At first glance, the Houthis resemble Iran’s proxy in Yemen. Through their unmanned aerial systems (drones) and ballistic missiles, they have turned the Red Sea into a battleground in the wider conflict in the region. In their mass demonstrations they invoke the cause of the Palestinians; in their slogans they target the US and Israel; in their symbols they echo the aesthetic of Hezbollah and Tehran. To many observers, they represent yet another element of the so-called “Axis of Resistance” (Iran’s regional network of allied armed movements) backed by Iran. Another armed Shia force opposed to Saudi Arabia, Israel and the US. But their longer history doesn’t really begin in 1979 in Tehran. It begins in 740 in Kufa, in the failed uprising of Zayd ibn Ali. That starting point is important. The Houthis are not rooted in Twelver Shiism (the dominant Shia tradition in Iran, centred on twelve Imams) from Iran. Rather, they are rooted in Zaydism, a form of Shia Islam particular to Yemen. In many ways, historically, it differed from Iranian Shiism and in many legal and ritual respects often stood closer to Yemen’s Shafi’i Sunnism (the country’s main Sunni legal tradition) than to Iranian Twelver Shiism. Which brings the analysis to the question of why Iran supports the Houthis. More important, perhaps, is why one of the Shia traditions most doctrinally distant from Iranian Twelver Shiism has become one of the most important partners of revolutionary Iran in the Arab world. That lies neither in the idea that Iran created the Houthi movement, nor in the idea that the Houthis are simply Zaydis continuing an old highland tradition. The Houthis arose as an ancient Zaydi grammar of righteous revolt endured the end of the imamate (rule by a religious-political imam), was sharpened by pressures of republicanism and Salafism, radicalised through Husayn al-Houthi, and eventually found in Khomeini and Hezbollah a modern revolutionary language.
Zaydism’s Old Grammar of Revolt
Zaydism traces its roots to Zayd ibn Ali, grandson of Husayn ibn Ali and great-grandson of Ali ibn Abi Talib. In 740 he led an uprising against Umayyad rule in Kufa. He was killed. His death was important in two ways. It added another martyr to the collective memory of Shias. And it supported the idea that at its core, Zaydi legitimacy lay in resistance. Zayd was revered not just for his descent from Ali, but for his action. For Zaydis, the imam was a figure in history, not an absent messianic figure in eschatological time. And a descendant of Husayn or Hasan could, in his own right, legitimately claim imamate if he was pious, courageous, learned and prepared to stand up against injustice. In his own right, the imam had to prove himself. He could not simply inherit authority; he had to act on it. In this respect Zaydism differed from Twelver Shiism, which eventually became dominant in Iran. Twelver Shiism believes in 12 divinely appointed imams. The last of them is now hidden. Zaydism has no equivalent doctrine of an occulted final Imam whose absence defines political life. Its religious and political vision was more open, more activist and more likely to focus on a living claimant. Because of this, in many respects Zaydism was more like Sunnism than Twelver Shiism. And that is no accident. Often in law, ritual and practice, Zaydi communities in Yemen would be more like their Shafi’i Sunni neighbours than Twelver communities in Iran. And in some strands of Zaydism, they would have been less inclined than Twelver Shiism to criticise the first caliphs. But Zaydism was not simply “Sunni Islam with an Alid twist.” At its core, Zaydism believed that rightful supreme authority lay with the family of the Prophet, and with descendants of Husayn and Hasan. And its theology, in its classical form, was deeply influenced by the rationalism of the Muʿtazilites (early Islamic theologians known for stressing reason and free will). They stressed free will, human moral responsibility, reason and divine justice. It was Shia, but not of Iran; Alid, but not Twelver; activist, but not in a modern revolutionary sense. In time, a modern, revolutionary language would fill out this disposition. Iran would later give that grammar a modern revolutionary image. Yemen first gave it a home.
The Mountain State and Its Death
Zaydism may well have started in Iraq, but it survived best in Yemen. In 897, al-Hadi ila’l-Haqq Yahya founded a Zaydi imamate in northern Yemen. In the region around Saʿda, Zaydism moved beyond its role as a doctrine of legitimate leadership. It became a ruling tradition, a scholarly culture, a social hierarchy and a sense of identity in the region. Much of its survival owed to geography. In northern Yemen, the mountainous landscape was unlikely to be administered from outside. And its tribes valued their independence and were reluctant to be incorporated into far-off political systems. In the highlands, authority was exercised by local notables, religious institutions, tribal mediation and, in many cases, allegiance to the imam. Authority did not travel mainly through the neat machinery of a modern state. Doctrine alone could not support an imam’s rule. He needed sacred lineage, as well as political skill and alliances across the tribes. Gradually, Zaydism became woven into the social fabric of northern Yemen. Families of the Prophet, the sayyids, were highly respected there. Scholars kept alive Zaydi theology and law. And through loyalty, negotiation and resistance, tribes linked up with the imamate. Saʿda became, in a sense, more than just a place. It became emblematic of a religio-political tradition that saw itself as upholder of legitimate authority in Islam. But for much of its history, Yemen was not a fixed sectarian space. For centuries there were Zaydi and Shafi’i Sunni communities living side by side. And between them, boundaries could shift in political, legal and scholarly life. Muhammad al-Shawkani, himself a product of the Zaydi intellectual tradition, used juridical reasoning rooted in hadith (reports of the Prophet’s words and actions) that appealed to both traditions. It was only in the light of historical circumstances that a distinct Houthi identity developed.
