The Houthis join in

 Published in Eurasia Review, 27 April 2026

       The Houthis, who currently dominate northern and western Yemen and most of the country’s population, have decided to participate actively in the US-Iran conflict.  After nearly a month of remaining on the sidelines, on March 28 they signaled their entry into the war by firing a barrage of ballistic missiles at Israel.  Most were intercepted, and no casualties were reported.

​         Within roughly 24 hours a second wave of cruise missiles and drones was launched, and were again intercepted.

Since then the group ​has fired ballistic missiles at the Tel Aviv area, and on April 4 the IDF reported that a missile launched from Yemen fell in an open area in Israel without casualties or damage.  Missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea and against US​ naval targets​ have ceased for the moment, though the threat persists.

            The Houthis are fully aligned with the philosophy underlying the hardline revolutionary Iranian regime.  They proclaim their beliefs and purposes on their flag.  Sandwiched between the words “Allah is great” and “Victory to Islam”, both in a suitable green, come inscribed in blood-red: “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, and the unequivocally antisemitic:  “A curse on the Jews”. 

             It would be an mistake, however, to assume that these basic articles of faith are the major motivators of the Houthi leadership.  Unlike Iran’s other proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, both well embedded in their respective territories, ​ the Houthis’ primary concern is not anti-Israel operations.  They have their own fish to fry.  For a decade or more the Houthis have sought to extend their rule over the whole of Yemen​.  Although they have won control of a large segment of territory, and rule an estimated 70–80% of Yemen’s population, the country remains fragmented. They are not recognized by the UN or internationally as the government of Yemen​, and as a result the Houthi leadership prioritizes battlefield gains in Yemen above any success they may achieve in external military operations.

The nation’s internationally recognized government​ is the Republic of Yemen, whose executive authority is vested in the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) chaired by Rashad Muhammad al‑Alimi. It was formed in April 2022 specifically to unify anti‑Houthi factions and to negotiate a ceasefire and political settlement with the Houthis. The PLC has operated from the southern city of Aden and from exile in the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh.

Its authority has often been contested, specifically by south Yemeni forces. The Southern Transitional Council (STC), backed by the United Arab Emirates, claimed broad control of southern areas in late 2025.  Saudi Arabia led a diplomatic effort to bring the STC within the ambit of the national government, and in early 2026, following negotiations in Riyadh, STC leaders announced the group’s dissolution.  That declaration was immediately contested by other STC bodies and leaders, and although the south now nominally falls under a single pro‑government, Saudi‑managed framework, the region remains deeply fractured and politically explosive.

As for the Houthis, they have no interest in negotiating a ceasefire or political settlement with the recognized government.  Their focus is on defeating government forces and wresting control of the remainder of Yemen from the PLC.

Who are these Houthis?  They are Zaydi Shi’ites, a minority group which actively opposed the man who emerged in 1990 as president of the Unified Republic of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh.  In 2011 Saleh fell victim to the so-called Arab Spring. In the face of a popular uprising, he reluctantly resigned the presidency and allied himself with the Houthis, his former enemies. 

Yemen’s military including its air force remained largely loyal to Saleh.  Supported by them, and with weaponry from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Houthi troops overcame government forces in September 2014, and took control of large areas of west Yemen.  They finally captured the capital, Sana’a.  Saudi Arabia, alarmed at Iran’s expansion into the Arabian peninsula, intervened in March 2015 to beat back the Houthis, and ​in reaction Iran increased its financial and military support to the​m.

As a result the Houthi-Iran relationship changed.  From Iran assisting the Houthis in their domestic struggle for power, it quickly turned into the Houthis becoming Iran’s proxy in its regional bid for dominance.

With the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza conflict, Iran further boosted the Houthis’ role.  They became an essential component of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance”, attacking Israel by air and sea.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait – a strategic sea passage at the very foot of the Red Sea – is flanked to the east by Yemen’s Houthi-occupied coastline.  Claiming to target vessels directly connected to Israel, the Houthis began attacking shipping passing through the Strait, and continued to do so largely indiscriminately for nearly two years. 

