Biden’s War Expands From Gaza to Yemen

With his airstrikes this month ordered in response to attacks on Red Sea shipping, Joe Biden has become the fourth consecutive U.S. president to bomb Yemen. The strikes targeted against the Houthi militant group are aimed at preventing further attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea. Biden himself has said that the strikes carried out so far have been ineffective but that they would continue on nonetheless.

This week on Intercepted, Shireen Al-Adeimi, an assistant professor of language and literacy at Michigan State University and non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute focused on Yemen, joins us to discuss the history of U.S. involvement in the country since the war on terror and the potential impact of this new intervention on Yemeni society. With co-hosts Jeremy Scahill and Murtaza Hussain, Al-Adeimi discusses the U.S. role in facilitating a disastrous Saudi and Emirati war in Yemen over the past decade, the emergence of the Houthis, and the political threats of the present conflict as Yemenis attempt to negotiate a peace agreement aimed at putting an end to a devastating conflict that has killed hundreds of thousands in the country.

Jeremy Scahill: This is Intercepted.

Welcome to Intercepted. I’m Jeremy Scahill.

Murtaza Hussain: And I’m Murtaza Hussain.

JS: Maz, there’s a lot to discuss this week. We have the United States government now very clearly agitating toward a wider war in the Middle East, even though the rhetoric from the White House is that that is not what the Biden administration wants.

The U. S. expanding its airstrikes against Yemen, the U.S. still continuing its military operations in Iraq. And, despite all of Netanyahu’s recent statements about how there will never be a Palestinian state as long as he’s in power, and then, very provocatively coming out and saying that, from the West of Jordan, Israel is going to remain in total control.

And I went back and I was looking, Maz, and this has been Netanyahu’s posture throughout his entire political career. But also, for all of the focus that we’ve heard about Hamas’s charter and calls for the destruction of Israel — by the way, parenthetically, Hamas amended its charter, and now says that it recognizes 1967 borders as a future Palestinian state — but what’s interesting is, if you go back and you read the Likud party charter of 1977, in that document, it says, quote, “between the sea and the Jordan, there will only be Israeli sovereignty.”

So, right now, we have, on the one hand, Netanyahu coming out and saying the Hague isn’t going to stop him, we’re going to continue going, this could go on for many, many months, if not years, Israel is going to be in control of everything West of the Jordan. And you have the Biden administration continuing to try to play this game where they project one image in the media, which is that they’re running out of patience, and then, on the other hand, continuing to support Netanyahu’s war of annihilation, Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza.

And Khan Yunis in the South of Gaza has now been the epicenter of the most intense Israeli attacks of late, where they’re killing upwards of 180 to 200 Palestinians every day, and laying siege to sites that the Israeli government has told Palestinians to flee to, to stay safe. They’re continuing to attack the few remaining hospitals and medical facilities in Gaza at the same time we see the war expanding with these airstrikes in Yemen, that could very, very quickly spread further into a much hotter conflict involving United States forces, and others within the “axis of resistance,” as it’s called.

MH: You know, it’s interesting. It seems like the U.S. — against its will and the exhaustion of the American public — is very, very much involved in a serious military conflict in the Middle East again. These strikes in Yemen, the U.S. has tried to downplay them and say that, well, they’re limited, we’re not in a war. It’s attempted to deter the Houthis and so forth, but it’s already expanding; they’re bombing Saada very heavily. And there’s no exit strategy of where this ends or how this ends, it could spiral and snowball quite a bit.

And it seems like the driver of this is effectively cosigning a very radical government in Israel which has very maximalist goals. It’s no longer interested — if it ever was — in meaningful compromise with its neighbors, or accepting a peace deal, which does exist on the table, which allows it to move on from this conflict. And the U.S. is effectively invested in bankrolling this, and underwriting it for as long as it takes.

And you mentioned the Likud charter; the Likud charter is effectively a very important document for American foreign policy now, because American foreign policy is invested in ensuring that the tenants of this ideology, in which Netanyahu himself is a major proponent now, are a U.S. foreign policy priority. And as much as politicians want to talk about pivoting to Asia, focusing on Europe, or what have you, they’re stuck in the same doom cycle of defending to the hilt maximalist Israeli ideological and political and military interests and demands.

So, it’s very irrational, I would say. The fact that the U.S. is now looking down the barrel of another major war in the Middle East; it’s already involved in another major war in the Middle East. It goes against every American interest, and yet we’re still stuck here. And I think it really bears reflection: how are we getting wrapped up into another war in Yemen? How are we still mired in the Middle East? It’s very bloody, irresolvable on the current term’s conflicts. And I think Netanyahu and Israel are very, very much at the core of that.

JS: You and I have talked for a couple of months at least, now, about how the actual Israeli ground war against Hamas actually is not going well for Israel or for the United States. And now, this is becoming a very mainstream story. In The New York Times, in the Wall Street Journal, in Haaretz, you now start to see a recognition that the stated goals of this campaign — to, quote, “eliminate Hamas, and to free the Israeli hostages” — there’s a recognition now among elite media outlets — and among journalists who have very good sources in the Israeli Military and the Israeli government — that they’re flailing. That this is rapidly becoming a quagmire, just on a military level.

You had an incident that took place on Monday, where 21 Israeli soldiers died as they were trying to rig two buildings in Gaza with mines so that they could do a controlled demolition. You know, under international humanitarian law, an occupying force or an invading force is not allowed to destroy buildings or seize properties unless there’s a very clear military necessity to do it. And, for months, we’ve watched Israeli soldiers posting videos on TikTok of them gleefully hitting the detonate button to blow up civilian residential neighborhoods, to blow up universities, to have these Israeli soldiers doing this.

