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2025-08-30 Arabia
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Israel's First Successful Strike Leaves Houthis with Difficult Choice
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Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.
by Leonid Tsukanov
[REGNUM] Israel continues to increase the intensity of its strikes on Yemen: on August 28, the capital Sanaa was subjected to a fire raid, where a meeting of high-ranking Yemeni resistance leaders was allegedly taking place.
Officially, the Israeli operation was a response to the Houthis' bravado and their statements about the launch of serial production of the Palestine-2 ballistic missile with a multiple warhead (under the guise of which, according to experts, is hiding the advanced Iranian Khorramshahr missile).
This created a new level of security threat for Israel, which the IDF was quick to mitigate.
However, in reality, the significance of the operation is much higher.
The strike on Sanaa was de facto the first successful IDF air force operation in Yemen since 2023 and left the Houthis with a difficult choice: either weaken their internal support by “tightening the screws,” or continue to act as before, hoping that the Israelis were “just lucky.”
"A DROP OF LUCK"
The military operation, dubbed “A Drop of Fortune” by Defense Minister Israel Katz, began with a false approach by Israeli aircraft to the southern districts of the Yemeni capital, where there is not a single facility that could be considered a potential military infrastructure for Ansar Allah.
However, eyewitnesses report that after several strikes "on empty lots," the planes abruptly changed course and bombed the Hadda area south of Sana'a. The target of the strike was an "inconspicuous building," which was completely destroyed; clearing the rubble continued for several hours.
The Israeli General Staff did not make a secret of the event and stated that the target of the strike was a "secret meeting of the Houthi leadership." The high-ranking rebels allegedly watched a televised speech by the movement's leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, during the raid and did not expect to become the target of the strike themselves.
Thus, among the potential targets eliminated are the Minister of Defense of Ansar Allah, Mohammed al-Atifi, and the Chief of the General Staff, Mohammed al-Ghamari. Both high-ranking officers, in one way or another, oversaw the national missile program and were involved in identifying targets for the retaliatory operation against Israel.
In addition, during the airstrike, the Prime Minister of the “Government of Change and Creation” (a collective body created by the Houthis to interact with other countries), Ahmed Ghaleb al-Rahawi, was “highly likely” killed. The latter allegedly organized the fatal meeting.
It was also reported that along with the Houthis, several "guests" - Iranian (and, according to some sources, Palestinian) functionaries who had arrived in Sana'a to exchange relevant experience - were also injured in the IDF air strike. However, this remained at the level of rumors, which even representatives of the Israeli General Staff questioned.
| Still, how very interesting. |
Defense Minister Katz explicitly called the operation “the death of the firstborn,” thus making a reference to the biblical story and hinting at the imminent expansion of strike operations if the Houthis do not lay down their arms.
| In the story of the Ten Plagues, the death of the firstborn was the final blow that persuaded Pharaoh to let the Jewish slaves go. |
LOSS ANALYSIS
Despite the fact that the leadership of the Yemeni movement denies Israel's claims about the death of high-ranking officials, calling the incident "another series of strikes on civilian targets," there are a number of indirect signs indicating the effectiveness of the Israeli operation.
The first is a rapid change in the tone of local press publications.
Thus, already in the first hour after the Israeli strikes on Sanaa, local publications came out with articles about “swift retribution” for the deaths of resistance activists and especially the “peace minister” (as Houthi journalists sometimes called al-Rahawi for his contribution to the inter-Yemeni settlement).
However, after some time they re-released the same articles with edited headlines and without any mention of the names and regalia of those injured in the attack; the emphasis in the new versions of the texts was placed exclusively on the damage to the civilian population of Yemen from the airstrike.
Secondly, in the Arabic-language segment of the Internet, a couple of hours after the Israeli strike, several obituaries of young soldiers killed during the "aggression against civilians in Sana'a" appeared in the channels of pro-Houthi bloggers. Judging by their insignia, they could have served as adjutants to the dead Houthi commanders.
Finally, the Government of Change and Creation has cancelled all public and work events involving al-Rahawi for the next few weeks, indicating that even if the Houthi prime minister was not killed, he was at least seriously injured.
THE HUNT FOR ABDUL-MALIK
Meanwhile, for the top leadership of Ansar Allah, it is much more important to understand what factors helped the Israelis achieve their results.
So far, the Houthis have only paid attention to the fact that enemy aircraft have entered Yemen for the second time from the land side (and not from the sea, as the Israeli General Staff claims), through the airspace of Saudi Arabia - which, in the understanding of the Ansar Allah leadership, looks like a pretext for resuming shelling of the Saudi border area.
In Riyadh, they are not commenting on the accusation and are generally trying to ignore the beginning destabilization of Yemen.
| The Saudis can’t be unhappy about it. Weren’t the Houthis shooting missiles at them a while ago? |
The question of how exactly the Israelis were able to get so close to the Houthi leadership also remains open.
Katz and his associates at the General Staff claim that they have located senior Ansar Allah figures without the help of agents “on the ground” – relying solely on artificial intelligence and other advanced intelligence technologies – but this thesis is questionable.
| To be fair, the Israelis are really good at advanced intelligence technologies… |
Especially considering that Mossad and other Israeli intelligence agencies have tried to “enter” Yemen several times already, but failed. Locals consider such “false modesty” a sign of ongoing disinformation and an attempt to lull the vigilance of the Ansar Allah leadership.
| There are 435,000 Yemenite Jews in Israel (and another 80,000 in America). In theory at least one ought to have a talent for spy craft in his ancestral homeland… |
One should expect a serious increase in counterintelligence work by the Houthis, in particular, the search for “Tel Aviv agents” among the local Arab population.
For now, the main suspicions fall on the local intelligentsia, which traditionally maintains close ties with the Saudis and Emiratis, although the Houthi leadership is trying its best to avoid unnecessary repression and destabilization of society.
| Eh? Since when do militant religious fanatics have any interest in avoiding repression while enforcing a totalitarian regime? Isn’t repression the entire point of the exercise? |
It is tempting to write off Tel Aviv's success as "random luck" and close the matter.
| If it can be tempting to be stupid, I suppose. |
On the other hand, Ansar Allah understands that Israel’s military action against Yemen is far from the last.
| Defeating the enemy in war is a process, I’ve heard. |
The experience of other pro-Iranian forces has clearly shown that Tel Aviv will not rest until it reaches its leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. This means that each subsequent raid could be his last. And with this formulation of the issue, the possible discontent of certain layers of society no longer seems like a big problem.
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Posted by badanov 2025-08-30 00:00||
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