It is easy to make something grand out of Israel’s strikes on the Houthis’ militia leadership in Sanaa. After all, a position such as “prime minister” might sound like the pinnacle of power, and the deaths of a dozen cabinet members could appear to be a devastating decapitation. However, the so-called Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi and his cabinet—Houthi appointees behind a government façade—made their presence felt in the public arena, shaking hands with loyalists and negotiating with international agencies. They were the softer face of a group so suspicious of outsiders and obsessed with control that genuine power remained locked within a narrow inner circle of family and allies.
Still, their deaths, even if not consequential for regional stability, have sparked something in the imagination of Yemenis who had resigned themselves to wrestling with this militia indefinitely. What the strikes revealed was as telling as what they destroyed: a movement built to absorb visible losses while protecting its true centers of power.
The most obvious loss was Rahawi himself, a man chosen as prime minister in August 2024 not for his political weight but for his utility as a symbol. A southerner in a movement rooted in the northern highlands, his presence was meant to project inclusivity in a government otherwise monopolized by northern, sectarian elites. His real role was to provide a veneer of national unity, not to wield authority.
Alongside him fell ministers of foreign affairs, justice and human rights, culture, agriculture, information, and others—a sweep of the cabinet that gave the Houthis the outward trappings of governance. The strikes also killed or injured deputies in the interior and defense portfolios, exposing the vulnerability of men who often moved more freely because they were never part of the Houthis’ innermost circle. These were all figures who had chosen to lend their credentials to a militia’s drive for legitimacy, becoming complicit in a system of domination that has brutalized Yemen and Yemenis.
The deeper loss, however, is psychological. For years, the Houthis have relied on the perception that they are untouchable, able to absorb strikes and emerge stronger. But the sight of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi delivering a televised speech even as his ministers were being killed punctured that mythology of invulnerability. The timing raises uncomfortable questions for the Houthis about how deeply Israeli intelligence has penetrated the organization, questions that extend far beyond this single operation.
Yet, despite the success of the operation, the strikes did not decapitate the movement. Houthi himself remains at the helm. The chief of the general staff, Major General Muhammad Abd al-Karim al-Ghamari—who manages the day-to-day war effort—is still alive. The Houthis’ security and intelligence services continue to function, as does their military command structure.
This survival is by design. The Houthis have built a system in which top titles can be filled by expendable figures. Prime ministers, ministers, and spokespeople are meant to be visible—and replaceable. Even the ministers they appointed were watched by informants loyal to the Houthis’ Zaydi sectarian core, creating layers of surveillance within their own government. Most of the cabinet had been in place for nearly a year, but their deaths do not paralyze the movement; they are absorbed into the narrative of martyrdom.
This culture of expendability allows the group to lose members without losing power, to parade governance without practicing it, and to sacrifice increasingly expensive props while shielding the true centers of command. After all, the entire movement is named after former leader Hussein al-Houthi, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s brother, who perished in 2004 before witnessing the group’s rise.
Where the strikes had their greatest impact was not in command continuity but in exposing the group’s fragility. The Houthis confirmed Rahawi’s death only on Saturday, two days after the Israeli airstrike that killed him. In the hours that followed the strikes, the Houthis enforced a strict information blackout and launched a disinformation campaign, working to suppress any mention of casualties. But as condolences were exchanged across social media, the news could not be contained.
The irony is particularly sharp: Just three days before his death, Rahawi had declared the regime “purged of traitors,” boasting of vigilance and cohesion. The arbitrary detentions that followed, including those of U.N. staff in Sanaa, were another sign of insecurity. The Houthis’ paranoia has deep institutional roots—they operate hundreds of illegal detention facilities holding thousands of political prisoners.
Even traditional critics of Israeli strikes remained conspicuously silent. Yemen’s U.N.-backed government and the Arab League issued no condemnations, a notable departure from their usual responses to Israeli operations in the region. Meanwhile, Yemen’s government used the moment to pointedly remind the world that the Houthis themselves had attempted to murder government cabinet members in an airstrike on Aden Airport in 2020 that killed at least 20 people, including a deputy minister of public works, and injured more than 100 people. The silence suggests tacit acceptance or even something beyond it—a recognition that if Israel can finish what others cannot, it would solve a regional problem. In the end, the only condemnations came from Iran and Hezbollah.
Houthi loyalists are openly blaming security officials for negligence and calling for purges in intelligence ranks. Yemenis under Houthi control are voicing grim satisfaction that their once untouchable jailers have finally fallen. The satisfaction some Yemenis expressed at seeing their oppressors struck reveals the gap between the Houthis’ Palestinian-focused propaganda and the reality of their domestic unpopularity.
For Israel, the strikes marked a shift from its previous focus on Houthi infrastructure and economic assets to directly targeting the group’s political leadership. This escalation in targeting methodology sends a clear message: Israel is prepared to move up the ladder of consequences, making the personal costs for Houthi decision-makers increasingly direct.
For Yemenis under Houthi control, however, it showed that the group’s grip rests less on strength than on the absence of challenge. After years of watching the Houthis manipulate the international community with impunity—escalating in the Red Sea, attacking Israel, surviving wars with Saudi Arabia that ended in effective appeasement—many Yemenis had concluded that their jailers possessed carte blanche. The strikes offered a glimpse at the limits of the seemingly unshakable.
Looking forward, the Houthis are unlikely to be strategically derailed. They will replace their fallen ministers with new placeholders, stage larger rallies, and issue louder threats. They will double down on deterrence by escalating attacks on Israel and in the Red Sea, seeking to prove that their capacity to strike remains intact. But the intelligence breach that enabled these strikes should worry not only the Houthis but the broader so-called Axis of Resistance: If Israeli intelligence can reach into Sanaa, it suggests vulnerabilities across the entire proxy network.
What emerges from this breach is a shifting calculus. While the Houthis witnessed Israeli intelligence capabilities with the pager attacks on Hezbollah, experiencing direct penetration of their own leadership circles forces a different reckoning. The Houthis had perhaps assumed their geographic isolation and operational security made them less vulnerable than their Lebanese counterparts. Last week’s strikes shattered that assumption, making their leadership more paranoid, more insular, and more repressive toward their own population and international organizations.
Inside Yemen, this means more arbitrary arrests, more propaganda, and a tightening of the culture of fear. For Israel, it means that deterrence can be achieved not only through intercepting missiles but by undermining the Houthis’ mythology of invulnerability. And for Iran, watching its most resilient proxy lose its aura of invulnerability, this suggests the proxy network model faces systemic vulnerabilities, not just tactical setbacks.
The bad news for both Yemen and Israel is that the Houthi system remains intact. There is no leadership vacuum, nor is there a crisis of succession. The good news is that the strikes cracked the veneer of control and the confidence that no one could touch the Houthis.
This is the next phase in Yemen’s war: not the fall of the Houthis but the erosion of their myths. What dies are the faces; what survives is the machinery of repression that keeps Yemen hostage. How long that machinery can continue to command belief is now the question.