Houthis
Betting Everything on Restraint
As Houthi attacks squeeze Saudi Arabia's access to global trade, Riyadh is struggling to avoid being drawn into a wider war. From the Red Sea’s oil terminals to its luxury resorts, a New Lines report offers a firsthand look at how the kingdom’s postoil ambitions have become a strategic vulnerability.
Saudi Arabia’s Yemen Dilemma
The collapse of the de facto Saudi-Houthi truce in July 2026 has reopened a question long treated as taboo in Gulf commentary: whether Riyadh's decade-long reliance on the internationally recognized Yemeni government still serves its interests, or whether the Southern Transitional Council should be given a larger role.
Inside Hezbollah’s Two-Decade Project To Shape the Houthis
In 2007, two operatives, one Iranian, one from Hezbollah, sat down to dinner at a restaurant outside Damascus and started discussing Yemen. What followed was nearly two decades of military assistance, mediation, media training and political network-weaving that turned a marginal movement into the most powerful actor in Yemen.
A Pact Between Al-Shabab and the Houthis Threatens Red Sea Shipping
A growing covert alliance between the Houthis in Yemen and al-Shabab in Somalia is creating a new axis of piracy, smuggling and asymmetric warfare along the Red Sea.
The Changing Face of the Houthis
Yemen’s Houthis are among the most misunderstood groups in the world. The movement’s critics and observers fail to grasp that it does not function like a traditional hierarchical organization, which is why it has been able to adapt to the political landscape.
Cheap Houthi Drones Are Draining the Pentagon’s Coffers
Since October, the United States military and its assets have spent over $1 billion to counter the low-cost drones launched by Houthi rebels and other militant groups in the region. With the weight of the American defense industrial complex behind it, why can’t the Pentagon develop cost-effective weapons?
Textbooks of Jihad
Alongside new textbooks, authorities in Sanaa have organized summer camps, in-school festivals and other educational activities that orient students toward the battlefield. As Yemen’s conflict nears its second decade, the Houthis are striving to place the next generation on a war footing and have shown no qualms about sending underage soldiers into combat.