Iran's policy towards the Houthis in Yemen: a limited return on a modest investment

For years, mounting instability had led many to predict the imminent collapse of Yemen. These forecasts became reality in 2014 as the country spiralled into civil war. The conflict pits an alliance of the Houthis, a northern socio‐political movement that had been fighting the central government since 2004, alongside troops loyal to a former president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, against supporters and allies of the government overthrown by the Houthis in early 2015. The war became regionalized in March 2015 when a Saudi Arabia‐led coalition of ten mostly Arab states launched a campaign of air strikes against the Houthis. According to Saudi Arabia, the Houthis are an Iranian proxy; they therefore frame the war as an effort to counter Iranian influence. This article will argue, however, that the Houthis are not Iranian proxies; Tehran's influence in Yemen is marginal. Iran's support for the Houthis has increased in recent years, but it remains low and is far from enough to significantly impact the balance of internal forces in Yemen. Looking ahead, it is unlikely that Iran will emerge as an important player in Yemeni affairs. Iran's interests in Yemen are limited, while the constraints on its ability to project power in the country are unlikely to be lifted. Tehran saw with the rise of the Houthis a low cost opportunity to gain some leverage in Yemen. It is unwilling, however, to invest larger amounts of resources. There is, as a result, only limited potential for Iran to further penetrate Yemen.     

Nationalism and the Internet*

ABSTRACT. The territorial integrity of nations is often taken as the premise for a functioning, unifying national identity. Yet, the economic and technological developments of recent decades have made it necessary to question this assumption. It can no longer be taken for granted that the people who identify with a given nation inhabit the same space, nor can it be assumed that cultural homogenisation takes place at the level of the nation through mass media. When the Internet appeared, many social scientists and commentators predicted that it would threaten the cultural integrity of nations; that the non‐territorial character of the Internet would lead to fragmentation and unprecedented cultural differentiation, making it difficult, eventually impossible, to uphold a collective sense of national identity based on shared images, representations, myths and so on. Although it is too early to draw any conclusions regarding the long‐term effects of the Internet, experiences so far suggest that such predictions were mistaken. In fact, nations thrive in cyberspace, and the Internet has in the space of only a few years become a key technology for keeping nations (and other abstract communities) together. Nations which have lost their territory (such as Afrikaner‐led South Africa), nations which are for political reasons dispersed (such as Tamil Sri Lanka or Kurdistan), nations with large temporary overseas diasporas (such as Scandinavian countries, with their large communities in Spain during winter), or nations where many citizens work abroad temporarily or permanently (such as India or Caribbean island‐states), appear in many sites on the Internet – from online newspapers and magazines to semi‐official information sites and ‘virtual community’ homepages. In a ‘global era’ of movement and deterritorialisation, the Internet is used to strengthen, rather than weaken, national identities.