And then, to die, when what Israel says is that Hamas launched an RPG at a tank that was, quote-unquote, “protecting the soldiers who were going to rig the explosives in this building.” And that this somehow then also hit one of the bombs they were trying to plant in the building, and it caused the buildings to collapse on top of the 21 soldiers This is the single biggest casualty event for the Israeli military of the past three and a half months of siege in Gaza.

To me, it really is sort of a symbol of how the whole military campaign against Hamas — you know, this is not a war against Hamas, it’s a war against Gaza — but the military campaign against Hamas also seems to be kind of collapsing on itself in some ways.

MH: You know, there was an incredible statistic which was reported yesterday, which is that it’s estimated that Hamas’s tunnels inside Gaza could run as much as 450 miles. So it’s only 25-mile strips, it’s a very, very small amount of territory fortified so deeply under the ground. And I don’t think there’s any precedent for a military actually encountering something like that or how to deal with it; it may be the first.

So, any of the goals, traditionally, that they set out for how this campaign was going to go have really stalled, or they have kind of confronted the reality that you can’t eliminate Hamas militarily, that’s a very difficult goal in itself. But, at the same time, trying to rescue the hostages which are in their control, where you don’t know where they are … These two goals don’t match at all.

I think this entire military offensive began very much in a panic and a rage after October 7th. There was not much foresight, not much planning. One thing we learned was that the Israeli military had never made contingency plans for how to do regime change in Gaza if they needed to, something that they discovered after October 7th.

So, now they’ve entered this conflict with no clear exit strategy, no plan on how they want to bring it to fruition. And the Israeli government, while it’s taking these very heavy losses, they’re now publicly fighting about how they’re going to proceed with this, and the divisions between the war cabinet are opening up quite broadly.

I think that it’s still quite early, but it’s looking very, very bad for Israel’s military campaign. It’s looking like a repeat, perhaps, of it’s campaign in Lebanon in 2006, where they withdrew without achieving their goals. I think that may be the case now, despite their very, very disproportionate amount of force that they have, that they’ve used. Ultimately, they’ve set a trap for themselves by setting maximalist goals, which may be, by themselves, impossible to achieve.

JS: Yeah. And it seems clear that Netanyahu is intent on saving his political career by planting a flag on a huge pile of Palestinian corpses in Gaza. And the question is, whether or not he’s even on a tactical level going to be able to do that, despite the fact that they’ve documented more than 25,000 Palestinians [killed by now], it seems like, even by just wantonly mass killing civilians, they may not even be able to conquer Gaza.

Well, Maz, today we’re going to turn our focus sharply onto this other front that has opened up in what is becoming a broader war in the Middle East, and that is: the U.S. attacks against Yemen, and the blockade that Ansar Allah, the Houthis, have been operating now for weeks, initially targeting Israeli ships, or ships that were affiliated in some way with Israel. Now they’re saying that they’re also going to target ships from the United States, and Britain, and other countries that participate in these attacks against Ansar Allah’s forces off the coast of Yemen. 

To do so, we’re joined by Shireen Al-Adeimi. She is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University. Also a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, where she focuses on Yemen.

Shireen, welcome to Intercepted. Thanks for being with us.

Shireen Al-Adeimi: Thanks for having me.

JS: So, I want to begin with this comment that’s gotten a lot of attention that Joe Biden made recently, when he was asked whether the strikes against Yemen, against the Houthis, were working. And Biden said the following: “Well, when you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.”

First, off the bat, your response to Joe Biden’s statement.

SA: I mean, in a way, it’s a very clear admission of what the U.S. policy has been toward Yemen over the last decade, let’s say, or more. The response has always been: bomb them, and let’s see if that works. And we know it hasn’t worked in the past, we know it’s not working now. We’re going to continue doing it anyway.

And so, I wasn’t surprised by it, and I realize that the administration knows what they’re doing, and that they understand that past behavior is the best predictor of future outcomes. And yet, they continue along this policy.

Just to hear that admission, I think it’s a little bit jarring, because it has not worked, it’s not working now. They know that the Houthis have gotten stronger. They know this will mobilize even more people toward their cause, and yet the policy remains in place, that they’ll just continue doing it anyway because, apparently, that’s the American way, is what it signals.

MH: Shireen, before we get more into present events: you’re an expert on Yemen. Can you tell us a bit about the political circumstances in which the current crisis emerged? Obviously, there’s been a civil war in Yemen for a number of years. And, more recently, there’s been some peace talks, which seem to have made some progress towards an end.

Tell us what was happening in Yemen before this crisis in the Red Sea began.

SA: I wouldn’t characterize it as a civil war, because it was, essentially, before it could even brew to a full-fledged civil war, there was a Saudi-led intervention in 2015.

And so, we could take it back to 2011 during the Arab spring, when Yemenis were seeking an end to dictatorship. The promise of democracy which, you know, we have the structure for that in Yemen, in contrast to the countries that are surrounding Yemen, which are all monarchies, and sultanates, and emirates, and whatnot.

But it began with people’s protests, which were coopted by various political groups. The president resigned in 2011, and we had an interim president in place, so that’s the internationally-recognized government that we hear about, President Hadi. And, meanwhile, the Houthis have had their issues with the Yemeni government since the early 2000s. They weren’t the only group who were dissatisfied, of course, so they joined the movement, initially what were peaceful movements. 

So, late 2014, the Houthis, in the middle of this national dialogue that was meant to bring people together, the various parties, come toward a coalition government. They essentially took over the capital and forced the president to house arrest. And they said that their motivation was, still, to work toward a political solution, and we’ve heard from the previous U.N. envoy that that was still on the table.

