Houthi response to the strike: Mourning, threats, and Unanswered questions

Was the US-British strike on the Houthis more of a morale message than a military strike to cripple their capabilities and limit their operations against ships crossing the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, disrupting international maritime navigation?

The Houthis officially mourned their seven dead in the past hours and maintained the pace of their threats.

However, the question is whether they were informed in advance of the strike and the locations to be targeted, so their losses of lives and equipment were not significant.

A report by the British newspaper The Economist suggests that Western warnings and leaks to the press gave Yemenis weeks to disperse and hide their weapons, many of which are small and relatively mobile. It remains unclear how much of this arsenal survived the bombing.

The report also noted that Sanaa could replenish its stock and bring in new dismantled missile systems for local reassembly, noting that anti-ship missiles can be easily dismantled.

The Houthi arsenal includes a variety of anti-ship missiles, including the 800 km-range "Bafih" missile.

Furthermore, the Houthis currently operate up to six different types of anti-ship cruise missiles and six other types of anti-ship ballistic missiles, according to a study by Fabian Heinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

While US officials mentioned that only about 20 to 30 percent of the Houthi attacking capabilities were damaged, Maged Al-Madhaji from the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies considered that the limited nature of the airstrikes aims to send a deterrent message, and what happened is a phenomenon more robust than diplomacy.

Whether the Houthis were informed in advance of the strike by the Americans or anticipated it due to the threats they received, the result is the same: a soft, non-painful strike that will not deter them from launching new attacks.