On 10 February 2023, Professor Liu Zhongmin of the Middle East Studies Institute, Shanghai International Studies University published an opinion piece on 'Iran and the Shi'ite Crescent: Yemen's Houthis' on The Paper, which reads as follows.
Iran and the Shi'ite Crescent③: Yemen's Houthis
When discussing the civil war in Yemen, the proxy rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran is often seen as one of the root causes of the civil war in Yemen, namely Saudi Arabia's support for the Yemeni government and Iran's support for the Shia Houthis. However, if viewed historically and objectively, the relationship between Iran and the Houthis is not a typical patron-proxy relationship, especially since the relationship has not been patron-proxy in nature since the creation of the Houthis. For while the Houthis have had ties with Iran since the 1990s, and the West has accused Iran of providing material support to the Houthis since at least 2009, there is little public evidence of direct Iranian support for the Houthis until 2011.
It was only after the fall of the Ali Abdullah Saleh regime in Yemen in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and especially after the Saudi-led Arab coalition against the Houthis in 2015, that the value of the Houthis to Iran began to rise; in the wake of the Saudi and Yemeni government crackdown The Houthis' demand for Iran also began to rise. It was in this context that the level of cooperation between the two sides rose, but the two sides did not form a typical patron-proxy relationship, not least because of their weak ideological base, the Houthis' greater independence, the fact that Iran was still conducting a strategic assessment, and the constraints of other complex factors. The relationship between Iran and the Houthis is therefore a patron-proxy relationship that is still under construction.
1990s to 2010: Iran and the Houthis did not yet have a patron-proxy relationship
From the rise of the Houthi movement in the 1990s to the fall of Saleh's regime in 2011 as a result of the Arab Spring, the Houthis were influenced by Iran and maintained ties with it, but the relationship was not one of patron-proxy.
The Houthis are a religio-political organisation established in the 1990s as part of the revival of the Zaid sect in Yemen (ed: the Shia branch of Islam). The Zaidis, also known as the Fifth Imamate (Imam is an Arabic transliteration of worshipper, example, The founder was Zaid bin Ali, grandson of the third Shi'ite Imam Hussein (grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and second son of the fourth orthodox Caliph Ali). The Zaids make up about 35-45% of the population of Yemen. After the conquest and Islamisation of Yemen by the Arab empire in the 7th century, the Umayyads, the Abbasids and a series of local dynasties ruled the country in succession. The kingdom of Mutawakkeria was established under the leadership of the Zaidist Imam Yahya. After the 1962 revolution by Yemeni military officers that overthrew the Imamate and established the Yemeni Arab Republic (North Yemen), the Zaidis were politically and economically marginalised. The impact of the religious expansion of the Saudi Wahhabis (ed.: the Sunni branch of Islam) and the influence of the Islamic revival, particularly the Islamic Revolution in Iran, combined to give rise to the Zaidist revival movement.
The Houthi movement is a product of the Zaidist revival movement. Beginning in the 1980s, Alama Said Houthi, a prominent Zaidist leader in Yemen, called for a revival of Zaidism in order to reject the influence of Wahhabism. Influenced by the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979, Said Hussein Husthi, the son of Alama Said Houthi, established the Zaid political organisation, the Young Believers. organization.
In 1992, Yemeni President Saleh, who was also a Zaidist, joined forces with the Young Believers to fight against the Sunnis, which led to the growth of Hussein Husthi's power. After the outbreak of the Iraq war in 2003, Hussein al-Houthi and his supporters turned on the US and other Western countries, accusing the Saleh regime of being a lackey of the US. 2004 saw the announcement of an Islamic government in Sa'ada province and a heavy siege by the Saleh regime in Yemen.
After his death, Hussein al-Houthi's supporters renamed the Young Believers as the Houthis, which is more commonly referred to as the Houthis or the Houthi movement. From 2004 to 2010, the latter received Saudi support during the seven-year conflict between the Houthis and Saleh's regime.
