Following the re-imposition of total siege conditions on Gaza by the Israeli military in March 2025, the supreme people’s council of Yemen has announced that it will, in turn, be re-imposing its own blockade on passage of Israeli shipping through the Red Sea.
Regular readers will no doubt be aware by now of the consistently patriotic and heroic stances taken by the Yemeni government, led by the popular Ansarullah resistance movement, which swept to power in a revolution at the end of 2014 that brought an end to decades of pro-western dictatorial rule.
Decried as an “illegitimate coup” by the imperialist media, it was the exact reverse of what had occurred in Ukraine that same year, where an imperialist-sponsored fascist coup that brought a pro-western junta to power was lauded universally across imperialist news media as a “revolution of dignity”. As the song goes: The revolution will not be televised – at least not on mainstream corporate media.
Plucky Yemen takes on the combined navies of the west
The initial blockade imposed by the Yemeni navy during the first phase of the Gaza genocide shocked the world with its effectiveness, its capabilities – and its sheer tenacity. Despite being totally isolated from the world economy for years under a heavily-sanctioned government recognised only by Iran, the Yemenis nevertheless managed to build up a naval and military capacity capable of imposing a blockade on all Israeli-linked shipping, and then successfully resisting all US and British imperialist-led attempts to break this blockade with military force.
In addition to the support of the masses, the Yemenis have geography on their side. The Bab al-Mandab strait is only 16 miles wide at its narrowest point, creating a pinch point between Yemen and the small African nation of Djibouti. And through this narrow gap all shipping between the Mediterranean Sea and the Indian Ocean via the Suez Canal and the Red Sea must pass.
Despite a concerted campaign by corporate media and western politicians to present the Yemenis as mindless pirates, their demand was very clear and succinct: Let food and humanitarian aid into Gaza, and we’ll let Israeli ships through. A perfectly reasonable demand, one might think. Of course, there is human logic, and then there is the logic of imperialism, which cannot tolerate such defiance to its system of global control.
Yemen becomes a hero nation in the eyes of the world
At a time when the vast majority of governments and international bodies, including muslim-led ones, are doing nothing whatsoever to stop the Gaza holocaust, the gall of the Yemenis in so fearlessly taking such a dramatic action against imperialist-zionist interests has captured hearts and minds globally. Prior to 7 October 2023, very few workers around the world had paid any attention to Ansarullah beyond a small handful in antiwar and anti-imperialist circles; nowadays, the Houthis have become almost a household name, having bankrupted the Israeli port of Eilat and caused huge embarrassment to both US and British imperialism.
At pro-Palestinian rallies in western capitals it is now quite common to see Yemeni flags flown amid chants of “Yemen, Yemen makes us proud! Turn another ship around!” Notably, these protestors say ‘Yemen’ and not ‘Houthis’, implying that they recognise the Ansarullah-led government as the legitimate representative of Yemen; another blow to the credibility of imperialist-aligned media outlets, which invariably present the Yemeni government as “Iran-backed rebels” and a Saudi-based cabinet of powerless stooges (a la Juan Guaidó of Venezuelan notoriety) as the so-called “internationally recognised government”.
Particularly in the muslim world, the masses have no doubt been shocked and elated to see such revolutionary action from a movement that their Gulf-aligned media has been hysterically demonising for the past ten years with the basest of sectarian propaganda. Al-Jazeera infamously ran a completely false story some years back claiming that the ‘Houthis’ were trying to bomb the Ka’ba in Mecca, the holiest site in Islam, which led to much sectarian rage outpouring from the more trusting of the faithful.
Notably, the myriad so-called ‘jihadist’ salafi-wahhabi groups in the region, usually screaming endlessly about the influence of the western ‘infidels’ (whilst taking absolutely no meaningful action), are silent. This is not really surprising when we understand that most of these groups (al-Qaeda, Isis, etc) are imperialist creations whose purpose is to dupe muslims with their seemingly radical ‘anti-western’ rhetoric whilst in practice invariably herding them into actions against the really anti-imperialist Axis of Resistance (described by the wahabbists as “shia infidels”).