So, in March of 2015, the various factions were still willing to sign an agreement, and that’s when Saudi Arabia began bombing, formed a coalition, said that this was going to take a few weeks, they were going to just curtail the Houthis. They didn’t want the Houthis in power; understandably, given the political differences between Ansar Allah, the Houthis, the Saudi government, and the U.S. government.

And so, that led to, essentially, the next eight years of war, where it wasn’t Operation Decisive Storm. They weren’t able to just bombard the Houthis, and have them give up their arms, and retreat to the northern part of Yemen. And, instead, the Houthis mobilized most of the nation, essentially, to defend the country against the Saudi-led coalition.

This persisted until 2022, when Houthi attacks began to have an impact on Saudi Arabia in the U.A.E., which was not previously the case. This was mostly an asymmetrical war, with Yemeni civilians being killed and being starved because of the blockade and the bombing, and Saudi, U.A.E. citizens, and American citizens not really feeling the brunt of this war at all.

But, in early 2022, there were some Houthi missiles and drones that landed in the oil fields in Saudi Arabia in the U.A.E., which prompted all of these parties to come and to have serious dialogue toward peace. And so, there was a ceasefire in place, and President Hadi — who was the internationally recognized president — he was set aside by the Saudis, and replaced with a council of eight men, four of whom were/are backed by the U.A.E., four of them backed by the Saudis. And they’ve spent the last year and a half fighting one another in southern Yemen, which is controlled by the coalition. Meanwhile, the Houthis are now recognized, essentially, as the de facto government in Yemen; they rule the part of Yemen where about 70 to 80 percent of the population resides.

They were close to an agreement with Saudi Arabia. We were hearing whispers that they were about to sign an agreement this month, in January, with the Saudis, signaling the end of the war. Who knows what that transition would have looked like post-war, but at least it would have given Yemenis this hope that foreign intervention was going to end, and the parties within Yemen could forge a path forward that worked for Yemenis.

Then the attacks on Gaza happened, and you know the Houthi response to that, which I think has derailed those talks and could further delay any notions of peace in the in the near future, at least

JS: Picking up on that, Shireen, I think it’s really interesting the way that the United States — and this is not a new phenomenon — but the way that the United States tries to link any entity that it wants to portray as ultra-nefarious as being ultimately controlled by another major power. The Russian-backed this, the Iranian-backed this, the Chinese-backed this. And, in the case of the Houthis or Ansar Allah, you can go back and look at a much deeper history, the tapestry of information that we were able to see from the WikiLeaks cables. How U.S. officials, over the years, the government of Ali Abdullah Saleh — the former longtime ruler of Yemen — constantly was trying to get the United States to allow him to use counterterrorism weapons and funding to fight his domestic battles against the Houthi militia at the time, and the U.S. was consistently saying no. And, also, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that, for a long time, the United States rejected the notion that the Houthi movement was a wholly owned subsidiary of Iran.

And part of what has happened with the Saudi bombings that you mentioned, with the U.S. policy under Barack Obama [of] beginning regular strikes on the country, and then, the battles for power that took place in Yemen, is that some of what the far right in the United States — or the Republicans — wanted to portray as this is just a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary, started to become more true. In the sense that when the Houthis achieved some form of political power in Yemen, then they were able to broker more peer-to-peer relationships with Iran. But the notion that this is an entirely Iranian subsidiary, I think, remains quite ludicrous. But, nonetheless, that is how it’s portrayed.

I mean, first of all, we should also say “the U.S.-backed Israeli government” when we’re talking about the war in Gaza, because there’s far more evidence that the United States is giving the crucial weapons to Israel to carry out this campaign than there is a long term plan with Ansar Allah in Yemen.

But what I wanted to ask you about is how the way when media outlets, and the U.S. government, and Western governments, talk about this as the Iran-backed Houthi movement, it strips Yemenis of their agency on the issue of Gaza, and it betrays an ignorance of Yemen’s history with sending fighters to Afghanistan, for instance, to fight the Soviets. I remember being in Iraq and Baghdad right before “shock and awe” began, and a bunch of Yemenis came pouring in, because they said they wanted to fight against a U.S. invasion.

I want to get your analysis of how much of this is about Ansar Allah, and the Houthis making this decision to implement this blockade in defense of Gaza, and how much of it has actual support among other sectors of Yemeni society, including people that may be opponents of Ansar Allah, or believe that the Houthis represent an illegitimate takeover of the government of Yemen.

SA: Yeah. I agree with everything that you’ve said, and I think we’ve become conditioned to hear Iran as the enemy. And so, “Iran-backed Houthi rebels” is just a euphemism for “enemy.” So, it’s just an easy way for people to just understand, these are the bad guys, and we’re the good guys.

And it’s not just a characterization that’s happened now, of course, in the context of Gaza, but over the last nine years, since the Saudi-led, U.S.-backed war in Yemen began, they were always characterized as Iran-backed Houthis. They were all of these claims about Iranians sending weapons to Houthis during the middle of the blockade, aerial blockade, naval blockade, land blockade. And yet, Iran’s relationship with the Houthis has always been exaggerated and, like you said, it takes away the agency. And we know that this was orchestrated by the previous president Saleh, all of this is out there for people to learn about, and yet this notion continues.

Now, I do think that the solidarity between Yemenis and Palestinians runs deep. In 1947, when Yemen had just joined the United Nations, they were among five member countries who were who walked out when the vote to partition Palestine occurred; this was a monarchy that was controlling North Yemen. During the time that Yemen was controlled by the Communists in South Yemen, there was a blockade in Bab al-Mandab in support of the war between Egypt and Israel.

