Middle East & Africa | Strikes in the Red Sea

The Houthis have survived worse than America’s and Britain’s strikes

The Iran-backed group has been hardened by its long war with Saudi Arabia 

Houthi loyalists take part in an armed parade in Amran, Yemen
Photograph: Getty Images
|DUBAI

THE HOUTHIS have an ambitious slogan: it includes “death to America, death to Israel”. For decades, that was aspirational. The group was largely limited to fighting its fellow Yemenis and its neighbours on the Arabian peninsula. Yet since October, what was once a scrappy insurgency in desolate northern Yemen has managed to put itself in conflict with both the Middle East’s strongest power and the world’s superpower.

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