilities and key infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as disrupt maritime shipping lanes around the Arabian Gulf Peninsula.

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