Two decades of reshaping religious authority, tribal power and mass mobilization carried the Houthis to the Red Sea. Holding what they have gained — and eventually passing it on — is a different task.

The Houthis began in the mountains of Saada, a landscape whose isolation had sustained Zaydi political autonomy for centuries. Their advance toward Bab el-Mandeb therefore marks something more consequential than another shift on Yemen’s endlessly changing military map. A movement born in geography that protected it from the outside world has reached geography that gives it leverage over that world.

Iran played an indispensable role in this transformation, supplying weapons, technology, training and strategic support. But Bab el-Mandeb has always been there. What has changed is the Houthis themselves: a local Zaydi revivalist movement has acquired the military capacity, administrative machinery and political endurance to turn Yemen’s geography into strategic power of its own.

At one of the weakest moments in the Islamic Republic’s history, the movement it helped build is expanding its territorial reach, threatening Saudi Arabia and acquiring greater leverage over a global maritime artery. Iran once exported power to the Houthis. The more interesting question in 2026 is how much power the Houthis can now export back.

The roots of Houthi power long predate its alliance with Iran. For almost a millennium, much of Yemen’s northern highlands was ruled by Zaydi imams. Unlike Twelver Shiism, Zaydism has no Hidden Imam whose return as the Mahdi must be awaited: legitimate religious and temporal authority could be claimed by a living descendant of Ali and Fatima who possessed the requisite learning and demonstrated his capacity to lead — including by rising against an unjust ruler. An imam was neither infallible nor necessarily hereditary, and could himself be challenged.

The Houthis retained........

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