The Iran regime’s investment in the Houthi rebels is expensive. Arms shipments and logistics cost money that the regime no longer has, as a result of Israel and US attacks.
Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps abandoned long-time ally Bashar al-Assad, and he is struggling to defend Hezbollah and can do little to stop Israel’s operations against Hamas.
As the Houthi rebels need to attend to its own internal security, they will likely face a reduction, if not a cut-off, in Iranian assistance, according to an analysis published by The Middle East Forum
Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of the analysis asked: “If the Houthis cannot live off Iranian assistance and their ability to raise taxes or customs duties is limited, especially if they lose control over Hudaydah, what comes next for the Houthis?
It is wishful thinking to believe the Houthis will simply fade away; they crave both power and money. At the very least, the group’s leaders will need to raise funds to pay their rank-and-file. They may shroud themselves in the trappings of government, but they are essentially a criminal gang. But even criminal gangs need to make payroll.
The Trump administration may hope that the retraction of Iranian power will stabilize the region, but the Houthis will not simply disappear; rather, they will seek other ways to fill their coffers.
Here, international shippers should worry about the Somalia model. After Somalia descended into state failure and as overfishing depleted offshore stocks, Somali fishermen from Puntland—the tip of Somalia—began to turn to piracy.
If the Houthis lose their Iranian financing, they will seek to survive. The Somali model may be their best recourse. Small northern Yemeni fishing ports north of Hudaydah may become hubs for piracy.
The question, then, is whether the international community is prepared for the Houthis version 2.0 and the real necessity that it will need to constantly hunt and destroy the speedboats that will continue prey on international shipping seeking to transit the Red Sea.
The Houthis might also engage in other criminal enterprises. Just as Hezbollah leveraged the drug trade to self-fund, smuggling heroin and cocaine through Africa and into Europe and the Middle East, the Houthis will likely seize an opportunity to activate Hezbollah’s African networks and Lebanese Shi’ite cells to bring drugs into the Arabian Peninsula to smuggle them into Saudi Arabia—a growing market—or via traditional smuggling routes into the Mediterranean.
The question now is whether the United States and Europe will simply celebrate the Houthis’ potential loss of a patron or recognize that organized criminal groups and cartels are agile, and will do what is necessary to find new revenue streams when the old ones disappear.