By Pishtaz | 2025-03-05

ADEN -- The Houthis have been exploiting Palestinian suffering for their own political gain in service of the Iranian regime, military officials and regional analysts said.

In November 2023, the Houthis announced they were creating a new popular force of 10,000 volunteers to support Gaza, according to Houthi spokesman Mohammed al-Bukhaiti.

Fifteen months later, there is no evidence that these promised forces were ever deployed.

"Militarizing the youth and children under the banner of the Gaza war has nothing to do with the Palestinian issue," Yemeni Deputy Minister of Justice Faisal al-Majeedi said.

"It is rather an exploitation of that attractive banner for mobilization," he added.

"The Houthis have learned smart techniques in propaganda and disinformation," said Middle East Institute scholar Ibrahim Jalal in a January 19 interview with France 24.

The Islamic Republic-backed group exploits the Palestinian issue "to play on the sentimentality surrounding millions of Arabs in the region who do not understand the dynamics and complexity," he said.

Tehran-supported Houthi attacks

The Iranian regime meanwhile seeks to profit from the ensuing chaos the Houthis have unleashed in the Red Sea region by destabilizing the economies of its regional adversaries.

Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping cost Egypt an estimated $7 billion in lost Suez Canal revenue in 2024, the Egyptian presidency said December 26 -- just one example of the fallout from the group's actions.

In a recent sign of Tehran's meddling, the Yemeni Coast Guard intercepted a vessel carrying Iranian missile components and radar systems bound for Houthi-controlled territories, Khabar Agency reported February 13.

The interdiction came shortly after authorities at al-Hodeidah port arrested a smuggling network, comprised of Iranian and Pakistani nationals, transporting a "suspicious" cargo of fertilizer from Iran's Chabahar Port, it said.

The shipment of missile parts and others like it demonstrate the Iranian regime's strategy of arming its proxies, the Houthis, to project power across the region while maintaining its own plausible deniability, according to security experts.

While Tehran arms the Houthis, and the Houthis carry out attacks on merchant ships, the Houthis stage elaborate displays of Gaza solidarity that political analyst Faisal Ahmed calls "a ruse to boost their image.”

“What they care about is their interests, as they left Gaza reeling from the impact of the war, and did not offer anything but rhetoric," political analyst Fares al-Beel said.

By carrying out attacks that claim to support the people of Gaza, which in reality do no such thing, the Houthis seek to cover up their own well-documented failures of governance in parts of Yemen they control.