Zaydism for over a thousand years had had a political home. In that home were mountains, tribes, schools, hierarchies and the memory of the imams. More than just a creed, it was a civilization. In 1962 that civilization fell apart. In the wake of his death, Imam Ahmad bin Yahya’s son Muhammad al-Badr was overthrown by republican army officers. They declared the Yemen Arab Republic. By overthrowing al-Badr, they overthrew more than a man. They struck at the institution on which Zaydi political authority had, for centuries, rested. Often dynastic in practice, and much contested, the imamate was the vehicle through which Zaydis expressed their ideas of legitimate leadership, learning, justice and sacred lineage. In the new republic, they promoted an egalitarian, anti-feudal and modern vision. They rejected the authority of the traditional sayyid elite. In its place they offered a vision of presidential patronage, equality, military power and nationalism. And they spoke no longer of sacred descent but of nationalism. Zaydis did not disappear from power in the new republic. And it would be wrong to see this as simply a victory of Sunni over Shia in Yemen. Yemeni politics was too tribal, regional and transactional for such a story. But in important ways, things had changed. Zaydism lost its place in the state. Far from destroying Zaydism, the republic pushed it aside. For generations, this tradition supported a certain kind of governance. Now it had to live as a religious identity in a state that in many ways rejected its past. No longer would official authority rest on sacred lineage. No longer would there be an imamate. But in memory, in possibility, and in some senses in feeling, it remained. As an institution it was dead. But as memory it lived on.
The Mirror of Iran
Seventeen years after Zaydi Yemen lost its religious polity, Twelver Iran created one. The contrast was extraordinary. Zaydism tended to think of religious authority in historical, concrete terms. At some point there could be a descendant of the Prophet, a man of learning, who could step forward, claim legitimate authority and challenge injustice. Twelver Shiism placed ultimate authority in the twelve imams, and in the occultation of the Twelfth. And here lay its political problem. Where was authority in the absence of the Imam? Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini offered a revolutionary answer to this question. In his doctrine of the guardianship of the jurist (wilayat al-faqih), he argued that in the Imam’s absence, political authority could legitimately rest with a learned Islamic jurist. In 1979, based on this doctrine, the Islamic Republic was founded. Twelver Shiism has often been associated with patience, mourning and endurance. And yet, apparently overnight, through this doctrine, it supported a revolutionary state. To Zaydis, this was both unsettling and, in some ways, familiar. It was unsettling because Khomeini’s doctrine was not Zaydi but Twelver. He was not arguing, for example, that authority should fall to a descendant of Hasan or Husayn. His was a jurist’s, not an Alid, authority. But it was familiar, because in some ways he brought Shia authority into history. He turned religious leadership into revolution, martyrdom into politics, resistance to empire into the basis of his ideology. Zaydism had a more activist vision of leadership. Twelver Iran realised it in revolutionary form. To later Zaydi revivalists, Khomeini wasn’t founding a new religion. He was setting a precedent. He showed that in the name of Islam, a revolution could overthrow a monarchy, face international isolation, build lasting institutions, glorify martyrdom and speak up for the downtrodden against the hubris of the world’s powers. Iranian influence preceded the point at which the weapons mattered most. At first, it was more a vision of what could be achieved through Islamic revolution. But only communities predisposed to see a precedent in this could act on it. By the end of the twentieth century, many Zaydis in northern Yemen were doing exactly that.
