Israel has failed to stop the Yemeni Houthis from firing ballistic missiles and drones at it since October 19, 2023, because of a mix of failed strategy and capabilities, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
From October 2023 until July 2024, when a Houthi drone killed an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem’s approach was to avoid directly confronting the Houthis and to try to leave any fighting with them to the US.
Top Israeli officials – with US officials agreeing with them – during the early stages of the war told the Post that the Shi’ite Houthis were the craziest Iranian proxy in the region and that getting into a tit-for-tat battle with them would go poorly for the Jewish state because they were virtually not deterrable.
As multiple experts on the Houthis have told the Post, the group spent a large number of years essentially living out of caves on the run from the then-Yemeni Sunni rulers.
So taking away some of their weapons, funds, and niceties is not going to reduce their standing lower than where they have been in the past.
Only after the Houthis killed an Israeli in July 2024 did Jerusalem order direct counterstrikes on Yemen. Since then, the IDF has undertaken less than two dozen counterstrikes, some of which have harmed the Houthis’ weapons supply, economy, electricity supply, and general ability to trade with the outside world.
However, shortly after Israel’s counterstrike on Monday, in which Israeli officials bragged that this time the terror group would be without electricity for an extended period, the Houthis had returned electricity to their capital of Sanaa and fired yet another missile on Israel. Although the IDF has not provided a recent update, given that several months ago the Houthis had attacked over 400 times, it is quite possible now that this number has crossed the 500 level.
But what has happened since July 2024, when the IDF started to strike back? Why has the IDF seemingly just re-struck the same targets in Hodeidah and Sanaa over and over again? Why hasn’t Israel killed the Houthi leaders as it killed the more powerful Iranian, Hezbollah, and Hamas leaders?
Top Israeli defense sources have told the Post that Yemen is a far greater challenge than some other terror groups because it is even more spread out and decentralized. Although Israeli intelligence is trying to adapt its efforts to this challenge, it started those efforts from almost zero.
If the September 2024 beeper operation against Hezbollah and the June operation against Iran reflected a decade or more of planning, recruiting spies, and infiltration, for all intents and purposes, Yemen started sometime in summer 2024, the Post has learned.
The Trump administration
Along with attempts to increase Israeli intelligence’s penetration and understanding of the Houthis, once President Donald Trump won the US election in November 2024, and especially once he ordered an intensification of attacks on the Houthis when he took office in early 2025, Israeli efforts on the terror group paused in a lot of ways.
Only in spring of this year, after Trump cut a side deal with the Houthis, leaving Israel to hang in the wind, did Israeli efforts return to full throttle.
In other words, in many ways, Israel has still been working on decoding the Houthis for less than a year, whereas typically major penetrations and sabotage are drawn out over years or longer.
In that sense, Israeli defense sources have said that Israel will need to scrape the Houthis off the Jewish state gradually, bit by bit.
At the same time, there is confidence among those sources that Israeli intelligence is starting to make progress and that a significant ability to harm the Houthis could improve in the future, although Israel has not clearly confirmed killing Houthi leaders, and there have not even been any reports about such efforts in recent months.
As defense sources put it, breakthroughs could take longer than Israeli leaders would like but shorter than many experts expect.
While a significant additional period of time of the Houthis firing missiles at Israel sounds intolerable, the scenario probably will not play out that way.
Rather, if Trump is right, then the Gaza portion of the current war will end in the next four months or less, at which time the Houthis will stop firing.
What will be different is that even then, Israeli intelligence will not stop working on penetrating the Houthis.
Instead, learning from the complete surprise the terror group has achieved against Israel in the current war, Israel’s intelligence will doubtlessly continue its infiltration efforts. This could mean that if the Houthis stir trouble again in Israel, Jerusalem will be able to give a quick order for a much more damaging retaliation.
Alternatively, the Houthis may have fired at Israel enough times that the Jewish state may retaliate once it has achieved sufficient infiltration of the group, even if, at that point, the Iranian proxy is not specifically firing at it. This would be a more aggressive and risky move, but would be consistent with Israel’s current forward-leaning approach to deterring its foreseeable adversaries.