During the time of Ali Abdullah Saleh — the Republic of Yemen, the long term dictatorship — he was very open with all members of the Palestinian leadership, and Palestinians were allowed to come and work in Yemen, have the rights that all Yemenis had. They weren’t living in refugee camps or anything like that. And their leadership was welcomed in Yemen, even when they were kicked out of Lebanon during the civil war.

And so, no matter the leadership in Yemen, this is one of the few issues where there’s a perfect alignment between what the people of Yemen want and what the leadership has done to support the Palestinians in the Palestinian cause, both morally and materially, over the last several decades. And so, this is not an inauthentic relationship between the Yemenis…

And now, of course, some people will say that the Houthis are trying to co-opt this and strengthen themselves. The Houthis have a lot to lose here by blockading the Red Sea in support of Gaza. Like I said, the peace deal is on the table. Yemenis want nothing more than to just move on with their lives, to pick up the pieces.

And the damage has been immense to the Yemeni population. The latest numbers — and these are vastly underreported — but at least 377,000 people have been killed in Yemen. A child was dying at the rate of one every 75 seconds, a child under the age of five, for the past several years, and this is because of the blockade.

And so, the Houthis don’t want to rule over a country where people are starving, and there’s no trade, and there’s a blockade, and we have to seek permission from the Saudis to leave our country or to enter our country. The one airport in Saada just finally reopened, which the U.S. just bombed in those first airstrikes.

And so, they have a lot to lose. And, yes, they may be regional clout [right now] for their stance with Gaza and Palestine, but it comes at the expense of a peace deal for Yemen, which we’ve long sought for, which everybody in Yemen has long sought for. But I think that even their enemies within Yemen, just people — whether they’re in higher positions or just the average person — this cause seems to have united us together.

The war with Saudi Arabia really fractured Yemeni society in many ways. We have a lot of Southern Yemenis where I’m from who supported the coalition, and a lot of Northern Yemenis who didn’t. The cause for Palestine, I think, though, unites Yemenis, and they see it as a way to confront the blockade in Gaza, and to lend support for the Palestinians in the middle of this genocidal war against them. And if the Houthis happen to be the one doing it, so be it.

I mean, this is the same reason a lot of people flocked to the Houthis during the last several years, because they were seen as the only group who stayed in Yemen and were defending Yemen against foreign enemies, a coalition of 16, 17 countries. Whereas the other members of the leadership in Yemen, were and are still in hotels in Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E., and directing, being told what to do. Step down, do this, do that, take this money, do that.

And so, they’re not seen as legitimate rulers in Yemen, whereas the Houthis are seen as being bold, whether it’s defending Yemen against Saudi Arabia, or now, lending support to Palestine through this blockade.

MH: Shireen, to your point, there were big rallies in major Yemeni cities in support of the Palestinians, and in defiance of the U.S. and U.K. airstrikes which took place after the Houthi attack. So, it clearly does evince exactly what you’re talking about, this unity of many, many different factions of Yemeni society over this one issue, of which the Houthis have become the standard bearer.

Obviously, we’re talking about the Houthis right now, and you know more about their origins, and where they came from, and what their characteristics are. Tell us, briefly, how did the Houthi movement emerge, and what are their beliefs and ideology, and how does that fit their place in Yemen?

SA: So, the family of al-Houthi began as preachers, turned politicians, and they came from a province called Saada in the very north of Yemen, which borders Saudi Arabia.

Now, Yemen, under a dictatorship, anybody who posed any threat to Ali Abdullah Saleh was met with violence. I know this as having lived in the south during 1994 in Aden, where the southern leaders declared secession from the North, because it wasn’t working anymore, there were all of these misalignments of expectations, and Ali Abdullah Saleh responded with a war, with bombardment, asymmetrical bombardment, until the Southerners felt like they were forced back into unity with the North, which is why you see a lot of resentment between historic North and historic South Yemen.

The Houthis, in that context, were preaching against corruption, Ali Abdullah Saleh’s corruption, his very close relationship with the Saudis in the U.S. which, Jeremy, you mentioned earlier, with Yemenis going to Afghanistan and Iraq. I think it’s safe to say that we’re allergic to imperialism. Like, this is not something that Yemenis will accept at all. It’s in our national anthem that we won’t accept a ruler over our lands, it’s a very… And we’ve been colonized. We’re people who have been colonized by the Ottomans, by the British, and have fought very, very long and hard to end foreign interference in Yemen.

And so, the Houthis were not representing a cause that was unique to them. This was something that was shared by the majority of the Yemeni population, but most people can’t really say much under dictatorship without having to worry for their personal safety. And so, they began preaching against that, but they also were preaching very specifically about Saudi religious influence in Yemen.

In the 90s, there was a lot of exporting of Salafi Wahhabi Islam from Saudi Arabia. And, in a country like Yemen, where 40 percent of the population is Zaydi Muslim — which is a branch of Shia Islam — and about 60 percent are Shafi Sunni, they felt like this was just a complete threat to the theological foundations of this country.

Yemen is a deeply conservative religious society, but they’re also proud. We’re proud of our history and the ability of these various factions to live harmoniously over a couple thousand years; like a thousand years or so, 1,500 years. And so, for Salafi Islam or Wahhabism to infiltrate into Yemeni society, and to have that on-the-ground impact, was something that the Houthis were rejecting, given their theological background. But they’re also not a minority, like I said. And so, they’re from the sect where 40 percent of Yemenis practice that sect of Islam.

The very president who fought against them in six different wars — Saleh, between 2004 and 2010 — also shares their theological background. He’s a secular Muslim, but he is also from a Zaydi family.