From Revival to Houthi Ideology
From 1962 onward, Zaydism no longer had its own state. By the end of the twentieth century, many Zaydis in the north of Yemen felt their own religious tradition was under threat. Saʿda, in the north of Yemen near the Saudi border, was remote, mountainous, far from Sanaʿa and historically wary of authority from the centre. Yemen under Saleh was more often held together by patronage, deal-making and coercion than by strong institutions. In such circumstances, tribal autonomy, regional grievance, and religious identity reinforced one another in many Zaydis. Saudi policy toward Yemen was not always sectarian. In the 1960s it backed Zaydi-linked factions of the royalists, out of concern that Nasserist republicanism might take root in Yemen. But in the late twentieth century, Saudi-backed Salafi activism added to many Zaydis’ feeling of being surrounded. For years, Zaydis and Shafi’i Sunnis lived side by side in Yemen. But in the presence of Salafism, their relationship became more adversarial. In the past, Yemeni Sunnism could comfortably sit alongside Zaydi practice. But Salafi preaching often argued that Zaydis’ veneration of the Prophet’s family, their local rituals and their inherited theology were wrong and needed to be corrected. To many Zaydis, this was not just inter-confessional coexistence. It was encroachment. And in this climate of defensiveness, there was a revival of their tradition. Once, this tradition supported their identity in the background. Now they needed to be taught it, to defend it and pass it on. Key to this was the Believing Youth, al-Shabab al-Muʾmin (literally, “the Believing Youth”). It was a network of lectures, summer camps and education for young people in and around Saʿda. It was not initially a project for seizing the Yemeni state. Rather, it aimed to reconnect young Zaydis with their tradition, which they tended to see as under threat. In much the same way that political parties support ideology, the Believing Youth supported Zaydi identity. Through it, they developed a common discourse, networks and repetition of their tradition.
Husayn Badr al-Din al-Houthi transformed this revivalist environment. More than anyone else, his gift was to give shape to a sense of grievance among Zaydis. He didn’t invent it, but he gave it enemies, a geopolitical context and voice. Drawing on anxieties in his own part of Yemen neglect, religious insecurity, dislike of the government under Saleh and fear of Salafis he placed them in the context of, among other things, Israel, the US, corrupt governments across the Arab world and the humiliation of Muslims everywhere. In his day, the Zaydi in Saʿda wasn’t just standing up for a centuries-old tradition of his people. He was joining a struggle of the oppressed against the arrogant. In some sense, it was through Palestine that he allowed his home in Saʿda to speak in terms of Jerusalem. Husayn was more than just a local insurgent. He was a scholar, a preacher, a former member of parliament and a descendant of the Prophet. In this way he could, at once, speak as a sayyid, as a teacher of religion, as a critic of the government, as a man from Saʿda and as someone who saw revival in his tradition as part of a cosmic struggle. In his lectures, the Malazim, Zaydi memory of the past met Qurʾānic exhortation, hatred of America, of Israel, anger over Palestine, distrust of Muslim leaders and admiration for the success of Hezbollah and Khomeini. Husayn did not make Zaydis into Iranians. But he allowed Zaydi revivalism to speak in the language of resistance. His sarkha “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, curse upon the Jews, victory to Islam” compressed the movement’s worldview into a chant. Its antisemitic language was hateful and deliberately provocative. But politically it worked. To chant it was to enter the movement’s moral universe. This could not simply be explained as a transplanted version of Khomeinism. In Zaydism, the Jarudi strand was more Alid, less accommodating of Sunni thought. It tended to be more forceful in its belief in Ali’s right to leadership and on the legitimacy of those who preceded Ali. Jarudism didn’t make the Houthis Twelver Shia. But it helped provide a more receptive idiom for politics built on righteous struggle, sacred authority and betrayal. In part because of this, there was fertile ground for Iranian revolutionary rhetoric. And that ground already existed. Iran did not create the bridge. It crossed one that already existed.
When Yemeni government troops killed Husayn al-Houthi in 2004, they did not kill his movement. But they gave it something Zaydi memory already knew how to use: a martyr. In a tradition built on the memory of a Prophet-descended man who revolted against injustice, the killing of another such man in similar rebellion could easily take on symbolic force. If Zayd ibn Ali gave the tradition its archetype of righteous revolt, Husayn al-Houthi gave modern Zaydi revivalism its enemies, its slogan and its direction. Over the next six years, through a series of wars against the government of Saleh, the movement produced martyrs, veterans, commanders, discipline and knowledge of the terrain. In each war, the Houthis learned how to survive bombardment, how to engage tribal alliances, how to take advantage of weaknesses in the central government and how to see themselves as victims of an unjust political system. The wars did not erase Houthi grievance. They organised it. Saʿda wasn’t driven simply by theology. It was a peripheral, poor, tribal region, deeply suspicious of Sanaʿa and scarred by years of military action. In this setting, Houthiism gave local anger a sacred language. It enabled communities to believe that their exclusion from power was more than just a failure of governance; it was part of a broader attack on their dignity, faith and place in the Yemeni polity.
