The Houthis group in the political scene of the Middle East

Abstract

The Houthis have taken over the world’s news following the repercussions of the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023. Who are the Houthis? What is their role within the ‘Axis of Resistance’ in the Middle East? Do their actions respond to their own interests or those of other powers? In order to understand how and why this militia assumes prominence in the political scene of the Middle East, this article was written. Thus, it starts from the origin of the group and the main moments that represented an opportunity for the group to rise at a domestic level, in Yemen, to consider how its actions reached regional and international dimensions that are not irrelevant. To structure the text, a series of reports from different national and international media outlets were selected and within the aim of proposing a reflection on the main theories of international relations, it were related to the group’s actions, classic theories of the International Security discipline such as Clausewitz’s aspects of his ‘theory of war’ and Mahan’s theory of the importance of the maritime power. These theories bring an academic contribution regarding the group’s performance in the Middle East. The descriptive methodology therefore used secondary and doctrinal data for its preparation.