Iran Accused of Backing Houthis as Yemen War Flares and Saudi Cities Come Under Attack

New allegations that Iran is backing Houthi forces in Yemen have surfaced in the media and in official statements, casting light on the opaque nature of the alliance.

According to the reports, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has aided the Houthis as the group seized territory in western Yemen and launched its most intense and sophisticated attacks to date on Saudi Arabia, which backs the internationally recognized Yemeni government fighting the Houthis.

The Iranian support described in the media includes training, the supply of intelligence, tactical guidance and help targeting drone and missile strikes.

If accurate, the reports would certainly escalate tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, given that the kingdom has been targeted by dozens of Houthi drones and missiles in recent weeks, including an attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport that killed 13 people. Saudi energy facilities and oil tankers have also been targeted by the group.

According to the reports, Iranian backing contributed to a Houthi offensive in September that helped the armed group, also known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for "Supporters of God"), take control of Yemen's Red Sea coast and the strategic Bab al-Mandeb strait.

The Wall Street Journal reported that flights by Iran's Mahan Air carried IRGC paramilitary officers, drone parts, missile guidance systems and fuses to the Houthis in Yemen. IRGC officers are also said to be on the front lines directing Houthi attacks.

Major General Turki al-Maliki, spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition backing the Yemeni government, confirmed that an outside country stands behind the Houthis' increasingly advanced arsenal but did not name it.

Al-Maliki noted that the Houthis, who have fought the government since 2014, acquired advanced technology with regional support. That support, he said, has made the Houthis the first non-state armed group to deploy ballistic missiles, attack and suicide drones, and fast boats packed with explosives, although other Iranian allies such as Hezbollah and Iran-backed militias also possess such weapons.

While the Houthis stress their independence from Iran, the two share an ideology. They are also accused of close military cooperation, most evident in the Houthi missile arsenal.

Operational planning

Analysts who spoke to Al Jazeera agreed that the "regional support" the Houthis receive refers to the IRGC, although Iran and the Houthis deny it.

One sign of this was the bombing of Sanaa International Airport in July just before an Iranian plane carrying a Houthi delegation from Tehran was due to land. The Yemeni government, which said its forces carried out the strike, accused the "Iranian plane" of violating Yemeni airspace.

"[The recent reports] confirm what experts have known for years: that Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah experts take part in managing operational planning for battles against the Yemeni government and neighboring countries, including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Ibrahim Jalal, an analyst specializing in Yemen, told Al Jazeera.

"For example, the killing of Hassan Irloo, the Revolutionary Guard envoy to the Houthis, in Yemen after the 2021 military campaign in Marib was one of the important signs, alongside Mahan flights carrying more experts before the Houthis escalated at home and abroad in July this year."

Ali al-Dahab, a specialist in military and strategic security, agreed that the advanced weapons the Houthis use point to Iran's role in recent operations.

"What has leaked about Iranian support for the Houthis in this report adds no new information beyond confirming what was already confirmed, and perhaps what it adds is that arms smuggling, especially precision technology for missiles and drones, takes place via small submarines," al-Dahab told Al Jazeera.

"This issue is not all that is smuggled from Iran to the Houthis, because there have been seizures of smuggled shipments by the joint forces controlling the coast from Mocha to Bab al-Mandeb before the Houthis took control and before the collapse in September."

Al-Dahab pointed out that while smugglers previously used traditional wooden dhows to deceive naval coalitions, the use of submarines is a new Houthi method, similar to the tactics of organized crime groups in the Americas.

"This shows Iran focuses on the Houthis as a military and security center of gravity in the southern Red Sea, and therefore supplies them with weapons, ammunition, expertise and information to deal with a battle that could break out at the Strait of Hormuz. So the Houthis play a supporting role for Iran at Bab al-Mandeb," al-Dahab said.

He warned of broader consequences for international shipping now that the Houthis control Bab al-Mandeb, the narrow waterway linking the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea.

"The biggest danger now is that sub-state entities in the southern Red Sea and Gulf of Aden region unite under Iran's leadership to confront the US, Britain and Europe in general if a battle breaks out in the Gulf of Aden and the strait," al-Dahab said.

Diplomatic reality

Saudi Arabia and Iran had appeared to mend years of hostility, including a suspension of diplomatic ties, with a China-brokered reconciliation agreement signed in Beijing in 2023.

Hesham Alghannam, a fellow at the Riyadh-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said he doubts Saudi Arabia ever viewed the Beijing deal as reconciliation rather than a way to reduce tension. Differences over geopolitical issues have persisted between the two countries since the agreement was signed, including over Yemen, which sits on Saudi Arabia's southern border.

"It is not a violation that you can take to a lawyer. It is the separation of the two files, and it works until someone says it out loud. That is what changed," Alghannam told Al Jazeera.

"Honestly, the deeper question was never whether Tehran signed [the deal with Saudi Arabia]. It is whether anything Tehran signs reaches those holding the launch pads," he added, referring to Iran-aligned armed groups such as the Houthis.

"We know how the other sequence ended. In 2014, [the Houthis] were offered seats, special status for Saada [the Houthis' northern stronghold] and a share of executive power in Yemen in exchange for handing heavy weapons to the state," he added.

What followed was the Houthi capture of the capital, Sanaa, in September 2014, forcing the government to flee south, and later the killing of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

"What came next was the takeover of institutions, the president placed under arrest, parliament dissolved. The benefits were kept, and the guns were kept," Alghannam added.

"Saleh cooperated with them, and he was killed in the street in 2017. Even after taking Sanaa, they did not become a state. They built a network of supervisors sitting in every official position. So Saudi Arabia's red line is one thing: no second armed group or army within a state."

The Saudi-led intervention in Yemen began in March 2015 and led to another direct conflict between Riyadh and the Houthis. Despite enormous Saudi support for the internationally recognized government, it could not retake Sanaa. That highlighted weaknesses in the anti-Houthi coalition, including divisions between the internationally recognized government and southern separatists.

"The lesson of 2015 is not that firm action leads to protracted war. It is that announcing objectives earlier than you should leads to that, because once you say it out loud, you are bound to it long before you can deliver," he said.

"What Riyadh is trying to do now is easy to say but hard to do, yet it is essential: tying money and weapons to real integration under one command, not to declared loyalties."

Strategic independence

Hassan Ahmadian, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tehran, told Al Jazeera that Iran seeks technological independence for its partners rather than permanent dependence.

"This model is not like the American model, which keeps anyone who follows and allies with it in a state of need, meaning [they] must buy the weapons they need from the US, and major weapons are basically not supplied if it is a particular Arab or Muslim country," he said.

"For Iran, the ally is given the technology to create and produce weapons, and this is not only in Yemen but in other regions and even in Gaza as much as possible, where technology is transferred because of a different viewpoint."

Ahmadian argued that enabling Iran's allies to produce their own weapons is a strategic move by Tehran, and that the Houthis are also driven by a desire to break Saudi Arabia's siege of the territories they control in Yemen.

"The view is that this technology helps confront the common enemy, and therefore strengthening this capability independently of Iran is itself an Iranian strategic interest," Ahmadian said.

"Note that there is an advance for Ansar Allah [the Houthis] regarding the legitimacy of the cause, because there is a siege imposed on Yemenis affecting 70 to 80 percent of society controlled by Ansar Allah and the Sanaa government. So this cause, breaking the siege, is legitimate... The regional circumstances gave [the Houthis] the motive that this is the time to pressure Saudi Arabia to break the siege, and that is what actually happened."