The Houthis Kick Ass in Yemen

Almost all of western Yemen is now controlled by the Houthi rebels supported by the IRGC.

[Read all my Iran stuff.]

Note: I reference a lot of people in this post that are important to this situation. Few have ever heard of any of them. You'll have to look them up yourself if you want more details. My focus is obviously on one previously obscure man in particular.

His name is Yusuf al-Madani. Almost no one outside Yemen had heard of him a week ago. Then his forces broke through the front, captured the Red Sea port of Mocha, drove down the coast and reached Bab el-Mandeb at the base of the Red Sea. A Houthi-linked estimate put their gains at more than 6,000 square kilometres. More than 2,300 square miles. Nearly the size of Delaware, taken in a few days. It was a classic blitzkrieg in the middle of a missile war.

Al-Madani is the most successful ground commander of anything stimulated by Epic Fury so far. The Houthis have never publicly named the commander of the operation. They tend to keep such things secret, which is inconvenient for military historians and generally good practice for people being hunted by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

But al-Madani is the Houthi chief of staff. He previously commanded the military region covering the Red Sea coast. And on September 3, just as the battle began, two Yemeni military sources reported that he had moved to Hodeidah to supervise the western front personally. Naval and drone commanders reportedly met in his presence to review plans and coordinate simultaneous attacks. The Houthis have not confirmed the report. They have also neglected to offer a more plausible name.

Still, military history usually attributes a campaign to the general who commanded it. Hannibal gets Cannae. Napoleon gets Austerlitz. Rommel gets Gazala. Thousands of soldiers did the fighting, staff officers wrote orders, quartermasters moved supplies and chance had its say. The general still gets the battle because command is the act that turns all those separate things into one result.

He was born in 1977 in Hajjah province in northwestern Yemen. He entered the religious world surrounding Hussein al-Houthi and the Believing Youth, the movement from which Ansar Allah emerged. Reports place him in Iran for military training around 2002. Other accounts connect him with Hezbollah training and the Revolutionary Guard. The details are murky. Houthi biographies tend to come in a pre-installed fog.

The broad outline is clear. Al-Madani fought in the six Saada wars between 2004 and 2010. The first began when the Yemeni government tried to arrest Hussein al-Houthi. Hussein was killed. The movement survived. Al-Madani survived with it. He helped fight a state army, endured Saudi intervention, participated in the Houthi expansion through Amran and Sanaa in 2014, and spent the next decade learning how to operate in circumstances where only your enemies have air power.

He also belongs to the movement’s ruling family. Al-Madani married one of Hussein al-Houthi’s daughters. That makes him the husband of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s niece. His late brother Taha reportedly married Abdul-Malik’s sister. Blood, marriage, ideology and command all meet in the same small circle. Dynasties have always appreciated a competent relative.

By 2017, al-Madani commanded the Houthi Fifth Military Region. It included Hodeidah, Hajjah, al-Mahwit and Raymah. More simply, it included the Red Sea coast. The United Nations sanctioned him in 2021 for leading Houthi military campaigns and identified him as commander of forces across those provinces. He was also assigned to the offensive against Marib.

Marib did not fall. The Houthis gained ground around it and paid heavily for the effort, but the city held. Al-Madani’s career contains long years of attrition, failed assaults and unfinished campaigns. Cannae followed Trebia and Lake Trasimene. Gazala followed Crusader. Generals are formed by the campaigns that refuse to cooperate.

Israel killed Houthi chief of staff Muhammad Abdul Karim al-Ghamari in 2025. Al-Madani replaced him in October. The Israelis removed one commander and elevated the man whose professional life had been spent on the coast that suddenly became central to the regional war. History enjoys this sort of joke. The people living through it generally do not.

From Al Jazeera.

The battle began with an apparent Houthi problem. Saudi-backed forces advanced north on September 5 and took Hays. They formed a salient on the flat coastal plain and approached al-Jarrahi, a crossroads threatening Houthi supply lines between Hodeidah and Taiz. Their commanders talked about continuing to Hodeidah. For several days they appeared to have the initiative.

But al-Madani had already moved into the theater. Houthi reinforcements came down from Sanaa and central Yemen. During the night of September 9 and 10, they attacked the salient from the north and east. Forces descending from higher ground threatened the Saudi-backed units with encirclement. The advance toward Hodeidah became a withdrawal from Hays. Then the withdrawal became a collapse.

The Houthis drove south along the coast and entered Mocha on September 10. Mocha was the operational and logistical headquarters of Tareq Saleh’s National Resistance Forces and the Yemeni government’s only major Red Sea port. The defenders abandoned Saudi equipment because the Houthi advance moved too quickly to remove it. The offensive continued toward Dhubab. Houthi forces crossed to the Hanish Islands and took Perim, the island sitting in the middle of Bab el-Mandeb.

The entire sequence took days. The territorial estimate comes from a Houthi-linked source and needs to be treated as an estimate. The map supplies the larger fact. Al-Madani’s forces now hold thousands of square miles they lacked before the offensive, including the enemy’s principal Red Sea base, the coastal road south, islands offshore and positions inside Bab el-Mandeb. The Houthis have converted a breakthrough into a new territorial system.

