Houthi rebels harass maritime traffic in the Red Sea. From their bases in the Yemeni territory that they control, they use ballistic missiles and single-use drones against merchant ships that, according to the spokespersons for these guerrillas, go to or come from Israel. Their artillery attack capabilities are not the most sophisticated nor too expensive, however they achieve a response to their attacks that is really expensive for the defenders, be it Israel, the United States, Great Britain or France.
It is a way to increase the damage. A swarm of medium-capacity drones, or even a ballistic missile, forces a series of immediate countermeasures at a cost much greater than the value of the Houthi weapons. On their first day of attack on Israeli soil, on October 7, Hamas terrorists managed to temporarily collapse their iron shield anti-aircraft system, faced with the avalanche of enemy projectiles to which they had to respond. That same iron shield has already neutralized several missiles launched from Yemen on Jewish territory since the outbreak of the war.
That the Houthi offensive capabilities are not state-of-the-art does not mean that their arsenal has not improved a lot in recent years, being capable of launching ballistic missiles at targets 2,000 kilometers away, such as the advanced Iranian Shehab-3 missile, which different sources assure that It is already in the power of the Yemenis.
The Houthis have intensified their activities, especially in the Bab al Mandeb Strait, a crossing point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, since the start of hostilities between Israeli forces and Hamas terrorists. They unwaveringly support the Palestinian organization even though they are Sunnis and the aforementioned Yemeni faction is Shiite.
The Houthis mainly have military material of Soviet origin or its Russian updates, replicas of Western weapons manufactured in Iran (their main ally at the moment) and ballistic missiles, possibly of the most varied origin. With them they have achieved not only launches against Israeli soil, more than 2,000 kilometers away, as has been noted, but also against cargo ships, although for this type of attacks they prefer to use drones with explosive charges.
The Houthis have a new ballistic missile named Toophan, which, like much of its weapons, bears an extraordinary resemblance to other almost identical Iranian-made ones, the Ghadr-H and Ghadr-F, which are said to be able to hit targets at a distance of 2,500 kilometers.
Launching certain unmanned devices with explosive capabilities of greater or lesser power is generating enormous nervousness in those marine waters that wet the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea and Djibouti. Five shipping companies, some of the most important in the world such as the Danish Maersk, have already refused to continue transporting containers through that marine corridor as long as its waters are not safe again.
In international media, it is pointed out that the ayatollah regime could also be entering Houthi territory, through a complex smuggling network, a variant of the Shahed-136 suicide drone. It seems that there is an improved version equipped with a targeting head using an electro-optical mechanism.
Among the munition drones that the Houthis have, there is also the Samad-4 which, according to official information from that Yemeni faction, is nationally manufactured, although everything seems to indicate that the design and assembly instructions are Iranian. The Samads remember very vividly Iran's Shahed drones.
It is easy to deduce that having goods arrive using other longer routes or other shipments arriving with gigantic delays will entail an economic penalty that will have an impact on the final prices. Houthi harassment is already causing significant damage.
This economic punishment has another modality that is expressed through an evident disproportion: the Yemeni rebels use in their attacks, as the newspaper Le Monde recently pointed out, drones whose price ranges between 10,000 and 50,000 euros per unit. Western powers, such as France itself and especially the United States or Great Britain, use anti-aircraft and counter-missile systems whose use easily costs several million euros, depending on the size of the attacking swarm they must face. That is also a wear mechanism.
Despite the reinforcement of naval surveillance, on December 15, the merchant ship MSC Palatium III became the first large vessel hit by an anti-ship ballistic missile. The shipping company reported that no member of the crew suffered any damage, but not the ship, which has been left out of service for the moment, after a major fire broke out.
“The Houthis do not have the capacity to close the Bab al Mandeb Strait, but they do have the capacity to cause direct economic damage or by causing, for example, navigation insurance to be triggered,” explains the professor of Political Science at the University of Granada and director of the digital publication Global Strategy, Javier Jordán.
The actions of the Houthis against maritime traffic in the waters of the Red Sea are not new, they have only now intensified. Iran gave them great support - especially in weapons -, which continues today without fissures and probably increased, since the guerrillas took control of Sanaa, the country's capital, in 2014. Since then, with different intensities, They have not stopped carrying out actions in the region.
Professor at the University of La Laguna Luis V. Pérez Gil, an expert in conflict theory, takes his view even further: “Russia is using Iran to spur the Houthis in the area. “Both countries are united by a common enemy (the United States) and, in addition, both are linked by international sanctions.”
The international board is interconnected and the Red Sea crisis seems to be another symptom of the struggle between the West and emerging powers such as China or Russia that challenge the United States and its allies for global control.