From the emergence of the Houthi movement in the 1990s until the fall of the Saleh regime in 2011, the establishment of the Houthis and their main founders were influenced by Iran, and links were established with Iran, but if measured against the three elements of a patron-proxy relationship, namely material support, sustained cooperation and a common enemy, the relationship between Iran and the Houthis did not have these three elements, and thus the relationship was not The relationship is not a patron-proxy relationship.
First, the Houthis do not receive significant material support from Iran. In their seven-year-long confrontation with the Yemeni government, the Houthis have emerged from the experience of confronting sustained pressure from the Yemeni and Saudi governments with virtually no external support and have developed into a truly organised, ideological and highly capable armed force .
Secondly, the Houthis have links with Iran, but they have not developed lasting cooperation. In the 1990s, the Houthis had established links with Iran, and both the Houthi father and son had studied in Qom or lived in Iran. In the late 1990s, Hussein Houthi travelled to Iran and Sudan to study religion. As many of the country's Shia elite have had the experience of studying in Iran, this connection is not a cooperative one in a principal-agent relationship.
Finally, Iran and the Houthis do not yet have a clearer common enemy. Although the Houthis have put forward the organisational slogan God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam, and there is some convergence with Iran's anti-American and anti-Israel policy ideas, the US and Israel are mainly ideological enemies of the Houthis, not common enemies of the Houthis and Iran in reality. The two sides in particular have not yet identified Saudi Arabia as a common enemy and cooperated to combat it.
Since 2011: a period of rising demand for cooperation between Iran and the Houthis
After the fall of the Saleh regime in 2011, the Houthis have grown in strength during Yemen's political transition and civil war, and their strategic value to Iran has increased significantly. 2015 has seen an intensification of the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran and the severance of diplomatic relations in 2016, and the Saudi-led Arab coalition against the Houthis has increased the strategic need of Iran and the Houthis for each other.
First, Saudi Arabia's involvement in the Yemeni conflict and the Salih regime's efforts to win Saudi support by portraying the Houthis as Iran's proxies in Yemen have allowed the discourse of Saudi Arabia and Iran as sponsors of both sides of the Yemeni conflict to begin to emerge. In the confrontation between the Houthis and the Saleh regime in Yemen from 2004-2010, Saudi Arabia was an important factor in influencing the political situation in Yemen, as the Saudi-backed expansion of Wahhabism was a major reason for the Zaydist's quest for revival and the establishment of the Houthis, who were naturally opposed by the Houthis; the conflict between the Houthis and the Saleh regime spilled over the Yemeni-Saudi border. The conflict between the Houthis and Saleh's regime spilling over the border between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, and the threat posed by al-Qaeda from Yemen, have all contributed to the increasing cooperation between Saudi Arabia and Yemen in the fight against the Houthis and al-Qaeda. This prompted the Houthis to target Saudi Arabia and led to clashes with Saudi border guards in November 2009, which lasted until January 2010, when a fragile ceasefire was agreed. And Saleh's regime is trying hard to shape the fight against the Houthis as a fight against Iranian proxies, accusing Iran of arming and training the Houthis. Many analysts believe that the reason why Yemen is playing up Iran's support for the Houthis is to gain the support of Saudi Arabia and the US.
Secondly, the collapse of Saleh's regime and the intensification of the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran after the outbreak of the Arab Spring have increased the value and demand of the Houthis and Iran for each other, and the conditions for a sponsor-proxy relationship between the two sides are primed.
In terms of the situation in Yemen, the popular protests and the Houthi rebellion in 2011 led to turmoil and the peaceful handover of power from Saleh's regime in 2012 and the formation of a transitional government under the presidency of Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi. In March 2015, the Saudi-led Arab coalition carried out airstrikes against the Houthis, increasing the military pressure on the Houthis, which in turn increased their need for external support. As a result, the volatile situation in Yemen, particularly the outbreak of civil war, has made it easier for Iran to enter the country in search of proxies, and the Houthis' significant growth in military capabilities, territorial control and political power between 2011 and 2015 has made them more strategically valuable as potential proxies.
