Analysis | The Houthis, Israel, and the Big Game

How would the Prime Ministers of Britain and France react if someone launched a missile from 2,000 kilometers away toward Heathrow and Charles de Gaulle airports? Because that is exactly what happened last week when a Houthi missile landed near Terminal 3 at Ben Gurion Airport.

The Israeli Air Force has already struck Yemen’s ports several times. Trump secured a commitment from the Houthis not to target American ships, and yet the latter continue to launch missiles at Israel—even last week, while Trump is in the region. The sirens hundreds of thousands of Israelis into bomb shelters. Drivers on the roadside stop their cars and lie down on the ground, hands on their heads—as per Home Front Command instructions. A surreal and insane sight in the year 2025.

US President Donald Trump visited  the region last week, and to some extent, the fate of the Israeli hostages in Gaza is in his hands. There are those in Israel asking whether it’s possible that Trump will “drop us,” make massive deals with the Gulf states, talk with Hamas and with Iran—both directly and indirectly—and what about us here in Israel, they wonder.

Regarding the Houthis, Trump took action and separated Israel from the other parties involved. The Houthis will not attack American or other ships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea. The maritime flow of goods from AliExpress in China will continue without interruption. And the Houthis will continue launching missiles and drones into Israeli airspace.

The situation will be assessed and tested in the coming days and weeks on the ground. But it’s possible that the Americans have concluded that Israel is capable of dealing with the Houthis and resolving this conflict using its own air force, with a bit of American support—while Trump’s focus is on MBS’s future multibillion-dollar investments.

The distance between Israel and  Yemen’s ports is 2,000 kilometers—further than Iran. The Israeli Air Force has learned to overcome the distance and successfully employs a doctrine of long-range sorties with dozens of fighter jets, refueling planes, and command and intelligence aircraft, destroying targets. There’s already a Houthi target bank. But every strike sortie from Israel to Yemen is a complicated, highly complex, long-range, and risky mission.

An F-15 squadron commander said on television that he and his fellow pilots trust more than 100% in the technical crew that prepares the planes for the long flights with perfect professionalism. Still, a malfunction could, heaven forbid, occur—and it’s problematic hundreds of kilometers from home. These sorties are also extremely expensive—many millions of shekels.

In other words, Houthi-controlled Yemen remains one of the active fronts against the State of Israel. The Houthis are also militarily provoking one of the world’s most powerful naval forces—the U.S. 5th Fleet and CENTCOM headquarters. They don’t have tanks, fighter jets, or artillery, but they do possess powerful capabilities in missiles and unmanned systems, and they continue attacking—despite almost all of their launched weapons being intercepted by Israeli Arrow missile batteries, with only a few falling in Israeli territory, like near Ben Gurion Airport. The Israeli defense array has been bolstered with THAAD batteries—America’s version of the Arrow.

The U.S. military holds enormous naval and aerial power against the Houthis even without “boots on the ground.” A comparison of military forces between the U.S. 5th Fleet and the Houthi arsenal shows that if they truly wanted to, the Americans could eliminate the Houthi threat.

The 5th Fleet is a powerful air-sea strike force: hundreds of advanced fighter jets on aircraft carriers, air defense systems, commando forces, and other units in regional bases. Task Force 51 (amphibious), Task Force 54 (submarines), Task Force 52 (mine warfare), and Task Force 53 (logistics). It controls and is responsible for an enormous area—the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Gulf, the Red Sea, and parts of the western Indian Ocean—in coordination with CENTCOM, the U.S. Central Command. Not far away, in the Mediterranean, lies the U.S. 6th Fleet.

According to the INSS report for 2024, the Houthis possess a wide range of missiles and drones: Iranian ballistic missiles with ranges of 1,600–2,000 km, Shahab-3 missiles, Burkan-3 missiles, SUMAR cruise missiles with a range of 2,000 km, and SUMAR-4. Nearly ten types of anti-ship missiles.

The War Zone website wrote in March this year that American intelligence does not have a complete picture of the Houthis' entire weapons arsenal. This raises the concern that the Americans “can but don’t want to” truly eliminate the Houthi threat—which is currently directed only at Israel.

At first glance, the Houthi threat seems bearable—not a global strategic threat that keeps world leaders awake at night. It’s not nuclear; there’s no risk of invasion of a Middle Eastern country or escalation into a regional conflict or full-scale war. And precisely for that reason, the State of Israel cannot remain silent about the launch of a missile from Yemen to its only international airport in the center of the country—a super-strategic site surrounded by millions of residents.

The Israeli Air Force demonstrates its ability to confront the threat, but the Houthis continue to threaten Ben Gurion Airport and show no signs of surrender. The Americans clearly prefer that Israel handle the Houthis on its own after securing an agreement with them. But this raises a question for Trump: how would he react if Mexico or Canada launched a ballistic missile directly at JFK Airport in New York?

All eyes are now on Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, Gaza, the hostages, and the war. If Houthi attacks on Israel continue, ideas of a ground operation against them may resurface—perhaps in cooperation with neighboring Gulf states, and maybe even with Israel. A significant expansion of the scale and intensity of U.S. naval and air force strikes will certainly be considered.

There is no doubt that military means exist to severely damage and even sever the land and sea routes of weapons transfers from Iran to Yemen. Striking the ports in Yemen is not enough. A much firmer hand may be needed from the U.S.—the same one that asked us to "leave the Houthi issue to them." Because even in today’s insane world, there’s no justification for millions of Israelis to keep running to shelters every few nights because of an enemy 2,000 kilometers away—with whom we have no direct conflict.