War Makes the Houthis
Khomeini supplied the revolutionary myth; Hezbollah supplied an operational imagination. Hezbollah showed that it was possible for an Arab religious movement to grow into a political party, media, welfare system, recruitment machine and symbol of resistance. In its funeral processions, its schools, propaganda, social work and military discipline, it developed a political culture. Over time, Iran found increasing value in the movement. Tehran did not script the movement into existence. But increasingly its goals, rhetoric and enemies aligned with those of the movement. And in different ways, over time, it influenced that movement ideologically, symbolically, organisationally and in its military and strategic thinking. It is unclear how much direct control Iran exerted. But over time, there was increasing common ground between the two. There was ideological borrowing, symbolic imitation, growing military support and strategic interests. The Houthis were not, at their birth, an Iranian project. But over time they became one of its partners. That became clear in public. There were, for example, posters of martyrs, Ashura processions, Ghadir celebrations, portraits of leaders, green banners and huge rallies. That doesn’t mean the movement became Twelver Shia in its beliefs. But it did pick up much of the revolutionary theatre of Shia politics. By 2014, the Houthis were more than just revivalists of Zaydism. They were a revolutionary movement with martyrs, symbols, territory, foreign allies, military experience and a claim to power. Revival had turned into insurgency. Insurgency into power.
The Imamate Without an Imam
The Houthis did not bring back the Zaydi imamate. That’s too simple a way of thinking about it. They didn’t re-find the monarchy that existed before 1962. Nor do they see Abdul-Malik al-Houthi as the traditional “Imam of Yemen.” In practice, they use committees, propaganda, coercion, bureaucracy and security. But they do pick up something more ancient than any formal title: the belief that legitimate rule is rooted in religious truth, sacred lineage and righteous command. In many ways, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi embodies the logic of the imamate, even if not its title. He is religious leader, commander in war, leader of his movement and a symbol of it. In the Houthi movement, influence depends more on one’s relationship to him and his closest circle than on any formal position in the system. They use the title “leader of the revolution,” but in many ways its undercurrents reach back further. That’s why the word “imamate” is both wrong and right. It would be wrong if it suggested the Houthis had resurrected the old order. They haven’t. But it’s right in the sense that at some level they share the imamate’s logic of righteous leadership, sacred lineage, scepticism of the secular republic and merging of religious and political leadership. The imamate did not return as a throne. It returned as an atmosphere. And it’s not a harmless atmosphere. Through their sense of themselves as righteous resistance, the Houthis have supported repression, ideological control, coercive mobilisation and limited political life in Yemen under their rule. To them, dissent can become not merely political opposition, but betrayal of religion, resistance and nation. In many ways, the mythology supporting the Houthis sustains their authoritarianism.
And that’s why they reject so much of the memory of the 1962 revolution in Yemen. That revolution was meant to break with the imamate and usher in a modern republic. Today, that memory sits uneasily alongside September 21, 2014, when the movement seized Sanaʿa. To them that was a revolution against foreign domination and corruption. Not coincidentally, in their telling, that date eclipses 1962 in significance. And in their eyes, so does its meaning for Yemen’s modernity. The republic once said it had brought an end to the imamate. In saying this, the Houthis suggest that in some way their revolution corrected the republic’s failure. In that sense, Houthiism is not a return to the old imamate. Rather, it is the afterlife of the imamate in a revolutionary movement. The old institution is dead. Its constitutional world is gone. But echoes of it, its symbols and assumptions live on in this new movement. Drawing on the Zaydi belief that righteous leadership and sacred lineage matter above all, the Houthis add lessons of war, language of anti-imperialism from Hezbollah and Iran, and build a propaganda, mobilisation and security apparatus. The imam has not come back. But the political desire for sacred command has.
From Zayd to Khomeini
The Houthis aren’t Iranian puppets. They aren’t relics of the past. They are a revolutionary movement in modern-day Yemen, built from ancient materials. The common “Iranian proxy” label notices Tehran but misses Saʿda. It sees missiles but not memory. It recognizes the alliance but not the movement. But there’s danger in thinking of the Houthis simply as rebels in Yemen. That would miss the fact that in many respects they have become part of Iran’s system of war in the region. They survive because they have roots in Yemen. And they matter outside Yemen because they are supplied, shaped and amplified from outside. In that sense, From Zayd to Khomeini doesn’t mean Zaydism turned into Khomeinism. Rather, it means two different Shia histories converged: one with the older grammar of revolt, the other with the modern demonstration of revolutionary success. At that point, the two histories fed into the Houthis. They are Zaydi in memory, Houthi in leadership, Yemeni in origin, revolutionary in method, and increasingly Iranian-aligned in strategy. Their power cannot be grasped through theology alone. Nor through geopolitics alone. But in some sense, it lies in the intersection of theology, grievance, war and strategy in the region. But fires illuminate and consume. The same revolutionary inheritance that helped the Houthis survive has also helped produce a coercive political order, one that sacralises obedience and treats opposition as treason to the cause. Khomeini did not create the fire. Zayd had lit it thirteen centuries earlier. But Khomeini showed what a fire could become once it captured a state.
