Is Houthis' attempt to target Israel an indication of a wider conflict?

Yemen’s Houthis, who fought a years-long bloody war with the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, said they launched ballistic missiles and drones at Israel this week, raising the spectre of wider tensions in the Middle East.

The attempt, which was thwarted by Tel Aviv as none of the missiles made it to Israel, is another indication that the Axis of Resistance, which includes the Houthis, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Iraqi Shia militias in Syria and Iraq, can be drawn into the Gaza conflict, analysts say.

“Our armed forces launched a large batch of ballistic and winged missiles and a large number of drones at various targets of the Israeli enemy,” said Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, a spokesperson for the Houthi forces, which control much of western Yemen including the country’s capital Sanaa.

The Israeli army said that its air-defence intercepted a surface-to-surface missile fired from the area of the Red Sea, without naming the Houthis. The Houthis control the Red Sea area in Yemen.

This is the third time Houthis tried to hit Israel since Hamas’s October 7 attack and following Israeli bombardment of Gaza in which more than 9,000 people have been killed so far.

The latest Houthi attempt shows that the Iran-backed group has upgraded its arsenal with ballistic missiles, which are capable of travelling more than 1,500 kilometres from Yemen to Israel.

The Iranian-made missiles that Houthis launched from Yemen towards Eliat - over a distance of at least 1,600 km - broke two military records: firstly, it was the longest-range launch of ballistic missiles from ground batteries and secondly it was the first time Israel's Arrow defense system was deployed to intercept a missile, according to Haaretz.

But Ioannis Koskinas, a senior fellow at the international security programme of New America, a US think-tank, says the Houthi attack on Israel was not “substantive”.

“The combination of theater ballistic missile defenses - whether from the US Forces in the region or Israeli Army's organic capabilities - are sufficient to defend against the Houthi missiles. The number of Houthis missiles and type of their attacks are meant more for show than for substantive damage,” Koskinas tells TRT World.

Fear of a broader escalation

Koskinas says that many regional actors do not want to see a wider war along the lines of “a force-on-force battle of attrition” in the Middle East, which has suffered under foreign occupations and civil wars for decades.

At the same time, “every tit-for-tat symbolic attack” like the one Houthis launched on Tuesday makes the chaotic Middle East’s political landscape more unpredictable, says Koskinas.

“In essence, the organizational ego and desire to push Israel’s limits, at a time when they are potentially fighting on multiple fronts, to live up to the promise of resistance against Israel and the US increases the risk of a wider conflict,” says the American military analyst.

“As a wounded Israel has shown, it will counter substantive attacks with overwhelming force. The attacks from Yemen’s Houthis have not risen to the level of substantive attacks that warrant a decisive Israeli response immediately. But give it time, Israel will not forget the missiles launched against its territory from Yemen.”

Koskinas fears that the rising death toll in the Israel-Palestine conflict might elicit high emotions among the Arab public in the Middle East, raising “the risk of miscalculation profoundly” for both sides.

While everyone now hopes that no party will “go astray” and exceed “the threshold of tit-for-tat attacks”, there is not enough international political pressure to deescalate deadly military engagement in Gaza, says Koskinas.

“It only takes one mass-casualty event, either caused by outside (pro-Iran) elements targeting Israel or by Israel in response to attacks, to change the calculus of the level of commensurate response to each engagement.”

Sami al Arian, a prominent Palestinian-American professor, says that stakes for the US are too high for letting a regional war engulf the Middle East.

On the heels of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s expected Friday statement, which can change political climate, the US wants “to restrain” a regional escalation, Arian tells TRT World.

“But it’s not clear if they are able to restrain the Israeli side. But if the Israeli side sees that they can not obliterate Hamas, fulfilling and achieving their objectives in Gaza, and if Hezbollah widens this war, I think they (Israelis) would have to face the reality and start finding a political settlement,” says Arian.

Alon Liel, the former director of the Israeli foreign ministry, shares Arian’s view with regards to the American brinkmanship in preventing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from becoming a wider war.

“The Americans are here to prevent it,” Liel argues, referring to the growing US military presence in the Middle East.

International dimensions

Experts say any sharp rise in the death toll as a result of the Israeli offensive in Gaza can potentially drag Iran, the US, Russia and even China into the fray.

Israel’s ground invasion in Gaza needs to serve both Tel Aviv’s and the US’ political interests and their regional aspirations in the Middle East simultaneously, says Abdullah Agar, a Turkish military analyst.

Israel can lose the support of its key US ally if it overshoots and decides to go its own way, he says.

Israel needs to persuade the international community of the benefits of its land offensive and at the same time keep the normalisation process with Arab countries intact, says Agar.

And this has to happen as the Israeli military faces accusations of war crime in the wake of deadly bombardments, he adds.

“As a result, this kind of planning is a very difficult task,” Agar tells TRT World. This also means that Israel might need more military support from the US and its Western allies against its regional foes, the Turkish analyst says.

“Why are they bringing THAAD to the region?” asks Agar, referring to the US President Joe Biden administration’s deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, which is particularly designed against short, medium and intermediate-range ballistic missile threats.

Russia and China will closely monitor the level of the US and European military deployment in the Middle East as the conflict proceeds.

“As various countries outside the region consider their alignment and support to their regional allies (both state and non-state actors), there is also potential for international involvement in a regional conflict. After all, Iran, Russia, and even China look for opportunities to minimise US influence in the region,” says Koskinas.

Current regional tensions can seriously affect the international balance of power, depending on how Israel assesses the level of threats coming from the axis of resistance, according to Omri Brinner, a researcher and lecturer at International Team for the Study of Security (ITSS), an Italian think-tank based in Verona.

As far as Iran and Hezbollah are concerned, they will not open a new front until the time Tehran has acquired nuclear weapons, Brinner tells TRT World.

This also means that from Israel’s point of view, it would be better to engage with Hezbollah and Iran now, before the latter becomes a nuclear power, he says. In such a scenario, a regional war also seems inevitable.

“If this scenario happens, then I assess that other Iranian allies (such as Houthis in Yemen and Shia groups in Syria) would try to distract the US forces in the region – and even beyond,” the analyst says.

“We cannot rule out a Chinese invasion of Taiwan in the midst of a Middle Eastern all-out war. No one would stand in their way, and if the Americans do, then they would most likely not fight on both the Middle Eastern and Asian fronts.”