Inside their territory the Houthis, under Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, their leader since 2004, have built an intrusive supervisory system (mushrifin) that penetrates ministries, local government and neighborhood structures, using control over salaries, fuel, food and jobs to secure obedience.  Economic policy is geared to sustaining this apparatus – capturing revenues from customs, telecommunications and fuel, channeling benefits to loyal elites and militias, and creating new financial centers and patronage networks. Maintaining internal security, keeping local patrons sweet, and financing domestic military operations consume most of the regime’s effort.

Anti‑Israel operations help the leadership convince the population that their privations are the necessary price of “resistance”. It reinforces their internal control, and Yemen remains their primary arena of concern and action. 

It is these considerations that motivate the Houthi’s anti-Israel activity. They are willing partners in Iran’s effort to pressure and, in the long term, eliminate Israel, and they vigorously appropriate the Palestinian cause in their rhetoric. It serves their regional image and their public standing. ​Yet even as they escalate their anti-Israel military involvement, their core calculation remains unchanged.  Their main interest is in the consolidation, and eventual expansion, of their grip on Yemen.

​ This will remain their primary concern.  To signal their continued commitment to Iran’s war effort, they ​will probably persist with their occasional missile and drone attacks against Israel and US-linked targets, though they will surely try to avoid a level of retaliation that could seriously endanger their hold on Yemen.

Published in Eurasia Review, 27 April 2026:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/24042026-the-houthis-join-in-oped/

Lebanon and Syria – deals with Israel are possible

Published in the Jerusalem Post, 15 April 2026

    Israel is technically at war with both Lebanon and Syria – and has been for the past 78 years, ever since the attack in 1948 by the joint Arab armies on the new-born state of Israel. ​ Although Israel concluded peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan, none have been negotiated with neighboring Lebanon or Syria.  Yet both have recently been seeking to hold discussions with Israel.

On March 9 Lebanon’s president, Joseph Aoun, outlined a four‑point plan aimed at controlling Hezbollah and bringing peace to his country.  In addition to calling for a “total ceasefire,” Hezbollah’s disarmament, and international support to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, to universal surprise he proposed direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices.  And on April 11 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that his cabinet would begin ceasefire and Hezbollah disarmament talks with Lebanon “as soon as possible.”  The first round took place in Washington on April 14 and have led to a short-term ceasefire, a harbinger of more permanent arrangements.

As for Syria, it was in July 1949 that the Syrian-Israeli conflict was brought to an end by means of an armistice concluded under UN Security Council auspices.  It was not a peace treaty. Following the 1973 Yom Kippur war, in which Syria joined Egypt in a joint attack on Israel, the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement similarly states that it “is not a peace agreement”, and provides only for a ceasefire supervised by the UN.  

  The position was not affected by the overthrow of the Assad regime in December 2024. Syria and Israel still have no diplomatic relationship and remain formally at war.  Potentially Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa – once closely associated with al-Qaeda – is a major threat to Israel’s security.  And yet, from the moment he was appointed on January 29, 2025, he has been asserting his intention to normalize relations with Israel.

His first major decision was to suspend the Assad-era constitution.  Since then, as interim president, Sharaa seems to have made every effort to distance himself from his al-Qaeda connection, and to present himself as moderate and pragmatic. 

On July 12, following conflict between Druze and Bedouin armed groups, the Druze-majority region of Sweida in southern Syria was engulfed in armed sectarian clashes. The violence involved extrajudicial executions, massacres, burning of villages, and looting.  Over 1,500 people were killed, and militias affiliated with the new regime in Damascus joined in the attacks. 

In reaction Israel honored the promise it had made to the Druze community following an earlier incident.  It mounted air strikes, targeting Syrian tanks and an airfield in southwestern Syria. On July 15 Netanyahu and defense minister Israel Katz issued a joint statement:  “Israel is committed to preventing harm being inflicted on the Druze in Syria, owing to the deep covenant of blood with our Druze citizens in Israel and their historical and familial link to the Druze in Syria. We are acting to prevent the Syrian regime from harming them...”

Even so, in a statement on July 16, 2025, Sharaa sought conciliation with Israel.  The nation did not fear war, he said, but in reaching out to Israel “we have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction.”

He was as good as his word.  Over the past year, Israel and Syria have held a series of low‑profile, US‑mediated negotiations that have gradually taken on a more structured character. The talks have covered security issues and also updating the 1974 disengagement framework in light of Israel’s post‑Assad military push beyond the Golan Heights.

