After protracted fighting, the Houthis, a heavily armed Shiite clan cum political movement with close ties to Iran, have seized control of the Yemenite capital and government institutions. Even as, elsewhere in the country, al-Qaeda remains very much alive, the Houthi takeover could have far-reaching regional consequences. Jacques Neriah writes:

The Yemeni conflict has an important strategic dimension. While over the last few years international attention has been drawn to the Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, public discourse has not been focused on the Bab al Mandeb Strait at Yemen’s southern tip, which serves as the outlet of the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. Iran has been positioning itself to build up its presence in the Red Sea region for many years. A Houthi-controlled Yemen could evolve into a full-scale Iranian stronghold in the future and threaten the freedom of movement within vital sea routes between Europe and the Far East.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].