The NPR Politics Podcast - Who Are The Houthis?

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

The U.S. government has been launching missiles at Houthi rebels who have attacked ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis claim they are taking physical action in solidarity with the Palestinians. The Biden administration has gone to great pains to say the strikes against the Houthis have nothing to do with the Israel-Gaza war. This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and editor/correspondent Ron Elving.Our producers are Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Barb calling from Portland, Oregon. I just threw a whole bunch of yams into the oven in anticipation of a visit from my grandbaby Alma, who loves them. I'll be baking the yams until they're nice and soft because right now Alma only has two teeth. This podcast was recorded at 108 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, January 18th of 2024. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but Alma will probably be full, a little sticky, and working on tooth number three. Enjoy the show. I miss those days. Sure you do. They were a little more dasa, my kids back then. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Greg Myrie, and I cover national security. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent.

The U.S. government has been launching missiles at a group that is based out of Yemen called the Houthis. And today on the show, who are the Houthis? Why is the U.S. striking them? And could this tie the U.S. into a broader regional war that President Biden says he's been trying to avoid? Greg, I want to start with you because you have been covering this story. The United States, as we say, has been firing missiles into Yemen for about a week now. Why is that happening? So the U.S. is going after the Houthis. They are the strongest military force in Yemen,

and they've been attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea that runs along Yemen's western coastline. They've been doing this for about two months. They say it's in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza as part of the Israel-Hamas war. Now, the Houthis have fired on well over 30 ships. These are commercial cargo ships from many different countries traveling in international waters, a very important shipping lane. In most cases, the U.S. Navy has shot down these incoming missiles and drones targeting the ships, and the U.S. has been warning the Houthis to stop this, cut it out, but they didn't. So a week ago, the U.S. began firing on

the Houthi targets using firing from planes, from ships, even from a submarine. And they're primarily going after places where missiles are launched or stored. The U.S. has carried out four attacks in the past week. More seem likely. So what are the United States goals for these airstrikes? You know, I was struck by something that the president said just earlier today. He was asked if these strikes are working. And he said, if you're asking me if they are stopping the Houthis, no, but are we going to continue them? Yes. Yeah, this is the big question. And it probably is a little early to tell. The U.S. either wants the Houthis to be deterred and stop firing on their own,

hoping they'll decide it's just not worth it to get in a shooting war with a much more powerful U.S. Navy, or that the U.S. will take out enough of their missiles and missile launch sites and take away their capacity to carry out these attacks. Now, Yemen is a very poor country. It doesn't make these missiles, but the U.S. says it gets them from Iran. So this could potentially go on as long as Iran

wants to supply them. Now, both Iran and the Houthis seem to welcome, at least for now, the international attention they're getting. They say they're doing something to support the Palestinians. And it is causing this significant disruption to Red Sea shipping, which is this very key route connecting Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Some big shipping companies like Maersk are now avoiding the Red Sea. They're taking a much longer route around the southern tip of Africa. So it hasn't stopped international shipping, but it is causing slowdowns and adding costs. Greg, let's take a pause for a moment

because I think for a lot of our listeners, they may not be incredibly familiar with the group, the Houthis. So who exactly are they? So it's a militant group that emerged in Yemen. It's been around for about three decades. And then they really rose to prominence about a decade ago when Yemen descended into turmoil. The Houthis seized the capital Sana'a. They're part of this Iran proxy network in the region, radical groups that Iran supports. Iran gives them weapons, training, and intelligence. And this support helped the Houthis emerge from this civil war over the past decade as the strongest force in Yemen. So they're considered very tough and resilient fighters. Now, previously, they've been mostly focused on fighting

inside Yemen, trying to gain control of the country. But in the past, they've also fired some missiles into Saudi Arabia. They've launched attacks on other shipping in the Red Sea. And now they're really in the international spotlight with these attacks that are being countered by the U.S. Navy. Ron, I think it's also important for us to place this story geographically in terms of where the conflict is taking place. Yes, I think it's safe to say most Americans would have trouble locating Yemen on a map. It's at the far southwestern extreme of the Arabian Peninsula. In fact, it is just across a very small body of water,

which is how they get these great shots at passing shipping. It's just a very small amount of water between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. The Gulf of Aden leads out to the Arabian Sea, out to the Indian Ocean. So if that helps people place it a little bit, it's right where the Arabian Peninsula comes closest to touching Africa. But presumably it's quite a busy shipping corridor, given the concerns we've seen about attacks on some of these commercial ships. Busy is putting it mildly. The Gulf of Hormuz is famous among Americans who remember the Persian Gulf Wars and the amount of

attention that was paid to the shipping that comes through that particular strait into the Gulf of Oman. But that's because the Persian Gulf was our great source of oil for so very long. And really what most Americans might recognize about this region is the name the Red Sea. Back to biblical stories, it is the Red Sea that leads up to the Suez Canal. And it has been an enormous touch point or choke point, really, one should say, between the shipping in Asia to the West and the shipping of the West to Asia. It has been so since the Suez Canal was built more than 150 years ago. Greg, I want to go back to something that you mentioned, which is about how the Houthis relate to the Israel-Gaza war. The Biden administration has been quite keen to say that these strikes against the Houthis have nothing

to do with that conflict. But at the same time, the Houthis have said that they are in solidarity with the Palestinians and that they are taking physical actions that no one else is in the international community right now. I'm curious how you make sense of that all. Sure, Asma, and it really just depends on your perspective. When the Houthis make this claim that they're doing this in support of the Palestinians, that's something that really resonates in the Middle East right now. Every time you see the Israelis and Palestinians fighting, it certainly stirs up passions in the Arab world. And so even though

the Houthis are not directly attacking Israel or Israeli ships, this does strike a strong chord throughout the Muslim world. Now, the Biden administration is trying to draw this distinction that the Israelis and Hamas are fighting in Gaza, and that is one conflict. And then what we have here is this vital international shipping lane, the Red Sea, and the Houthis have no right to be firing on ships that are coming from countries all around the world, going to countries all around the world. So it's also part of what we see is this broader network of Iranian proxies. We also see Hezbollah firing into Israel. We see the Houthis attacking these ships.

