胡塞武装向利雅得发射导弹不仅仅是伊朗的代理人 — — 他们是延续了1000年扎伊德伊玛目教派的继承人，该教派在现代也门国家于1962年建立之前，断断续续统治着也门北部。扎伊德教派认为权力应属于先知的后裔，而非选举产生的官员。在一段解释视频中，RUSI研究员巴拉阿·希班（Baraa Shiban） — — 他曾参与也门全国对话，后因批评该组织的滥用行为而被流放 — — 描述了在1995年访问伊朗后，该组织创始人侯赛因·胡塞（Hussein al-Houthi）如何将什叶派扎伊德分支与德黑兰的革命学说融合，并以真主党为蓝图建立了一支民兵组织。该组织在其创始人遇害十年后的2014年夺取了萨那。
The Houthis firing missiles at Riyadh are not just Iranian proxies — they’re heirs to a 1,000-year-old Zaydi imamate that ruled northern Yemen on and off until the modern state was established in 1962. Zaydism holds that power belongs to the Prophet’s descendants, not elected officials. In an explainer video, Baraa Shiban, a RUSI fellow who sat on Yemen’s National Dialogue before being exiled for criticizing the group’s abuses, describes how, after a 1995 trip to Iran, the group’s founder, Hussein al-Houthi, fused the Zaydi branch of Shia Islam with Tehran’s revolutionary doctrine and built a militia in Hezbollah’s image. The group seized Sanaa in 2014, a decade after its founder was killed.
希班表示，胡塞武装并未取代国家，而是将其掏空，他们在每个部门和社区任命一名“监督人”，勒索企业，灌输公众思想，并招募儿童当兵。如今，他们控制着也门大部分人口，并坐拥世界上最繁忙的航运通道之一。
Rather than replace the state, the Houthis hollowed it out, Shiban said, assigning a “supervisor” to sit over every ministry and neighborhood, extorting businesses, indoctrinating the public, and recruiting children as soldiers. They now rule most of Yemen’s population and sit on one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.