And so, those were the causes that brought them to parliament, initially. And then, once Saleh saw that this was going to be a threat to his rule, responded with war. Enlisted the Saudis, tried to enlist the Americans, like you mentioned earlier, Jeremy, and was not successful, because the Americans understood that they were not Iran-allied, and so it was not their business to deal with it.

But the Saudis failed to do anything about the Houthis, and they’ve continued to strengthen themselves as fighters, but the fighting came as a response to the way that the government responded to them. They had some sympathy among the Yemeni population during this time, but it wasn’t until 2011 when they joined the protest movements that they also became a legitimate or a viable sect, a group who were asking to be represented in a future Yemen, in a future coalition government, that more people started paying attention to them.

JS: I wanted to ask you about the Axis of Resistance. We recently had on a scholar on Hezbollah, and she was talking about how the Axis of Resistance — Hezbollah, Hamas, the Islamic resistance in Iraq, Ansar Allah in Yemen, as well as the Iranian Government — that they have essentially their own command center, also, where they’re analyzing global developments, particularly in light of the events of October 7th, and then the Israeli war of annihilation that’s been going on now for more than 100 days.

And you hear, from time to time, Yemeni officials… And Houthi leaders have become very popular on many Arabic language news channels as political analysts, as commentators, and their status is rising, certainly in the world as Gaza becomes destroyed. And you have silence from so many Arab nations and Muslim nations around the world, that the Yemeni commentators are emerging as very sharp critics of the Anglo support for Israel’s war of annihilation in Gaza.

But when Yemeni leaders say that this is sort of their opening salvo in a war of defense against Gaza, and that they also can escalate, and you have the prospect of a full blown hot war against Lebanon, for instance, by the Israelis… You have the United States now resuming bombing in multiple countries, you have Iran also staging its own attacks in the context of the broader simmering war.

How do you see this playing out, specifically with regard to Yemen? What else could Yemen be doing right now that they’re not already doing in the Red Sea? When Yemeni officials imply that they could do more, what is your read on [it]?

Are they bluffing? Are they giving a geopolitical analysis that says that, if this turns into a broader ground war in the region, that Yemenis would go and fight it? I mean, you get what I’m saying? Like, how much of this is bluster or bravado, and how much of it is, we’re serious about what we’re saying?

SA: I mean, they are serious about what they’re saying, but their capabilities are limited. So, they don’t have a Navy, they don’t have an Air Force. And yet, they were underestimated in the past. They were essentially able to defeat the Saudis in the U.A.E., let’s be honest. If the Saudis were not able to take an inch of land that they already had — in July of 2015, between 2015, between 2015 and 2022 — and were desperate to get out of this war, then that constitutes a defeat, despite their backing by the United States, despite the U.A.E. being a partner in that war.

Now, of course, southern lands have been essentially taken over by the coalition, and our islands, for example, are occupied by the U.A.E. But, in terms of holding on to the North, and the stronghold where most of the population resides, they’ve won, despite only really having ground soldiers, and some drones, and some missiles here and there.

And so, this blockade that we’re seeing in the Red Sea, you know, they’re using drones and missiles and fishing boats. They don’t really have a Navy, like I said. They could escalate those.

And I think one interesting. development was, not just attacks in the Red Sea, but going all the way down to the Gulf of Aden, and staging attacks from there. Those are not areas that the Houthis control. And yet, they were still able to attack some ships from that. So not just the Red Sea; it’s also just that entire area. So, I think they could escalate those.

Fighting on the ground is their strongest suit. This is why the Saudis never had a ground invasion. The U.A.E. was policing this, basically, but they knew better than to have a ground invasion. And they were using Yemeni forces, mercenaries. They were using Blackwater forces, Sudanese forces, they were using all of those people, except the Saudis and the U.A.E. soldiers to wage these battles on the ground, and even they were defeated. Because Northern Yemen, these are highlands. Think of Afghanistan; you’re not going to be able to win on the ground over there.

So, I think defending their own country, they’ve been very, very successful at that. They have not had any ambitions to take over, or to go outside of their borders, except to win these short battles with the Saudis at the border, because that was the only place they could face them on the ground. But it’s interesting to me, because there’s Saudi Arabia between Yemen and Palestine. And so, it’s hard to imagine that they could do anything more to escalate, but I think their escalation is in the Red Sea, and in the Gulf of Aden. And they’ve said that they’re targeting Israel-bound ships. And, since the U.S. and U.K. started bombing, now they’re targeting U.S. and U.K. ships as well. Maybe that’ll escalate to other countries, depending on what happens.

But I think some of it is bravado. Some of it is that they are dedicated to this ideologically more than technically. They’ve been underestimated in the past, and I think we should be taking everything that they’re saying seriously.

MH: Shireen, you mentioned that they survived this very long and very brutal air campaign by the U.A.E. and Saudi, which was backed by the U.S. with various technical and logistical support. It’s interesting because, now, the response to them is to hit them with more airstrikes by the U.S. and U.K. directly now. Are there lessons that they’ve learned during that time of how to survive an airstrike? Because it seems that there’s some adaptation that took place here.

I remember several years ago, we had a story about the bombing of Saada City in the north, where you mentioned that many leaders come from. The city was very much destroyed, including the historical heritage. And it was assumed that the group was going to be wiped out very soon as a result of facing this air power. Because, as you said, they don’t have air defenses, really, they don’t have an air force of their own.

How have they learned to adapt? Is it like a Darwinian sort of adaptation, that they’ve become stronger, or learned how to evade and hide their forces from air power? Is that likely to make this campaign today unsuccessful?

