Yemen’s Ansar Allah militia (better known as the Houthis) have reportedly established an office in Baghdad, Iraq, with the apparent push to cement their growing regional clout coming amid their continuing guerilla blockade campaign in the Red Sea against Israel and its allies.
The new office is situated in Baghdad’s Al-Jadriya district, about 2 km from the heavily fortified Green Zone, which includes the US Embassy compound and other foreign embassies, across the 14th of July Bridge on the other side of the Tigris River.
A Houthi delegation led by Al-Sharafi visited the headquarters of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces last Friday, with the Yemeni militia leader characterizing the Yemeni and Iraqi militias as an “inseparable unit.” Over the weekend, Al-Sharafi visited with tribesmen in Samawah and other southern Iraqi provinces.
The Houthis have been interfacing with Iraqi officials since at least 2016, although official Baghdad has expressed a desire to avoid being drawn directly into any conflict with the US or Israel.
An adviser to Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani told local media on Monday that the new Houthi office was “not” a formal “office or representation as it is being promoted, but a headquarters for movement members who previously stayed in one of the hotels in Baghdad.”
“Iraq is keen that the group does not have any activities hostile to any country from Iraqi territory,” the anonymous official stressed.
The Houthis, an Iraqi militia coalition calling itself the Islamic Resistance, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah have spent months targeting the interests of Israel and its allies across the region, with the Yemeni campaign focused on trying to block Israeli and Israeli-linked commercial ships from traversing the Red, Arabian and eastern Mediterranean Seas.
A US-led effort to crack down on the Houthis via a bombing campaign inside Yemen and patrols in the Red Sea has not been met with any measurable degree of success so far, with Ansar Allah vowing to continue and ramp up its attacks, and the Pentagon spending hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of ammunition to destroy mostly low-cost Houthi drones and missiles.
The US’s inability to bring the Houthis to heel has led to considerable demoralization among America’s allies, with one British publication lamenting back in May that the militia had effectively “defeated the US military,” humbling Washington into recognizing that it “cannot be an omnipotent force, fighting every battle around the globe.”