Syria has been represented by its new foreign minister, Asaad al‑Shaibani, while Israel’s interests have been in the hands of strategic affairs minister Ron Dermer. 

        After at least one early, largely unpublicized encounter in Paris in mid‑2025, Dermer and al‑Shaibani met again in Baku on July 31, 2025, in a high‑level session devoted to the deteriorating situation in southern Syria. Subsequent rounds convened in Paris in late summer 2025, and then on 5–6 January 2026, with US envoy Tom Barrack mediating and French officials acting as hosts. Some media reports also refer to additional working meetings, including at least one five‑hour session in London in September 2025.

On September 17, during a media briefing to reporters in Damascus, Sharaa described a security pact with Israel as a “necessity” for Syria.  Such an agreement, he added, would need to respect Syria’s airspace and territorial unity.  He said that Syria is seeking “something like” the 1974 Israel-Syria Disengagement Agreement concluded after the Yom Kippur War.  It established a formal ceasefire, and separated opposing forces by creating a demilitarized zone and a UN-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.  He did not categorize such a pact as normalization, since Syria’s position is that the Golan Heights and related issues would first need to be resolved.

Sharaa also mentioned that in July a Syria-Israel deal had been “four to five days” away, but the outbreak of violence in Sweida had derailed it.

The US was deeply involved in the agreement known as the Sweida roadmap, publicly announced on September 16 in Damascus. The negotiations leading to it were one reason for delaying the broader Israel-Syria security pact that was on the table at the time. Now the US is playing a mediating role in the current round of Syria-Israel security discussions.  

These on-going Syria–Israel contacts embody real potential to reduce the risk of a wider regional war.  They can clarify rules of engagement in southern Syria, and establish channels for crisis management. Even a modest security arrangement could create a platform for more substantive diplomacy over time. The problem is that they are fragile, and could easily crumble.

By contrast, the Lebanon–Israel talks were built on more substantial foundations.  Both parties seek to bring Hezbollah under control. There is, moreover, the recent precedent of successful, US‑mediated technical bargaining over maritime boundaries.  They focused on a clearly defined, border‑and‑security agenda that officials on both sides see as “solvable”.

In fact, the two tracks are linked.  The tangible progress made in the Lebanon-Israel talks provide the cooperative atmosphere necessary for Syrian-Israeli negotiations to succeed. Suddenly a glimmer of hope for a restoration of peace along Israel’s northern borders is appearing.  It needs to be fostered assiduously.

Published in the Jerusalem Post, and the Jerusalem Post online titled "Are deals with Lebanon and Syria possible for Israel?", 16 April 2026 :
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892708

Neutralizing Hezbollah

  Published in the Jerusalem Post, 9 April 2026 

The Lebanese government, under its president Joseph Aoun, has been making a determined effort to assert its authority over the rogue Iranian-backed terrorist Hezbollah organization that once operated inside Lebanon as a virtual “state within a state”.  Although much weakened by Israel’s military and other more covert operations, Hezbollah is still too powerful to be controlled by the government.  Since it entered the war on March 2 in support of Iran, it has been launching an average of 150 rockets a day into northern Israel, some coordinated with Iranian missile attacks.

The Lebanese presidency and cabinet have declared Hezbollah’s cross‑border attacks “unlawful” and not authorized by the state, stressing that no non‑state actor has the right to drag Lebanon into war.

On March 9 Aoun outlined a four‑point plan calling for a “total ceasefire,” Hezbollah’s disarmament, and international support to strengthen the Lebanese Armed Forces, coupled with direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices.  In an online conference with senior EU officials, Aoun described the plan as a path towards "permanent security and stability arrangements on our borders", but declared it was conditional on a halt to Israeli strikes inside Lebanon.

Perhaps as a sign of the sincerity of his intentions, on March 24 Aoun declared Iran’s ambassador-designate Mohammad Reza Sheibani persona non grata, and gave him five days to leave the country.  Lebanon objects to the close connection between Hezbollah and Iran’s hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, accusing the IRGC of “commanding Hezbollah’s operations” in the current conflict.