SA: I mean, wars are never won through aerial bombardment. We know those lessons from Afghanistan, for example, or from Vietnam. And so, I think, with the Houthis, they’re not just a small group. Maybe the family of Al-Houthi is what inspired this movement, but when you see those millions of people on the streets coming out in support of the movement of Ansar Allah, these are ordinary Yemeni men who are willing and have been willing to sacrifice for the defense of their country.

And when we thought that the movement was going to be wiped out in Saada — like you said, they really carpet bombed it, essentially, they were carpet bombing Saada in the beginning parts of the war — and yet the leaders have been safe. Many of them have not — we have had a previous Houthi president who was assassinated by the Saudis a few years ago — but they just continue to survive, because they know that this is not something that is unpopular. It’s not an unpopular movement, it’s not just isolated to northern Yemen and Saada in that one province. They’re all over the country.

I mean, even Ali Abdullah Saleh, the previous president who joined them initially from 2015 up until late 2017, he joined them in the war against the Saudi-led aggression, which was just phenomenal to think about, that they had forged this partnership after years and years and years of fighting one another, but it was a very convenient political partnership. And the second he turned against them and tried to join the U.A.E. again, he was killed within 72 hours. 

And people were saying that there’s no way; like, Saleh had maneuvered every imaginable thing against him. He was known as the one who danced on the heads of snakes. He was a very shrewd politician, he was a survivalist in that area. And yet, in his stronghold, in Sana, he was killed within just… not even 72 — 48 hours of him turning against the Houthis.

And so, I think their power has been entrenched, and part of it is survival. Part of it is, they’ve always worked with very limited technology, and they know how to make that go a long way. But I think, on the ground, they have won hearts and minds, and many more people are willing to fight for their homeland than I think the Americans understand. They don’t understand our history with colonialism, they don’t understand our history with oppression, and how hard Yemenis had to fight, for their rights to not just live free of oppression and colonialism — whether it was the Ottoman empire in the North or the British empire in the South — but also to not live under a monarchy. That was a hard-won fight in Yemen, and then the fight against dictatorship, which happened during 2011.

So, I think there’s a lot of investments by Yemenis to just be left alone, to chart their own course, to determine self-determination, and to live in a sovereign place that does not have to bow down to the will of Saudi Arabia, or to the U.A.E., or to the United States, or even to Iran. You’ll see a lot of people speaking out very strongly against Iranian influence in Yemen, because they don’t want to bow down to anybody. They want to be able to control their own affairs. 

MH: I want to ask you very quickly: obviously, Biden has reinvigorated U.S. military involvement in Yemen, by bombing Yemen in recent weeks. The Saudis and the Emiratis, because of their very, very painful and failed experience in attacking Yemen, they’re desperate to get out of the country now. And you mentioned that they’re concerned about these strikes by the Houthis against their own cities, and so forth, that took place in 2022.

Are these strikes going to derail the Saudi regime’s ambition to extricate themselves from Yemen and have a peace deal? Because it seems like, as opposed to welcoming them, they seem to be quite nervous about the strikes, or seem to be not supporting them. What’s their concern as you see it, in terms of maybe failing to end the war in Yemen from their perspective, and go back to a stable situation?

SA: I think, more so than the airstrikes, the designation of the Ansar Allah as terrorists is more likely to derail the talks, because the Saudis are not going to want to be seen as just, “signing a peace deal with terrorists,” quote-unquote. And so, I think they’re nervous about that.

And, of course, they don’t want to also be … You know, the Saudis and the U.S.’s relationships are very intertwined, their interests are intertwined. And so, they want the U.S. to just play along here. Let us sign this deal, let us get out of this completely, and then you do what you want. They’re not concerned about Yemeni citizens — they never have [been], of course — they’re just concerned about their own security at the border.

There have been continued skirmishes at the border, by the way, with Saudi Arabia. And so, they just want to wrap this up, and get it over with, and work toward their vision 2030, or whatever it is that Mohammed bin Salman is interested in doing.

The Emiratis, I think, have longer-term ambition in Yemen, which is why this deal is with the Saudis and not the Emiratis. So, the Saudi went into this just thinking they’re going to bomb their way to it, and they couldn’t, and they’ve lost. The U.A.E., I think, is a separate contender here, a separate entity to deal with, because they are interested in the theft of resources, essentially, in Southern Yemen. And so, that’s a whole other battle that Yemenis themselves are hopefully going to unite in fighting against, and not be fractured again.

But I think the Saudis are asking for de-escalation. They don’t want to derail the talks, they just want to get out of this. But I think, more importantly, the designation, if it sticks, to designate the Houthis as terrorists won’t look very good for Saudis, because they’re not going to want to seem like they’re talking to terrorists.

JS: One other note on that: when the United States designates Ansar Allah or the Houthis as a terrorist organization while, at the almost the exact same moment of the designation, you have the overwhelming majority members of the United States Senate, a massive bipartisan majority voting to effectively kill a measure brought by Senator Bernie Sanders that simply sought to ensure that the Biden administration’s state department is complying with American law regarding the military support for units or entities, foreign military units or entities that may be committing human rights abuses, it just strikes me that this is our response to the blockade of a port that the individuals doing the blockade seem to have kept their word on which kinds of ships they…

Israel and Yemen are at war. Yemen did declare war, Yemen is a party to this, and is implementing this blockade which, the massive result of it has been to disrupt shipping, but they were exclusively targeting ships that had a connection to Israel. Now, as you mentioned, the front has expanded, because of the U.S. and Britain and other countries now deploying their war vessels into the region.