So for many in that part of the world, they see all of this as a statement against what Israel is doing with its war in Gaza. But from the U.S. and some other Western countries, they see them as very distinct conflicts. Greg, the U.S. has designated the Houthi as an international terrorist organization or as a specially designated organization. What does all that mean? Yeah, so there are these two sorts of classifications when it comes to terrorist organizations. One, the more serious one, is a foreign terrorist organization. Think of al-Qaeda or the Islamic State. This is the most serious designation that the U.S. would put on a group. It means you can have absolutely no contact with them.

There could be punishment, criminal penalties if you do. They're completely out of bounds as far as the U.S. is concerned. There's a second category, which is slightly less stringent, and it's specially designated global terrorist entity. Besides being a mouthful, it does give just a little bit of wiggle room, essentially for, say, aid groups, humanitarian groups to provide assistance to Yemen. So this is the list that the Houthis are now on. And so aid groups, humanitarian groups could still work in Yemen without getting in trouble. It may not seem

like a distinction with a big difference, but at least from a humanitarian point of view, this seems to be the distinction that the U.S. is making. And that is, of course, important because of the ongoing civil war in Yemen. We are going to take a brief break here, and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back. And Greg, President Biden came into office very clear that he wanted to end the so-called forever wars in the Middle East in particular. And he said that the United States wouldn't be involved in ground wars. We have seen, of course, the United States military using missiles and drones in certain

parts of the world. But I want to understand, Greg, what is going on right now? And does this pose political challenges for a president who was very keen to ensure that the United States does not get dragged into conflicts in the Middle East? Well, it certainly could, and he's trying to draw a very fine line here of staying out of conflicts, but saying the U.S. cannot entirely sit on the sidelines when you have international shipping at risk in the Red Sea, as we're seeing with these attacks. And we're seeing how quickly these things can spread and metastasize. You know, it's barely been 100 days since Hamas attacked Israel back on October 7th, and now we have Israel's ongoing operation in Gaza. But on any given day right now, you have shooting in a half dozen or so places in the region.

Now, the U.S. has bombed three separate countries recently, the Houthis in Yemen and extremist groups in Syria and Iraq that were attacking small contingents of U.S. troops that are still based there. Iran, which was recently hit by a major bombing attack claimed by the Islamic State, has responded by bombing three separate countries as well. So this is a very dangerous, volatile moment where the U.S. is trying to restore some order and stability, but doesn't want to get deeply involved in fighting there. And Ron, I want to ask you about the electoral consequences here, because this is all happening in an election year. And I know those of us who cover politics a lot will often hear from folks who say foreign policy issues do not determine elections. I think that is largely true. But I imagine that no candidate wants to be digging themselves further and further into Middle East wars in the midst of an election campaign.

True enough. And no, foreign policy does not, generally speaking, matter that much in our presidential elections, unless foreign policy becomes the issue, as it has at times. After 9-11, George W. Bush was reelected largely because of 9-11 and what he was doing after that. But back to the Vietnam War, it was certainly the biggest issue. Jimmy Carter, with all of his problems, finally went down because he couldn't do anything about those hostages being held in Iran. So it can become an albatross, even for a president who has tried hard to keep foreign policy from being his primary focus. And, of course, there's going to be a huge contrast between whatever Joe Biden does and what Donald Trump will say he would do, which is he would say he would have the perfect solution on day one, and that will be sufficient for some voters. So that is a way in which what's going on in the Middle East right now could be, once again, as it has been in the past,

a major focus for the presidential election by the time we get to the fall. Greg, I have a final big question for you, which I realize may be very hard to answer, but ultimately, how does this entire conflict end? When I talk to experts, it seems like there's two schools of thought. You know, the Biden administration could broker this mega deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and it would have this regional stability. The other is that this could really escalate into an all-out regional war. That's also a possibility. Yeah, I think you're right, Asma. And these are the kinds of discussions you're hearing,

but I think a lot of analysts say those are kind of the extremes. On the one hand, this idea of a grand bargain in the Middle East has been kicking around really for more than two decades. The notion that the Israelis and Palestinians would work out a two-state solution and then other Arab states would recognize and accept Israel. That would be the aim there in this sort of idealistic scenario. But you still have this war in Gaza, a terrible humanitarian crisis. None of the main issues in that conflict have been resolved. So a full-fledged peace deal, especially this year, just doesn't seem realistic at the moment. Now, what is realistic certainly is more fighting,

but probably not a wider regional war. I think one important point here is that the only fighting we're seeing at close range on the ground is this Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. These other conflicts are long range. There are airstrikes, there are missiles fired across borders. So we're virtually certain to see more of these attacks from a distance, but the bright red line, the sign of a regional war really, would be when ground troops are sent

across the border. Most analysts say this still seems unlikely at this point. All right, well, we will continue to follow this story. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Greg Myrie, and I cover national security. I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.