At the regional level, the confrontation between Saudi Arabia and Iran has intensified, with both sides engaging in extensive regional proxy battles, and with Saudi Arabia's support for the Hadi regime and its crackdown on the Houthis, the conditions are primed for Iran to foster a proxy war with the Saudis. The intertwining of sectarian and religious tensions between the two sides in Syria, Iraq and Bahrain has intensified sectarian tensions and competition for power, especially since Salman became Saudi king in 2015, adopting a more aggressive foreign policy and breaking off diplomatic relations with Iran in 2016, which has expanded the real possibility of the Houthis becoming Iranian proxies.
Some analysts argue that Iran provided support to the Houthis in 2011, if at all, in a limited, low-cost, low-risk manner. Prior to 2010, Iranian media rarely commented on the Yemeni crisis and vehemently denied that Iran was providing assistance to the Houthis. But along with the intensification of the Saudi-Iranian confrontation, the Iranian media began to increasingly condemn Saudi Arabia's anti-Shia activities in Yemen and portray it as part of a campaign to attack the Shia world, which can be seen in part as Iran beginning to gain public support for intervention in the Yemeni conflict and support for the Houthis.
The Iranian-Houthi patron-proxy relationship is still in the process of being constructed
The lack of information due to the severity of the conflict in Yemen makes it difficult for outsiders to access information on the content and extent of Iranian-Houthi cooperation. In general, Iran's explicit support for the Houthis and its elevated level of support is synchronised with the openness and sharpening of the confrontation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, as evidenced by Iran's strong condemnation of Saudi military intervention in Yemen and its linking of the Saudi military campaign to the sectarian conflict between Sunnis against Shiites, as well as its open support for the Houthis in terms of public opinion, which shows that using the Houthis to counteract, attack and hold back Saudi Arabia is Houthis' greatest potential proxy value to Iran. The conflict between the Houthis and the Saudis in Yemen could be a check on the Saudis, without Iran having to get involved in the conflict.
In short, Iran can make the Saudi army pay a high cost at only a relatively low cost, and Iran does not risk confronting the Saudis directly. Furthermore, the Houthis control a large swathe of territory in northern Yemen, making them a potential proxy for Iran to approach Saudi Arabia and pose a direct threat to it. For the Houthis, gaining Iranian support is of great value in sustaining their survival and development after the military strikes by the Saudi-led Arab coalition in 2015, while the Houthis also hope to use Iranian support to counter and remove the influence of Saudi Salafists (editor's note: an ultra-conservative orthodox movement among Sunni Muslims based on Salafist doctrine) in northern Yemen.
From a large number of academic results, think-tank studies and media reports on Middle East politics, the Yemeni conflict, Iranian diplomacy and Houthi studies at home and abroad in recent years, various results acknowledge Iran's support for the Houthis and that it has grown significantly since 2015, but there is a wide divergence in the academic community regarding the scale and extent of Iran's support for the Houthis and the nature of their relationship. Regarding the scale and extent of support, some views, especially those of the West and Gulf Arab states, believe that Iran has provided strong support to the Houthis in terms of funding, materials, weapons and training, while others believe that Iran's support to the Houthis has been more limited; regarding the nature of the relationship between Iran and the Houthis, there are various views in the academic community such as exchange of interests, political alliance, sectarian alliance and sponsor-proxy relationship.
Objectively speaking, it is true that the scale and level of Iranian support to the Houthis has increased significantly since 2015, as reflected to some extent in Iran's own official position and media reports, and even in the UN report on Yemen. However, there is a lack of solid and credible data to support the specifics of the support, especially in terms of weapons, funding and training, and the data in a large number of Western reports and reports, in particular, is mostly characterised by uncertainty and problems of extrapolation and speculation. The RAND report concluded that Iran's support to the Houthis was fairly limited from 2011-2014, before Yemen descended into civil war and the Houthis gained significant strength; Iran's support began to increase after 2015, but the exact nature and extent of this support remains unclear. This should be a more objective view.