But this designation of the Houthis as terrorists is really on the nose when you juxtapose it with the fact that, not only is the United States completely arming and politically bankrolling the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, but actively refusing to check if even U.S. law is being broken by supporting units that all of us are watching on television, committing human rights abuses and mass murder in Gaza.

SA: Yeah. The political cover that they’ve provided to their allies — whether they’re the Saudis, the Emiratis, or the Israelis — it’s just been incredible. Like, la-la-la-la-la, we don’t want to hear about it. Let’s just continue supporting them because they have a right to self-defense, or whatever it is that our government tells itself. But they don’t even want to know, like you said.

And even bombing Yemen, on the day that South Africa brought its case to the ICJ, I think, also sends a signal. Let’s just distract from this case and bomb Yemen, and just call them Houthi targets, and not pretend that bombing a sovereign country is totally fine, and bombing airports is totally okay.

And so, I think this is all just a distraction. Our government is totally intertwined with Israeli’s government and interests and, unfortunately, the people we’ve elected are taking a lot of money from AIPAC and other sources, and they’re not interested in at least even understanding what the goals or what the will of the American population is, let alone fulfilling it. They just have their own interests.

And so, yeah. This has just been extremely… It’s interesting, in a way, because they’ve laid out… They’ve been much more transparent about this. Wars have a way of just laying bare what people’s motivations and interests really are, and I think they’ve done a really good job at doing that.

JS: From the beginning of this intense phase of Israel doing a scorched-earth attack against Gaza, killing more than — and I still assert these are conservative numbers — more than 25,000 Palestinians, more than 10,000 children. I emphasize that I think they are conservative numbers, because people need to understand, when news outlets or commentators dismiss death figures or injury figures given by the Health Ministry in Gaza — they say, oh, it’s the Hamas-run health ministry — but if you actually know anything about the standards that are used there by the Hamas-run Health Ministry, anyone who’s counted as dead or injured has to have come through either the hospital system or the mortuary system. And they’re not just, like, randomly throwing out estimates. And if you actually pay close attention to it, there are other international NGOs that put the body count of Palestinians several thousand dead higher than even the so-called Hamas-run Health Ministry.

But, even taking those conservative statistics — the 25,000 dead — you contrast that, then, with the rhetoric and statements of American officials, most prominently Secretary of State Antony Blinken. And, on the one hand, the United States is giving no-condition military aid to the ongoing slaughter in Gaza. Blinken on a number of occasions has gone around the back of congressional review processes to push through extra tank ammunition to the Israelis to be used in their attacks on the people of Gaza. And you have, then, Blinken running around the world trying to force a tear to come out of his eye when he talks about the suffering of innocent Palestinian men, women, and children. He even — and I thought this was so disgusting — started to talk specifically about Wael Dahdouh’s family, the Bureau Chief of Al Jazeera Arabic, while at the same time doing nothing to address the fact that Israel is systematically murdering journalists and their families.

And you have Biden, and Blinken, and others saying, we seek no wider regional war, that the United States is doing everything possible to stop it while, at the same time, engaging in military strikes in multiple countries, and opening up what is a very significant front in bombing Yemen in such an overt way, and pledging to continue it in perpetuity.

And what I wanted to ask you, Shireen, is: what kind of fire is this administration playing with in the region? This is an election year that Biden is going into. A lot of presidents think that wars are going to help them to win their elections, but it doesn’t seem like they’re going to be able to tie this up in some kind of a neat, convenient bow in time for what appears to be a race between Biden and Trump. 

So, lay out how you see this playing out in the coming months, with the kind of box that has been opened now by the U.S. actions in the Middle East. 

SA: We know from polls, and from demonstrations, and everything going on around here that most people in this country — most Democrats for sure — are calling for a ceasefire. And, instead of working toward a ceasefire, instead of making the support for Israel conditional or pulling it all together, we’re seeing this administration doing everything they can to support Israel. While, at the same time, claiming that, “Oh, I have no leverage, and Israelis will never listen, and we want to curtail civilian deaths.” Meanwhile, they’re vetoing any mentions of ceasefire in the U.N. Security Council, and so on.

And so, I think this president is much more interested in supporting Israel and propping up a genocide, essentially, through his support for Israel than winning, winning against Trump. And his own party is telling him, people within his own party are telling him that we’re not going to vote for you if you continue supporting Israel, and he is doing that regardless. So, I think it’s interesting.

There is mention that he might be coming to Michigan at the end of this month. Michigan has the largest Arab American population in the United States. They did this just before the last elections, too;  I was part of a group where President Biden sent his senior foreign advisor to come speak to a group of us here, Arab Americans in Michigan. Yemeni, specifically Yemenis in Michigan, because the idea was, like: Well, yes, we were part of the coalition that started this war on your country, but we promise we’re going to end it, we promise we’re going to end the war in Yemen.

And I remember sitting in that meeting and hearing his security advisor talk about the regrets of having joined the Saudi-led coalition, and how they felt like it was just to appease the Saudis, because the Americans had just signed the Iran deal without the Saudis being part of that, and the Saudis were upset. And so, when they said, please join the coalition, we said, yes, of course.

I mean, this is all a farce; the United States was more than happy to lend support for the Saudis, and many think of this as a U.S. war in Yemen, anyway. But, you know, “we guarantee we’re going to end this war.” And the moment, of course, Biden took power, he reframed this war as defensive rather than offensive.

And so, the reality is that this is who Biden is. Biden voted for the Iraq war. Biden expanded the war in Afghanistan through drone warfare. Biden/Obama launched the war in Yemen. He has never seen a conflict that he didn’t turn into a war. He has never met a war that he doesn’t like. And so what makes us think that he’s going to all of a sudden change? He’s not going to change. He is committed to violence and war as a foreign policy tool. And so, I think it’ll come at his own peril, right?

