After Assad, Are the Houthis Next?

Ari Heistein Nathaniel Rabkin

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With the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon defeated and increasingly isolated, attention turns to the Houthis in Yemen. Perhaps the strongest remaining Iranian proxy force in the region, the Houthis are certainly the most active in terms of their attacks on Israel and also on international shipping in the Red Sea.

With confrontation between the Houthis and Israel, and perhaps America too, seems set to escalate, this will likely raise questions of whether the regime in Sanaa will prove as frail as its former partner in Damascus.

Like Assad’s regime, the Houthis are a corrupt organization representing a narrow segment of the population, leaving the majority mired in poverty. This poverty stems less from war or sanctions and more from systemic corruption, nepotism, and deliberate isolation. These regimes facilitate depredation of the populace via a common tool kit: bribes demanded by underpaid officials, monopolized industries that benefit insiders, and rigged systems for the import of goods, as exports play little role in the ravaged economies of Iran’s satellite states.

Reform of state institutions is implausible, as their dysfunction is a deliberate choice to ensure that the regime’s core supporters enjoy economic and social preeminence.

The high levels of corruption and exploitation made both the Assad and Houthi regimes deeply unpopular, forcing them to depend on brutal security apparatuses to maintain power. Indoctrination through media and education, framing these governments as anti-colonial defenders of national independence, grows less convincing as public suffering at the hands of the regime worsens and as dependence on foreign sponsors, especially Iran, increases.

Despite these parallels, key differences between the Assad and Houthi regimes suggest their trajectories may diverge. The Houthi leadership is younger and more energetic than Assad’s aging cadre. For example, Houthi intelligence chief Abulhakim al-Khaiwani is under forty, while his Syrian counterpart, Hossam Louka, was nearing sixty-five before Assad’s fall.