To date, Yemen’s Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, have played a limited role in the U.S., Israel and Iran war. This cautious engagement raises important questions about their motives and the factors that could push this influential non-state actor to escalate further.
Despite possessing highly effective tools, the Houthis have opted for restraint over total engagement. Their behavior reflects a doctrine of limited escalation,rooted in military, economic, and strategic calculations, aimed at achieving certain political gains while avoiding a slide into full-scale confrontation. This strategy deploys their leverage within a carefully calibrated framework that balances influence against survival, while keeping some of their powder dry, most notably, their leverage over the Red Sea.
Ansar Allah’s involvement in the conflict can be understood through two theoretical lenses. The first is asymmetric deterrence, whereby weaker actors use low-cost tools to achieve strategic impact. The second is asymmetric warfare, which explains how non-state actors engage adversaries that are superior in conventional terms. The Houthis’ operational behavior can be further explained through the concept of sub-threshold escalation, by disassembling military and economic considerations and linking them to the regional context.
Between Symbolism and Strategic Calculations
Despite their limited military impact, Houthis’ attacks have served a clear political and symbolic function: establishing the group’s presence within the regional resistance axis, without incurring the costs of full-scale escalation. This reflects a doctrine of striking only where the political impact outweighs the military risks.
Several key features define this approach, including extreme caution and a calculated delay in entering the war, suggesting that the Houthis were waiting for the opportune moment to maximize impact. Furthermore, they confined operations to small-scale missile and drone attacks against Israel, symbolically meaningful but militarily modest, constrained by distance and the effectiveness of Israel’s air defenses.
Critically, the Houthis have avoided opening high-risk battlefronts, such as attacking shipping in the Red Sea, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, or regional energy infrastructure. From a propaganda perspective, the Houthis have invested heavily in supporting the Palestinian cause and bolstering their image as a ‘resistance‘ force. While their involvement in the current war is limited, it reinforces this image in the minds of their Palestinian and other Arab supporters.
The result is a posture that balances support for Iran against the risk of a devastating U.S. and Israeli retaliation, while simultaneously preserving domestic interests and regional relationships. It represents a shift from open asymmetric deterrence to what might be called a “limited deterrence,” in which force is used selectively while avoiding triggering an escalatory response.
The Red Sea as a Delayed Deterrent
The Red Sea, and particularly the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, represents the Houthis’ strategic center of gravity. As the conduit for 10-12 percent of the world’s oil and 25-30 percent of container traffic, it is a key chokepoint for global supply chains. This means an attack here would have a direct impact on world trade and immediately send energy prices spiraling, forcing major powers to respond.
Yet by refraining from using this tool, the Houthis have indicated a fundamental shift in their strategic thinking. Rather than seeing it as a means of day-to-day tactical pressure, they have come to see it as a deterrent of last resort, recognizing that playing this card under the current circumstances could prompt an uncontrollable escalation. Accordingly, their restraint reflects not a retreat from the use of force, but rather an awareness of its limits.
Prior to the current war, the Houthis adopted a model of asymmetric deterrence that relied on low-cost missiles and drones to achieve high strategic impact by threatening trade and energy flows. However, the war has revealed a shift towards limited deterrence that still requires the use of force but is well short of deploying their most powerful capabilities.
This strategy, which is designed to avoid becoming fully embroiled in the conflict, is defined by rigorous cost-benefit analysis at each step, weighing the likelihood of military retaliation, economic consequences, and domestic stability. All this is calibrated to maintain the Houthis’ position in Iran’s broader regional network while preserving operational independence.
Reshaping Political Behavior
The U.S.-Israeli strikes against the Houthis in 2024 and 2025 resulted in degrading their military infrastructure and reducing their operational capabilities, as well as revealing intelligence breaches, which helped deter the group. The threat of further strikes and ongoing surveillance of the group reinforced that deterrence. This led to a behavioral shift — from a pattern of sustained attacks to one of calculated, low-risk strikes — reflecting not in elimination of Houthi capabilities, but a recalibration of how they are deployed.
Economic factors have been equally decisive. At their core, the group’s military actions are the result of complex economic and strategic decisions. The domestic economy in Houthi-controlled areas is structurally fragile; it is partially dependent on limited trade, oil smuggling, salary transfers, and remittances, and is battered by sanctions, the destruction of infrastructure, and declining revenues. Any major escalation would risk sparking a rapid internal collapse.
It is also important to bear in mind the Houthis’ economic relationship with Saudi Arabia, an oft-underestimated strategic issue. Saudi Arabia is a source of indirect support, partially funding salaries in Houthi-controlled areas and acting as a safety net for economic stability. In wishing to avoid severing this lifeline, the Houthis have halted attacks on the Red Sea. This is an economic decision, as any large-scale escalation would undermine this relationship and accelerate the collapse of their domestic economy. Still, closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait remains in the Houthi arsenal and — alongside closure of the Strait of Hormuz — could push oil prices over $150 per barrel, disrupt broader supply chains, and create massive global inflation.
A Rational Actor Within a Regional Network
Despite being a non-state actor, the Houthis exhibit behavior similar to that of states, characterized by meticulous cost-benefit calculations and conscious management of their relationships and alliances, including by maintaining a degree of independence from Iran. While they are part of a broader regional network, they do not relinquish their capacity to make independent decisions related to their own interests.
Their objectives in the current war are only to bolster the Iranian negotiating position, maintain their own regional standing, and strengthen their domestic legitimacy, all the while keeping the option of escalation open. That calculus will change only if it is decided that escalation will enhance their political influence without threatening internal stability and their survival.
This falls within a strategy of sub-threshold escalation, which allows for maximum impact at the lowest possible cost. In practice, this means carrying out strikes that do not provoke a full-scale response, issuing threats without fully carrying them out, and making their presence felt without fully engaging in the conflict.
Conclusion
Ansar Allah’s limited involvement in the latest Iran conflict does not reflect weakness but strategic discipline. The group has demonstrated that far from being reckless, it is a rational, pragmatic, and highly calculating actor that seeks to strike a delicate balance between influence and survival.
The U.S.-Israeli strikes against the group prior to the war reshaped this behavior, while economic constraints and regional balances have imposed a clear ceiling on any escalation by the Houthis. In this context, the group’s most impactful tools — above all, disruptions in the Red Sea —have been transformed from instruments of tactical pressure into deterrents of last resort.
Domestic economic considerations and the relationship with Saudi Arabia have further curbed the appetite for a full-scale confrontation. Accordingly, the Houthis have refrained from escalating their involvement; rather, they have played a calculated tactical role within a broader regional strategy, designed to serve Iran politically, while furthering their own interests at home.