Uncertainty over the future of Iranian-Houthi relations
At present, Iran and the Houthis have not formed a durable and sustainable sponsor-agent relationship, and the future of their relationship is still uncertain.
From the perspective of the sponsor-agent relationship, this paper believes that the relationship between Iran and the Houthis is still in the process of constructing a sponsor-agent relationship, and that the relationship has certain characteristics of a sponsor-agent relationship, namely the sponsor's support for the proxy and the common goal of both sides to confront the Saudis. There are also some differences in their goals, and the Houthis' strong autonomy limits Iran's ability to lead them.
First, the relationship between Iran and the Houthis is more of an opportunistic exchange of interests, and cooperation between the two sides lacks strategy. Iran's interests in Yemen have been very limited for a long time, especially before 2011, and Iran did not consider that it had huge strategic interests in Yemen. Some analysts argue that Iran's interests in Yemen are indirect and non-core, and that the support it provides to the Zaidis and Houthis is limited and opportunistic; even since the 2015 crackdown on the Houthis, Iran's relationship with the Houthis has remained largely transactional, with both sides fulfilling commitments only where the strategic and tactical value outweighs the cost .
Secondly, Iran does not possess leadership over the Houthis, who are more autonomous in their ideology and development goals. The Houthis are by nature a political and military organisation representing the interests of the Zaidis in northern Yemen and have been a rebel force since the start of the conflict with the regime in 2004, but they have not closed the door to reconciliation with the regime and participated in the 2014 National Dialogue Conference, only turning to armed resistance after the Conference agreement failed to meet their It only turned to armed resistance after the conference agreement failed to meet its demands. However, the nature of the Houthis as a local political organisation in Yemen has not changed, and their main claim is to end the political, economic and cultural marginalisation of the Zaidist areas, and their conflict with Saudi Arabia is not the result of Iranian orders, but rather an attempt to remove Saudi influence from traditional Zaidist areas.
In short, the Houthis are ultimately a homegrown Yemeni organisation with an autonomous leadership driven almost entirely by local Yemeni issues. Since its inception, the Houthis have focused on local Yemeni issues rather than engaging with Iran's broader regional strategy. The interests and goals of the Houthi and Iranian leaders cannot be aligned on all issues. While the Houthis (and Iran) share a common enemy (Saudi Arabia), the Houthis have traditionally focused on their domestic interests and are far less inclined to export revolutionary fervour than some of Iran's other proxies. In this context, Iran has little direct control over Houthi behaviour and decision-making. A State Department spokesman has said that while the US does have concerns about Iran's ties to the Houthis, there is no evidence of Iranian actions to control the Houthis.
Finally, there is a lack of strong ideological roots between Iran and the Houthis. As mentioned earlier, in terms of religious beliefs, the Houthis follow the Shia Zaid sect and Iran follows the Shia Twelve Imams sect. Although the Houthis appreciate and affirm the Islamic Revolution in Iran and the two sides have established relatively close religious ties, they have not formed a strong ideological cohesion in terms of either sectarian identity or political ideology. On the sectarian side, the Zaidis are closer to the Sunnis in their beliefs; on the political side, while the Houthis praise the spirit of Khomeini's Islamic revolution, it is not in line with the Twelver Islamism of the Iranian Twelve Imams and their shariah principle (velayat-e faqih). velayat-e faqih) is weaker and the Iranian alliance with the Houthis relies more on common interests than on relations between Iran and other proxies.
In summary, in the early years of the Houthis' establishment and development, from the 1990s to 2010, the establishment of the Houthis was influenced by Iran's Islamic revolution and the religious ties between the two sides were extensive, but they did not establish a patron-proxy relationship. Since the Arab Spring in 2011, Iran and the Houthis have seen a rise in demand for each other, and the two sides have entered a period of building a patron-proxy relationship, but the relationship still lacks strategic, sustainable and ideological roots, and its future is uncertain.
Source: The Paper
(The views expressed in this article are the personal views of the author or the interviewee and do not represent the position of this research institution)
