Houthis

On July 19, a Houthi drone struck an apartment building a few hundred meters from the US Embassy branch office in Tel Aviv, killing one person and injuring a dozen others. The Houthi group (Ansar Allah) announced that they used a Yafa drone that carries a high explosive payload and is equipped with stealth technology. Experts reported that the Yafa…

Threatened with new attacks, Saudi Arabia has forced the Yemeni government to abandon efforts to cut off the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) from the international banking system. Financial sanctions enacted by the government-aligned Central Bank of Yemen in Aden (CBY-Aden) were perhaps the government’s last card in its efforts to negotiate economic relief or affect the power imbalance ahead of…

The widely expected victory of the Labour Party in Britain’s July 4 parliamentary elections came with a few surprises. As widely described, it was more a collapse of the Conservative Party than a Labour success, with the Labour Party gaining almost half a million fewer votes than it did in its equally historic defeat in 2019. Despite this, Labour will…

Hadil al-Mowafak is a non-resident fellow with the Sana’a Center, focused on peacebuilding, human rights, and environmental security. Following the outbreak of war in Yemen, Al-Mowafak joined Mwatana for Human Rights as a researcher, investigating war crimes and human rights violations. In 2016, she moved to the United States, where she graduated with a degree in Political Science from Stanford…

With a long flaming red beard, distinctive square face, unconventional white turban, and a voice that was immediately recognizable – Abdelmajeed al-Zindani was perhaps the most famous political-religious figure in Yemen of the past 50 years, a controversial persona who stirred endless debate, even after his death on April 22 in Istanbul at the age of 82. Al-Zindani was born…

Yemen’s civil war has cast a shadow over Socotra, the Indian Ocean archipelago governorate, and the daily lives of its residents. Before the war began in 2014, there were three flights to and from the islands. The first was operated by Yemenia Airways, the second by small local operator Felix Airways, and the third by the Yemeni Ministry of Defense,…

The death of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, as well as the foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, in a helicopter accident on May 19 raises the question of the impact of their disappearance from the scene on the country’s foreign policy regarding Yemen. The answer for the short term is straightforward: Raisi’s death will have a…

Following the widespread dissemination of leaked documents and a very public debate on the risks of agricultural pesticides, including accusations that Houthi leaders are involved in the trade of banned chemicals, Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of the group’s Supreme Political Council, addressed the thorny issue on May 19. Al-Mashat spoke during a meeting with leaders from the Ministries of Agriculture…

In assessing the situation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden in early April, one might have said Operations Prosperity Guardian and Aspides, the US- and EU-led coalitions tasked with defending the seas from Houthi attacks on commercial vessels, were achieving their declared goals. Attacks on ships were down, and Pentagon officials even speculated that the Houthis could be…

In April 2023, a Saudi delegation was invited to visit the Houthi-held capital of Sana’a. Over the next couple of days, the media arm of the Houthi group (Ansar Allah) distributed a series of photographs to international and local media outlets featuring Mahdi al-Mashat, head of the Houthi Supreme Political Council, smiling warmly in a stately reception hall and shaking…