So, people here are fed up. They’re not going to vote … Many of them are saying here in Michigan that he’s lost their vote. They’re not going to forget, even if he calls for a ceasefire now. Like you said, at the very least, we have 25,000 people in Gaza who are killed, and the suffering is just not going to be forgiven, right? Or forgotten.

And so, I think it should be interesting what happens later this year.

JS: One follow-up on that. I know we’re going to hit the season where the sort of major league vote-shaming starts happening, where you have all these democratic operatives telling everybody that, oh, if they don’t vote for ol’ Joe Biden, that they’re going to be responsible for Donald Trump winning again.

I mean, it’s such an intellectually and morally bankrupt argument to begin with, but setting it in the context of this specific mass slaughter that Biden is fueling in Gaza, I’ve been saying to people: first of all, most Democrats didn’t want Joe Biden to run, which is the first point here. But, secondly, I want to hear from anybody who runs around telling people that they have to vote for Joe Biden or they’ll be personally responsible for Donald Trump being elected, I want to see every piece of evidence they can produce to show that they spent every waking hour trying to stop Biden from fueling this genocidal war in Gaza. I want to know that they were knocking on doors, that they were calling their representatives, that they were talking to the DNC, that they were trying to stop the DNC from running, ramming Biden down the country’s throat again as the Democratic nominee. I want to see all their receipts. Because, on a moral level, I don’t think you have any business vote-shaming anybody, particularly Palestinian Americans whose family members have been killed by American bombs in Gaza. So, now is the time to produce those receipts, or else you need to go and sit in a corner and be quiet, telling people how they need to vote. Because if you can’t show those receipts, you have no credibility. You’re just a cog in a party machine.

But what I wanted to ask you specifically, Shireen, is what you’re hearing from people in the broader community in Michigan, because it is an important place, as you noted. Do you think people are likely to just not vote? I can’t fathom that they would vote, that a lot of Muslim Americans in particular… I mean, Arab Americans aren’t necessarily Muslim, that’s a mistake Biden made the other day, when he said Donald Trump wanted to ban Arabs from coming into the United States. He was talking about Muslims. And the United States has a substantial population of Arab Christians, including Palestinian Christians.

But are you hearing from people — this isn’t a scientific question, it’s more of just kind of, you know, what are you hearing — that they won’t vote, or that they’re only going to vote the down-ballot races, but they won’t vote for Biden? Or that they will vote for Trump, or that they want to vote third party? What kinds of things are you hearing from people?

SA: Yeah. So my sense is that people are likely not to vote, because nobody wants Trump, either, he was a disaster for Muslim Americans as well. And so, my sense is that they’re just going to sit it out. And, at the end of the day, these people cannot be shamed into voting for somebody who is an active supporter of genocide.

I didn’t vote for Biden in the previous elections, because how could I allow my moral conscience to vote for somebody who had destroyed my country, right? Not just my country, [but] others [too]. But he was in the Obama/Biden administration. Were it not for them, the Saudi war in Yemen would have never started.

And it wasn’t just selling weapons to the Saudis, as we see now with selling weapons to Israel, right? Or donating them or whatever. It was logistics, it was training. It was choosing targets for them. It was spare parts, maintenance, midair refueling, for god’s sakes, right?

And so, in every way, the Obama/Biden administration were responsible for this war in Yemen. I could not vote for a man who caused that much death and destruction, and I knew that I couldn’t trust him to just say, well, we’re going to end it. He didn’t. I was very happy with my decision, because he just continued the policy, same as usual.

And so, I think, for those of us sitting it out, not voting, it is not up to us. We did not put somebody in power who is committing genocide, supporting genocide, and has many war crimes behind his belt, right? And so, this is up to the party, this is who they nominated. And if that person is going to ignore the majority of Democrats saying that we want a ceasefire, and is going to continue supporting the Israelis anyway, then those are the consequences of his own actions and no one else.

Not voting for Biden means not voting for Biden. It doesn’t mean voting for Trump. It doesn’t mean enabling anybody else, it just means that we have taken a moral stance in not voting for somebody who has caused so much suffering and death and destruction in places where… And these are not just abstract figures to us.

When I talk about the war in Yemen, we talk about 377,000 people who are killed. Some of them are my own family, extended family members. I can’t go back to Yemen and expect to see things the way they are, right? There’s been so much displacement, there’s been so much destruction, and this is going to cause a generational impact on my country, just like it will cause a generational impact in Gaza and in Palestine.

And so, it’s Biden’s problem that he chose to support genocide, and he should face the consequences. And I think, no matter what happens with the vote-shaming, well, too bad. He shouldn’t have committed these war crimes, or supported war crimes in these other countries. If you really want us to vote, we’re happy to vote for people who are not going to be war criminals.

JS: Shireen, thank you very much for being with us on Intercepted. 

SA: Thanks for having me.

MH: That was Shireen Al-Adeimi, Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy at Michigan State University, and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute, where she focuses on Yemen.

JS: And that does it for this episode of Intercepted.

Intercepted is a production of The Intercept. José Olivares is the lead producer. Our supervising producer is Laura Flynn. Roger Hodge is Editor-in-Chief of The Intercept. Rick Kwan mixed our show. Legal review by Sean Musgrave and Elizabeth Sanchez. This episode was transcribed by Leonardo Faierman. Our theme music, as always, was composed by DJ Spooky. 

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Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, I’m Jeremy Scahill.

MH: And I’m Murtaza Hussain.