On March 30 it emerged that Sheibani, backed by Iran and its Hezbollah supporters, had refused to leave.  Iran has stated unequivocally that its ambassador to Lebanon would remain in post.  A standoff between the Lebanese government, in its efforts to control Hezbollah, and Iran – which regards Lebanon as its colony – has developed.  Lebanon has not enforced its own decision – for example by closing the Iranian embassy, or attempting an arrest of Sheibani.  In fact the situation has settled into a symbolic but revealing deadlock.

            Israel and Lebanon are similarly in a state of frozen animation, and have been for nearly 80 years.  The two countries are still technically at war – the war launched on the nascent state of Israel in 1948 by the joint Arab armies.  In all that time no peace treaty or armistice has been negotiated between them, and there have been no diplomatic relations or official channels of communication.  Any interchanges have been indirect, via the UN, international mediators, and back‑channel contacts.  Only UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and subsequent arrangements have provided a formal framework for the cessation of hostilities along the border.

All of which makes Aoun’s recent apparent overture the more unusual. Whether it can lead to direct negotiations is highly unlikely, given the current situation.  Israel is establishing a security buffer zone inside southern Lebanon, which it describes as a temporary defense measure rather than a permanent occupation. At the same time it is undertaking extensive airstrikes against Hezbollah infrastructure and fighters, including in Beirut. 

Even so, on March 13 the Qatar-funded Caliber news medium reported that Aoun had proposed a one-month truce with Israel, pledging to use the period to achieve the disarmament of Hezbollah.  This proposal was communicated to Israel through US Ambassador to Lebanon, Michael Issa, but like so many emanating from the Lebanese government, has simply withered on the vine. 

The official Israeli position is that the Lebanese government, in accordance with a number of prior agreements and commitments, is responsible for disarming Hezbollah. If it cannot achieve that, Israeli officials have argued that the war will end only when Hezbollah no longer poses a threat to Israel from Lebanese territory.

In short, Israel has not signaled any readiness to enter political talks with Beirut a long as its relationship with Lebanon is dominated by active hostilities.  But the door is not shut fast.  Even though Lebanon’s infrastructure is affected by the ongoing military offensive, and civilian deaths and displacements continue to mount, Israel does not describe current operations as a conflict with the Lebanese state, but as self‑defense against Hezbollah.

            The political gap between the Lebanese and Israeli governments is wide, but not unbridgeable.  From Israel’s perspective Hezbollah is lodged firmly within the Lebanese arena, and it holds the Lebanese state responsible for its disarmament.  The Lebanese administration does not disagree, for it is trying to distance the state from Hezbollah’s actions, is openly seeking help to bring the terrorist organization under state control, and has signaled its readiness to negotiate.

On March 31 the EU’s Diplomatic Service issued a statement on behalf of 10 states, including the UK, asserting that the responsibility for the current conflict in Lebanon “lies with Hezbollah,” adding “We strongly condemn Hezbollah’s attacks in support of Iran against Israel, which must cease immediately.”  They expressed their “full support to the government and people of Lebanon,” and called for “direct political negotiation between Lebanon and Israel, that can contribute to putting a durable end to this conflict and set the conditions for peaceful regional coexistence.”

There is another factor at play.  Lebanon’s next parliamentary elections, originally scheduled for May 2026 but now delayed until 2028, could consolidate Hezbollah’s strength, or signal its decline.  Aoun has managed to achieve a breathing space of two years in which to ensure that the state gains the upper hand in its struggle with Hezbollah.  It is because he acknowledges that the government is not powerful enough to achieve this without help, that he has floated the idea of direct Lebanese‑Israeli talks under international auspices.

Negotiations, perhaps leading to joint military operations, could eliminate Hezbollah’s constant onslaught on Israel’s northern border, and would justify Israel’s withdrawal from the buffer zone it is establishing in southern Lebanon.  ​If such talks were ever to be arranged, Hezbollah would undoubtedly attempt to disrupt them, so Israel's participation would have to be dependent on firm security guarantees, perhaps underwritten by international enforcement.  

Unlikely the possibility of face-to-face talks may seem, but should the potential, however remote, of a collaborative Lebanese-Israeli effort to strike down Hezbollah – with Israel for once in lockstep with international opinion – be rejected out of hand?  

Published in the Jerusalem Post on 9 April 2026, and in the Jerusalem post online titled: "Lebanon vs Hezbollah: A standoff between state sovereignty and Iranian influence" on 7 April 2026:

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-892224