Houthi Rebels and Iran

“Thine enemies make a tumult: and they that hate thee have lifted up the head. They have taken crafty counsel against thy people … They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance” (Psalms 83:2-4).

The Persian Empire was founded by Cyrus the Great, the king used by Jehovah God to return the Jewish people to Israel after decades of exile in Babylon. The Book of Daniel reveals the power and influence of the Persian Empire in its heyday.

In 2025, Clifford May, President of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, published an essay, “Satrapy fishing in Yemen,” contending that Iran’s goal was to rebuild the Empire established by Cyrus. The conflict in Yemen had its roots in the Arab Spring of 2011, when an uprising forced the country’s long-time authoritarian president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, to hand over power to his deputy, Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Fighting began in 2014 when the Houthi Shia Muslim rebel movement took advantage of the new president’s weakness and seized control of northern Saada province and neighboring areas. The Houthis went on to take the capital Sana’a, forcing Mr. Hadi into exile abroad. It escalated dramatically in March 2015, when Saudi Arabia and eight other mostly Sunni Arab states — backed by the US, UK, and France — began air strikes against the Houthis, with the declared aim of restoring Mr. Hadi’s government.

The Houthis had taken control of the northwest region and the capital city, Sana’a, sending the government into exile in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi-led coalition soon intervened, but the Houthis stayed in control while the coalition’s bombs fell, often killing civilians and destroying factories and infrastructure in what was already the Arab world’s poorest country.

Saudi Arabia and its coalition partner, the United Arab Emirates, also backed various Yemeni fighting groups to battle the Houthis. Iran, the Saudis’ regional nemesis, had a relationship with the Houthis before the war but dramatically ramped up military aid to the movement after the fighting began. In September of 2023, just two weeks prior to the Hamas attack on Israel, Saudi Arabia praised the “positive results” of negotiations with Yemen’s Houthi rebels after they visited the kingdom for peace talks to end the war tearing at the Arab world’s poorest nation. The conflict had become enmeshed in a wider regional proxy war Saudi Arabia faced against its longtime regional rival Iran, with which it reached a détente earlier in 2023. According to May, only two world leaders have deciphered Iran’s true intent: Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and King Salman of Saudi Arabia.

The Houthis now function as the de facto government overseeing much of Yemen. They also act as one of Iran’s regional networks of proxy forces opposed to Israel and US military presence in the Middle East.
Following the October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, Houthi leaders characterized its actions in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden as in solidarity with Hamas fighters battling Israel in Gaza, yet often its targeting appears indiscriminate. Since November the US Defense Department has documented 105 attacks on merchant vessels off Yemen. As of this writing, the Biden administration is expanding efforts to surveil and intercept Iranian weapons smuggled to Yemen.

When Houthi fighters seized Yemen’s capital, Sana’a, in 2014, they inherited an array of weaponry, including North Korean and Soviet-era scud missiles, Soviet-era surface-to-air missiles, and Chinese anti-ship missiles, said Mohammed al-Basha, a senior Middle East analyst at the Navanti Group. Since then, the group has learned to create more advanced weapons by modifying items in its arsenal and using technology obtained from overseas, and from Iran.

The US Defense Department’s intelligence arm has a new unclassified report, detailing what is in the Houthi arsenal. Most of its tech linked back to Iran. This includes unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that act as remote suicide bombers. The Bab al-Mandab strait on the west coast of Yemen is a gateway to the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. This makes Iran the gatekeeper of strategic waterways, giving them a potential chokehold on Asia and Europe.

The Middle East is taking a different shape, along clear, far older lines than those Western powers imposed nearly a century ago. Across the continent those borders are in the process of cracking and breaking.

Israel in a Difficult Situation

Nine years ago, on March 31, 2015, the Times of Israel reported that commander Naqdi of the Basij militia of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that “erasing Israel off the map” was “nonnegotiable.” Though his remarks were dismissed by many,1 Iran’s Fars news agency reported that Naqdi said Iran was stepping up efforts to arm West Bank Palestinians for battle against Israel, to lead to Israel’s annihilation.

The prophet Joel describes a time when a great confederacy of nations will gather against Israel and be brought to their end in the valley of Jehoshaphat. Prominent among those nations, Ezekiel says is Persia (Ezekiel 38:5). As Persia was only rising in Ezekiel’s day, he must have been referring to the time preceding the final battle of the Gospel Age, Armageddon.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Israel’s leader Netanyahu has referred to Iran’s negotiations for nuclear development as a “pincer movement” representing “a threat to the Gulf and the entire world.” The reestablishment of Israel in the Land promised to Abraham’s descendants is an important event in the Biblical “time of the end” (Luke 21:24).

In God’s first recorded promise to Abraham He said “Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee: and I will make of thee a great nation … and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3). Verse 7 adds, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”

Israel was expelled from its land the second time in 70 AD. Israelites were dispersed among nations for over 1,800 years. Then, prior to World War 1, Jews were given an opportunity to again live in Palestine. When the Ottoman Empire was overthrown, the doors for return were opened. Today, over 7,000,000 Jews live in Israel. Never before has a nation been resurrected in this way. The experience has not been peaceful. Since 1948 Israel has experienced three major wars, and is threatened by Iran and others. Ezekiel 38, 39, describes a final cataclysmic assault, which will bring divine intervention. This deliverance by God will be recognized by all nations.

“Thus will I magnify myself … I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am the LORD” (Ezekiel 38:23). Then kingdom blessings will flow to Israel and the world. The Ancient Worthies will be recognized as God’s human representatives. Israel will have the opportunity of co-operating with the Ancient Worthies in the great project of restitution. Peace will come to the Middle East and spread through the whole world.

“The inhabitants of one city shall go to another, saying, ‘Let us go speedily to pray before the LORD, and to seek the LORD of hosts: I will go also.’ Yea, many people and strong nations shall come to seek the LORD of hosts in Jerusalem, and to pray before the LORD. Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days it shall come to pass, that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard that God is with you” (Zechariah 8:21-23). Events transpiring today are drawing us ever closer to the these wonderful prospects!