The Only Thing the Houthis Have Done Successfully

Yesterday in Riyadh, a missile fired by Yemen’s Houthis struck King Khalid International Airport, killed 13 people, and wounded hundreds more.

Attacks in the previous week had killed four others.

Because Saudi Arabia has been trying for years to shed its reputation for austerity and discomfort, a sterile, boring airport with overpriced pastries and harsh lighting is a national accomplishment.

The strike turned that airport into chaos, its floors streaked with blood and lounges billowing with smoke.

The Houthi military spokesman announced that the attacks would continue on a reciprocal basis—“airport for airport, siege for siege, and escalation for escalation”—until the Houthis achieve their stated goals: the “death” of America, Israel, and their allies, and an apocalyptic victory for Islam.

Escalation, in other words, is assured.

The Houthis hit the Riyadh airport again today.

Saudi Arabia’s ongoing self-transformation during the past decade has involved trading cosmic goals—the spread of Sunni Islam over the world—for more modest local ones, such as opening specialty coffee shops in Jeddah and hosting pro-wrestling contests in Riyadh. (The two most prominent international events in the coming weeks in Saudi Arabia are an investment conference and World Wrestling Entertainment’s “Crown Jewel.”) One can imagine the frustration that Saudis feel, just as they try to exit the game of global religious domination, to be pulled back in by a neighbor far more zealous than they ever were.

The Houthis “are on a divine mission,” Nadwa Al-Dawsari, an independent Yemeni researcher, told me last year.

That mission, she said, is to “keep the war going, at least until Jerusalem.” Negotiation, for them, consists of tactical delay, so they can resume the fight and fight harder.

“Why would they want a deal when they can get everything?” Earlier this week the Houthis’ leader, Abd al-Malik al-Houthi, delivered a typically long-winded denunciation of the Saudis.

He devoted the bulk of it to condemning the Saudis for doing exactly what the Houthis have just done openly: targeting civilians.

This decade-long conflict has indeed been characterized by a lengthy series of atrocities.

Abd al-Malik listed alleged Saudi attacks against weddings, funerals, and homes—the total death toll far exceeding the missiles in Riyadh—and concluded that the Saudis were not Muslims at all but “Zionists” who follow “Satan.” He mentioned an attack on a market in Taiz, and said “there is absolutely no justification for targeting such a place,” because “it was a market, not a military camp.” Riyadh’s airport is also a civilian target, but I suppose because the Houthis think they are fighting Satan, they are willing to excuse their own hypocrisy.