The Yemeni Islamist, pan-Arab nationalist, anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist movement effectively closed down the Red Sea to the merchant fleets of Israel and its allies in late 2023 in solidarity with Gazans, with their campaign of ship seizures, missile and drone attacks causing a two-thirds drop in tonnage passing through the strategic waterway.

According to The Iran Project, Yemen’s Houthi militia have effectively “defeated the US military,” humbling America into recognizing that it “cannot be an omnipotent force, fighting every battle around the globe,” one of the UK’s top circulation daily newspapers has suggested.

In a piece for The Telegraph on Wednesday, opinion contributor Daniel Depetris pointed out that America’s immense economic and military might “doesn’t necessarily equate to unlimited influence,” and that “the architects of US foreign policy all too often assume the US is all powerful, that it can will events out of whole cloth and coerce friends and adversaries alike to adopt their policies to Washington’s likings.”