Behind the Houthis' Bold Decision to Join the War in Support of Iran

During the first month of the US-Israel war against Iran, which broke out on 28 February 2026, the Houthi group appeared to exercise restraint, even though many parties anticipated they would enter a more rapid and non-gradual phase, based on their close relationship with Tehran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This assessment is not wrong, as that relationship is indeed strong and influential, but what has been overlooked in this picture is that decisions within the group are now the result of internal discussions that have been ongoing for quite some time. These discussions, at their core, began from the phase of support for Gaza after the Al-Aqsa Storm operation on 7 October, as well as the retaliatory strikes launched by the United States and then Israel from October 2023 until the end of 2025 since March. That phase ended in 2025 with a joint agreement with Washington facilitated by Oman in May, where Israeli strikes were incorporated into the Gaza agreement framework, but this left a profound impact within the group. Some Houthi leaders argue that the cost of involvement over the past two years has been very high, not only in terms of military and leadership losses and civilian casualties, but also in terms of depleted resources, infrastructure damage, and increasingly complicated political paths, especially with Saudi Arabia, which in 2022 proposed a roadmap for peace in Yemen. This assessment is not merely theoretical analysis, but forms the basis of internal discussions that have given rise to two clear schools of thought. The first stream tends to be cautious, arguing that previous experiences prove that direct involvement does not yield strategic benefits, but rather opens up costly fronts.