We do not know whether al-Madani deliberately invited the advance toward Hays. The Saudis may simply have overextended themselves. Regardless, he recognized the moment, concentrated his forces, attacked the exposed formation from two directions, threatened its rear and converted retreat into operational collapse. Then he exploited south without allowing the defenders time to establish another line.

His troops performed like clockwork inside the confusion they created. His forces passed through the original battlefield, seized the enemy’s headquarters and continued seventy miles toward one of the world’s great maritime chokepoints. Tactical success became operational movement. Operational movement produced strategic results that literally stunned the military world.

The Houthis coordinated the ground offensive with ballistic missile and drone attacks against Saudi airfields, cities and energy installations. Those attacks forced Riyadh to defend its own territory while its Yemeni clients were coming apart. Houthi drones provided reconnaissance over the battlefield. Artillery, rockets and explosive drones struck positions without assembling large formations that Saudi aircraft could easily destroy. Fast-moving units in trucks followed the ruptures, cut roads and pushed into abandoned positions. This was modern light infantry warfare conducted by men who knew what they were doing.

And, just as incredibly it seems, it was logistically facilitated by the IRGC. Direct guidance, funding, weapons and senior Guard officers are supporting this on-going operation. Yemeni sources identified Quds Force commander Abdolreza Shahlaei as the man directing the Iranian role, based upon intercepted communications and accounts from captured Houthi fighters. Iranian sources confirmed that senior IRGC officers had traveled to Yemen after weeks of strategic discussion, while stopping short of confirming Shahlaei’s personal command. One Iranian official also said the decision to take Mocha belonged to the Houthis.

That produces a believable division of labor. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi supplied political authority. Shahlaei and the IRGC supplied strategic coordination, money, weapons and technical assistance. Al-Madani commanded the Houthi military system that turned those resources into an offensive.

Iran has spent years building the supply system behind him. In July 2025, the National Resistance Forces intercepted more than 750 tons of equipment allegedly bound for the Houthis. CENTCOM said the cargo included hundreds of cruise, antiship and antiaircraft missiles, warheads, seekers, drone engines, radar systems, communications equipment and air-defense gear. Manuals were in Farsi, the Houthi language.

Much of the equipment reportedly came from a company connected to Iran’s Ministry of Defense. The quantities and attribution come from CENTCOM and its Yemeni partner rather than an independent inventory audit. Even allowing for the promotional habits of military public affairs, 750 tons is a supply chain.

That shipment was caught. Other cargoes plainly got through. The Houthis entered this battle with stockpiled missiles, drones, artillery, antitank weapons, radios, optical equipment and the workshops needed to assemble Iranian components inside Yemen.

The Houthis already possess a layered maritime arsenal. Their Al-Mandab 2 antiship cruise missile belongs to the Iranian C-802 and Noor family. Their Asef and Tankil antiship ballistic missiles are derived from Iranian systems and are credited with ranges of several hundred kilometers. They have long-range attack drones, explosive boats, naval mines and shorter-range rockets. In June 2024, an explosive Houthi surface vessel struck the cargo ship Tutor, flooding it and forcing its crew to abandon ship.

Range was only part of the problem. Ships move. Finding one, identifying it and maintaining a track long enough to guide a weapon into it is harder than firing a missile at coordinates on land. The Houthis used drones, coastal observers, ship transponders, commercial information and Iranian surveillance assistance to build that targeting chain. It worked often enough to disrupt Red Sea shipping from positions much farther north.

The capture of Perim also changes the geometry. The island divides Bab el-Mandeb into two channels. From Mocha, the international lanes are roughly seventy kilometers away. From Perim, they are practically across the street. Missiles and drones remain available. Fast boats, explosive craft, mines and even artillery join the list. A man with binoculars can now contribute to a system that previously depended upon sensors, informants and drones.

Holding Perim will require supplies, air defense and secure movement from the mainland. Saudi air strikes could make the island a murderous place to store expensive weapons. Al-Madani has still reduced the technical problem of threatening shipping. That is a major strategic advantage.

He does not need to close the port of Bab el-Mandeb completely. The Houthis can announce that friendly ships may pass and hostile ships may not, then claim authority over the passage by demonstrating the ability to punish disagreement. Iran has attempted the same thing at Hormuz. Al-Madani has provided the ground from which Yemen can try it at the Gate of Tears.

The permanence of the victory remains open. This is an unfolding situation. Saudi air power is attacking the captured corridor. Government forces promise a counteroffensive. Islands can become traps. Supply lines can be cut. Rommel won at Gazala and lost at El Alamein four months later.

Al-Madani has made no consequential mistake in this operation so far. He arrived before the decisive fighting. He absorbed or exploited the enemy’s advance. He struck its exposed sides. His forces threatened encirclement, shattered the withdrawal, captured the enemy headquarters and drove straight through to the strategic objective. They synchronized ground movement with missiles, drones, naval preparations and political pressure. They seized more than 2,300 square miles according to the available estimate and still control the decisive portion of it. Whatever happens next belongs to the next campaign. As of today, victory already belongs to him.

Yusuf al-Madani spent twenty years fighting smaller wars and rising through the Houthi command. Epic Fury gave him his first campaign on this scale. He answered with a lightning campaign capturing thousands of miles of territory including the key port of Mocha and the approach to Bab el-Mandeb. While nearly everyone was watching Hormuz. Al-Madani took the other strait.