"Yemeni Brotherhood" blesses a supposed blow to Iran's proxies against Israel and an American channel says it is an "inaccurate attack"

The Houthis, Iran's arm in Yemen, said they had launched a missile strike on Israeli cities, but without any real confirmations, while Yemeni politicians questioned the allegations, which the Israeli government exploited to justify its bloody attacks against civilians in the Gaza Strip.

The Houthi movement said on Tuesday it had fired a "significant batch" of ballistic missiles and drones towards Israel, while the website of the American channel Alhurra downplayed the Houthi claims, saying the Houthi ballistic attack was inaccurate compared to the distance between Sanaa, Tel Aviv and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Iran-backed group's military spokesman, Yahiya Saree, said in a televised statement – according to Reuters – that this operation was the third "in support of our brothers in Palestine ... We continue to carry out more qualitative strikes."

The Saudi-backed Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen blessed the supposed Houthi operation against Israel, and the Marib-based group officially announced that it stood behind Iran's loyalists in confronting Israel.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Marib, "Mabkhout bin Abboud Al-Sharif," said in press statements, "The Houthis were guided by God and directed their war towards the Israeli enemy." He stressed on the Iranian proxies to continue their war against Tel Aviv, and that the entire Yemeni people will stand behind them.

He saluted bin al-Sharif, the military spokesman for the Houthi movement, Yahiya bin Saree, who said he preceded the resistance axis groups in Iran, Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood in Marib said in a post on X, "I salute you for the quick precedence of the speakers in the axis of resistance in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq and Syria, and this is how they are Yemenis throughout history, and the most important thing is to continue."

Israeli military spokesman Admiral Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday that Israel remained focused on the Gaza Strip despite attempts by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi movement to challenge Israel.

"There are many parties in the region that act as proxies of Iran, such as the Houthis, who are trying to challenge us and distract us from the war in Gaza. We're staying focused."

The Houthi group, which controls large areas of Yemen, has received Iranian support for years, and Western reports have long highlighted its military capabilities, in terms of long-range missiles or even drones, with which they have been targeting Saudi Arabia and, at times, the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.

After Tehran repeatedly disavowed and denied responsibility for supporting the Houthis, its spokesman for its forces, Abu al-Fadl Shakarji, stated in September 2020 that they had "put missile and drone production technologies at the disposal of Yemen," referring to the Houthi group.

"We don't send missiles to Yemen, but they are making them themselves to fire them at their enemies," Shakarji said at the time, adding that Yemenis have experts who were able to build "sophisticated" drones in record time.

The pro-Iran Houthis said they were seeking to "make an impact" by claiming to bomb Israel, despite the long distance separating Yemen from Palestine, Nasr Aldin Amer, a leader of the pro-Iran group, was quoted by US TV as saying.

A Palestinian researcher questioned the importance of the Houthi response to Israeli attacks against civilians in the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian researcher and political analyst Majid Azzam told the American channel Alhurra that "the response from Sanaa at the moment is late and too little, because after the fourth week of the war we are talking about more than 10,000 martyrs and 20,000 wounded, and half of Gaza's neighborhoods have been destroyed."

"We hope that the response from the Houthis will be real, and part of activating what they have always described as the unity of squares or fronts," Azzam said, but he believes that the Houthis' announcement is a "bypass road," asking: "Which is closer? Which square should be activated?", going to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq.

The response from Sana'a does not pose a "real danger" at the moment, while Azzam asserts that "what happened is to save face and a way around the real response," he continued, adding: "I would be happy if it was real."

"The response from Yemen lacks surprise. The Houthi crowd said it had delivered three strikes. The rockets are dripping a limited number of two thousand kilometers, and some of them fell in Taba, Egypt."

Yemeni politician Saleh al-Baidani questioned the validity of the Houthi claims of targeting Israel, saying on platform X, "Iran's axis in the region operates according to the rule of 'Where is your ear, Juha?' instead of moving the military arms adjacent to Israel in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, they directed the Houthis to carry out media missile launches from which nothing will actually reach Israel."

Mahmoud al-Bazi, a researcher on Iranian affairs, believes that "the intensification of fighting in Gaza and the ground incursion is the reason for the official appearance of the Houthis."

While pointing to the very long distance between Yemen and Israel, which reaches more than 2,000 kilometers, Al-Bazi told Alhurra that the scene faces two cases, the first is "the Houthis' use of ballistic missile technology and Iranian drones, because they are the only ones capable of covering all these distances."

In any case, al-Bazi believes that "the Israeli Iron Dome and the US air defense systems deployed in the region are all capable of avoiding and neutralizing these attacks."

"The Houthis' use of ballistic missiles means raising the level of the conflict to a higher level."

"The Houthi ballistic attack may be inaccurate." However, the researcher explains that "the use of intermediate-range ballistic missiles is an important issue in the international system, and in terms of security, it cannot be compared to drone attacks and even cruise missiles."

The Houthi intervention is currently facing "a problem in reaching Israel, either violating Saudi or Egyptian airspace to reach Israeli cities."

Israeli political analyst Yoav Stern said that "the rocket fire by the Houthis comes at the request, directives and interests of Iran, such as what is happening in southern Lebanon."

"The Houthis in Yemen are not under occupation. They have no common borders with Israel, and they have no dark history with it. What happened based on Tehran's demands."

The Israeli analyst believes that "what happened from Yemen is additional proof and proof of the arrangement of cards in the region," and that it "serves Israel because the strikes do not pose a real threat to it."

"At such distances, Israel knows how to confront these threats, and neighboring countries know that, which enhances cooperation with Israel," Stern asserts, stressing that "the Yemen front poses no threat, either to Israeli interests or to the lives of Israeli citizens."