The blockade was finally lifted by the Yemenis after Israel had begun to implement a ceasefire and the loosening of the starvation-level siege on Gaza at the start of 2025. Now that the shaky Gaza ceasefire has effectively collapsed, however, and the zionists have returned to genocide mode, the Yemeni blockade has snapped back into place. Having exhausted all other options, the US regime led by Donald Trump has not been slow to respond by openly sending in the US military to try to bomb the country into submission.
Of course, this will not work. Indeed, even the US imperialists probably understand on some level that sending their bombers to rain death and destruction will not bring Yemen any closer to submission; if anything, it will likely have negative repercussions by openly exposing the USA as the driver behind the wars in the region and removing any room for plausible deniability.
Rather, the latest bombing campaign is an expression of the imperialists’ impotent rage: what else can they do when they have tried everything for more than a decade and signally failed to achieve their goal of cowing the people and controlling their government?
Advance of the Yemeni revolution
The Yemenis have come a long way since Sayyid Hussain Badreddine al-Houthi – the founder of Ansarullah murdered by US-backed government troops under the pro-US regime in 2004 – was giving religious guidance and recruiting youths in the remote northwestern backwaters of Sa’ada in the early 2000s.
Over the past two decades, Ansarullah has created an incredibly strong and cohesive social base, largely free of collaborationists and traitors to an extent that would make even their fellow resistance allies in Iran and Lebanon envious. The imperialists have quite simply been unable to use their moles, NGOs and ‘soft power’ tactics against the ever-vigilant Yemenis.
Unlike other Axis of Resistance countries, the Ansarullah-controlled part of Yemen has been largely sealed off to outsiders and has a fairly homogenous make-up, much like the DPRK, adding to the difficulties of smuggling in western spies and trying to use the usual divide and rule tactics – such as have been employed to such devastating effect against Syria, to give the most recent example.
Using al-Qaeda/Isis terrorists as proxies to destabilise the country has failed. So too did the massive Saudi-fronted bombing campaign, despite causing a death toll from famine and disease between 2015-18 that was comparable to the current Gaza holocaust. Despite the immense human suffering, despite the loss of infrastructure and industry, and despite the most barbaric economic sanctions, Ansarullah emerged stronger than ever from that war.
Sanctioning the country today has become a meaningless gesture, since Yemen has already endured its isolation from all international bodies and financial institutions for the past decade and has found new ways to begin the process of revitalising its industry and agriculture.
Arms development a key to Yemeni sovereignty
A measure of the Yemenis’ success can be seen in their present-day armament capabilities. While the west is keen to either ignore or dismiss Yemen’s missile and drone successes, and to assert that the country is entirely reliant on technological imports from Iran, the truth is far removed from this.
Over the last decade and more of ongoing warfare against western planes and ships, the Yemenis have developed the ability not only to use drones to down imperialist planes and drones and sink imperialist ships, but also to steadily refine these capabilities, reverse-engineering captured vehicles and constantly iterating the design of their own domestically produced weapons.
It is this local innovation that allows Yemen to constantly adapt its drones to real combat conditions. American drones, on the other hand, are reliant on complex, expensive and totally unresponsive supply chains in which new technologies can take years, sometimes decades, to make it into active service, and even the smallest of modifications is a major project.
Today, Yemen is leading the way in the production of highly effective air and sea-based drones, and its hypersonic missile capabilities allow it to strike US naval carriers in the Red Sea, ships far out in the Indian Ocean and buildings in the centre of Tel Aviv 1,500 miles away. As yet, the imperialists have no way of intercepting these missiles and find them difficult even to detect until it is too late to respond. As a result, citizens in the Israeli capital have been regularly forced to flee into their bunkers, while the USS Harry Truman and other aircraft carriers have repeatedly been forced to flee the area after direct hits or near misses.
It should be recalled that the Saudi-led war against the Ansarullah government was essentially brought to an end because the Yemenis repeatedly demonstrated their ability to target oil facilities deep inside Saudi territory.
There is nothing left for imperialism to do other than send in its own troops to try to deal with the problem “the old-fashioned way”. We are sure that if they are fool enough to do so, they will be given short shrift.
Long live international solidarity!
Victory to the Yemeni and Palestinian people
in their just struggle for sovereignty and liberation!
