On 21 July last year, then Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said after the Israeli Air Force’s first strike on Yemen that “the fire that is currently burning in Hodeidah is seen across the Middle East, and the significance is clear. The IOF [Israeli Occupation Force] is capable of operating anywhere required and will strike any force that endangers Israelis.”

The Iranian-backed militia has now attacked Israel seven times since Christmas. It seems that it does not understand the Israeli deterrence strategy, which depends on aerial strikes. It also does not seem to matter how powerful the strikes are, since the Israeli Air Force attacked the Houthis for the first time last July with precision missiles and bombs like the Delilah and JDAM.

In September, Israeli planes attacked with much heavier precision missiles, such as the Rampage and Popeye. In December, they attacked many targets again in a campaign that saw a mix of precision light and heavy bombs such as the GBU-39/31 and Spice-1000.

However, none of these attacks worked because the Houthis have simply adapted to the aerial strikes, having already dealt with them for years during the Yemen Civil War after 2014.

The US and UK Poseidon Archer Operation in the Red Sea is making great efforts to eliminate Houthi ammunition stocks but to no avail despite extensive and brutal strikes from the air and sea.

Spokesman for the military in the Yemeni Governorate of Taiz Abdel-Basit Al-Baher told the UK Daily Telegraph newspaper that “the escalation is clear evidence that Iran is increasing its support for the Houthis after the weakening of Hamas and Hizbullah and the fall of the Al-Assad regime in the region.”

“Then there is the continuous smuggling by Iran of weapons parts, especially drones and missiles, which are assembled internally. It is not possible to talk about a specific number for all of this, but according to the operations carried out by the Houthis, we believe that the quantity is large, and the stockpile can last for years to come.”

The Houthis depend on two types of weapons to target Israel. The first are hypersonic ballistic missiles named Palestinian-2, a locally customised version of the Khiber-Shikan missiles with a much lighter warhead and additional boosters to reach hypersonic speeds of more than five times the speed of sound.

The Houthis are the only Iranian-backed militia to have this type of missile.

The second is loitering ammunition, also known as “suicide drones,” which are called “Yafa,” the Arabic name for Jaffa, the port city which is now part of Tel Aviv in Israel. These drones are a locally customised version of the Samad-3 long-range drone with a lighter warhead and a longer range.

Both weapons are employed using completely new tactics. The drones are employed on new routes to attack from the west to evade the defences in the south and north of the Red Sea and Israeli Sa’ar corvettes.

Israel’s air defences and air force has adapted to intercept these drones. However, it has been less successful with the hypersonic missiles, which are different from the other missiles fired earlier. Their high-speed attacks made it difficult for the Israeli air defences to intercept them before the arrival of the US THAAD air-defence system last year, which is able to intercept them.

These missiles were not in the Houthi arsenal before the events of 7 October 2023, and the Houthi role in confronting Israel as part of the Iranian “axis of resistance” was unexpected, so Israel was not ready to deal with them.

An Israeli intelligence source told the Telegraph that Israel was struggling to gather information on the Houthis, having not considered the group a threat until the 7 October attacks.

“At the time, we were under the conception that the Houthis weren’t an Israeli problem, more for the US, Saudi, and the UAE,” the source said. “Intelligence gathering is now starting from scratch.”

If Israeli intelligence succeeds in collecting data about Houthi ammunition stocks and depots, the question is how Israel will now target them.

The Houthis depend on a careful strategy that has two important cornerstones. The first is the group’s possession of underground facilities to protect what they are smuggling and manufacturing.

Fabian Hinz, a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), said in an April 2023 paper that the Houthis are preparing to fight for a long time. “The fact that the Houthis began constructing major new installations after the agreement of the ceasefire with the Saudi-led coalition suggests that the group is focused on entrenching themselves and bolstering their military capabilities,” he said.

“The resilience of the sites in the face of Saudi and coalition-partner air strikes may have even enhanced the Houthis’ interest in them. The group opted to construct large installations visible on satellite imagery rather than exclusively adhering to the clandestine mode of tunnel construction favoured by groups like Hamas and Hizbullah. The size of the entrances, which are large enough to accommodate heavy vehicles, raises questions about whether these refurbished and newly constructed underground facilities could eventually be used to conceal parts of the Houthis’ strategic-missile and UAV arsenal.”

The second cornerstone of the Houthi strategy is the adoption of a conservative launch mode to attack with a limited number of units to cause the greatest military and political impact for the longest time while preserving ammunition.

This strategy leaves limited options for Israel to eliminate the militia’s commanders. Recent reports cite an Israeli intelligence source as stating that “the Houthis’ whole regime is one Shia tribe which relies on its megalomaniac leader, and if Israel and the allies eliminate [Houthi leader] Abdul-Malik and his brother, the whole regime will collapse.”

 “He is the centre of the tribe and the whole operation… An assassination attempt may well follow if the group continues to target Israel’s civilian towns and cities,” the source said.

In the meantime, there is the threat of further Houthi missiles and drones aimed at Israel, raising the question of how Israel’s air defences will coordinate and intercept them.

This round of conflict in the Middle East raises many questions, among them whether the Houthi attacks are an Iranian attempt to distract Israel after the Israeli statements that it is necessary to attack the Iranian nuclear programme.

This could be pushing the Iranians to provide more armed support to the militia in Yemen to replace the other Iranian-backed groups in the “axis of resistance,” given that the Iranian Iraqi militias now prefer not to attack Israel.

The Israeli government is conflicted about what to do about the Iranian threat, which affects the country’s economy and living conditions.

According to the US outlet Bloomberg, this led “in 2025 to more taxes. Less disposable income. Higher food, water, and electricity bills. As 2025 starts, Israelis face a 40-billion shekel ($11 billion) war bill that will likely deepen social and political divides.”

In 2024, Israel borrowed more than 260 billion shekels from international and domestic markets, almost a record for the country, to fund the war effort. Its budget deficit soared to 7.7 per cent of GDP. To prevent the debt from spiraling, its 2025 target deficit is set at around 4.5 per cent of GDP.

Any further increases in taxes and other fiscal measures to bolster the government’s finances will make what is already one of the advanced world’s most expensive countries even costlier.

* A version of this article appears in print in the 9 January, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly