{"id":652617,"date":"2026-10-12T17:04:17","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T17:04:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/652617\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T17:04:17","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T17:04:17","slug":"theyre-not-just-guys-in-flip-flops-houthis-show-military-reach-with-deadly-missile-strikes-on-riyadh-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/652617\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They\u2019re not just guys in flip-flops\u2019: Houthis show military reach with deadly missile strikes on Riyadh \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lethal missile strikes on Riyadh\u2019s international airport<\/a> over the past week have demonstrated the growing military power of Yemen\u2019s<\/a> Houthi rebels, who have evolved from an insurgency into one of the Middle East\u2019s<\/a> most formidable non-state armed forces.<\/p>\n

The latest attack on Saturday, the third on the airport in a week, killed 12 people and wounded more than 300, part of a tit-for-tat military escalation by the Houthis against the beleaguered Saudis, who support Yemen\u2019s internationally recognised government.<\/p>\n

The Houthis have also targeted Saudi oil infrastructure and seized more territory along Yemen\u2019s Red Sea coast in recent weeks, including the port of Mocha, and secured control over the entrance to the Red Sea by taking Perim Island in the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait \u2014 although the Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have now launched a counteroffensive.<\/p>\n

The Houthis announced a blockade on Saudi ports in July and have repeatedly targeted Saudi ships attempting to sail through Bab al-Mandeb, strangling Saudi oil exports.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone continues to underestimate the Houthis\u2019 military power,\u201d said Farea al-Muslimi, a Yemen expert at London\u2019s Chatham House think-tank, adding that Houthis were routinely dismissed as little more than \u201cguys in flip-flops\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cSuddenly these guys in flip-flops can double or triple your winter heating bills.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re not just guys in flip-flops, they\u2019re actually geeks,\u201d he said, and they had spent a decade building military capabilities with Iranian assistance and producing their own weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were importing weapons from Africa a decade ago, and now they are manufacturing and supplying weapons to the people they used to buy from.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having mostly sat on the sidelines after the US and Israel launched their war against Iran in February, the Iran-backed Shia movement entered the Gulf conflict in earnest in the late summer, after Saudi forces struck Sana\u2019a airport as a Houthi delegation was travelling to Iran for the funeral of the country\u2019s assassinated supreme leader.<\/p>\n

The attack broke a truce between Riyadh and the Houthis that had largely held since 2022, and plunged the two sides back into war that culminated with the Houthis\u2019 seizure of Mocha last month.<\/p>\n

Yet analysts say the Houthis\u2019 success reflects not only their increasingly sophisticated weapons but their superior organisation and the weakness of Yemen\u2019s Saudi-backed internationally recognised government.<\/p>\n

The Houthi group\u2019s military foundations were laid when it captured Sana\u2019a in September 2014, inheriting much of the Yemeni army\u2019s arsenal, including the Republican Guard\u2019s ballistic missiles and the navy\u2019s anti-ship weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t start from scratch, they had a foundation,\u201d said Mohammed al-Basha, head of the Basha Report, a specialist security consultancy in Washington. The Houthis also acquired experienced officers, missile technicians and military units, which they subsequently reorganised into a more consolidated force.<\/p>\n

Iran\u2019s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Lebanon\u2019s Hizbollah provided training and technical expertise, while a generation of Houthi specialists subsequently travelled to Iran to improve their capabilities, particularly in anti-ship missiles and drone boats, which have been used against shipping in the Red Sea.<\/p>\n

Al-Basha said the Houthis could now manufacture their signature Samad attack drones largely independently, using locally produced fibreglass and commercially sourced components, many imported from China.<\/p>\n

More sophisticated ballistic and cruise missiles, however, remained heavily dependent on Iranian components and technology, he said.<\/p>\n

Extensive air strikes by the US, UK and Israel have largely failed to degrade the Houthis\u2019 missile capabilities. <\/p>\n

While the Houthis depend largely on Iran for their missile knowhow, they have apparently also begun to rely on AI. According to a security report published by Anthropic, users in Houthi-controlled northern Yemen tried to exploit its Claude AI model to develop and refine sophisticated missile systems.<\/p>\n

Their growing sophistication was demonstrated by the fall of the Red Sea port of Mocha, the gateway to the Bab al-Mandeb Strait from the Yemeni side, where forces loyal to Tariq Saleh, a member of Yemen\u2019s Presidential Leadership Council and nephew of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, collapsed within days.<\/p>\n

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lethal missile strikes on Riyadh\u2019s international airport over the past week have demonstrated the growing military power of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":652618,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[171471,171472,21659,171473,171474,37784,29161,70061,10179,36601,11223,26444,11226,171475,6630,23302,229,8954,171476,14833,171477,16906,106019,4530,171478,4644,171479,66153,6503,38472,9447,46131,8569,61435,3355,42,171480,77542,14832,82815,171481,2091,171482,5907,17536,171483,171484,43,38256,70637,19784,171485,3185,57364,47139,171486,6509,23553,16620,3589,9333,171487,713,23292,30220,171488,40,38,41,39,19681,3186,14825,90,812,171489,171490,171491,5906,16878,48475],"class_list":["post-652617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-171471","tag-171472","tag-21659","tag-171473","tag-47th","tag-a","tag-after","tag-also","tag-american","tag-are","tag-as","tag-at","tag-been","tag-businessperson","tag-c","tag-candidate","tag-chinese","tag-college","tag-contested","tag-democratic","tag-depicting","tag-display","tag-dolls","tag-donald","tag-elected","tag-elections","tag-electoral","tag-federation","tag-female","tag-following","tag-former","tag-gift","tag-harris","tag-has","tag-having","tag-headlines","tag-j","tag-jinping","tag-kamala","tag-known","tag-l","tag-male","tag-matryoshka","tag-more","tag-moscow","tag-necessary","tag-nesting","tag-news","tag-nov","tag-november","tag-personality","tag-politician","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-putin","tag-r","tag-race","tag-reactions","tag-republican","tag-russia","tag-russian","tag-secured","tag-shop","tag-states","tag-than","tag-tightly","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-traditional","tag-trump","tag-united","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-vice","tag-vladimir","tag-votes","tag-with","tag-wooden","tag-xi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=652617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/652617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/652618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=652617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=652617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=652617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}