Israel prepares for Houthi retaliation following elimination of senior officials in Sanaa strike

A senior Houthi official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, said on Sunday that Israel’s assassination of the group's prime minister, along with a number of senior ministers, represents the crossing of a red line, and said the group has no choice but to take revenge. 

In an interview with al-Mayadeen TV, a Hezbollah affiliated news outlet, al-Bukhaiti said that the strike would be met by escalation from the Houthis, accusing Israel of committing “crimes” during its campaign against Iranian proxy groups during the war. 

“We remind Israel that in the end they will pay the price for all the crimes they commit, whether in Yemen or Palestine or Lebanon or Syria, al-Bukhaiti said. 

Another Houthi official, Nasr al-Din Amer, said the group will not give up its support for Gaza, despite Israel’s strikes. 

“No matter the scope and intensity of the attack, Yemen's position will not be affected,” Amer told Al-Jazeera in an interview. “The Houthis will continue to escalate and improve their missiles, their range of weapons, and their military tactics to help Gaza.” 

Mahdi al-Mashat, the chairman of the Houthi Supreme Council, threatened Israel with retaliation, saying, "We fully trust the Yemeni leadership's ability to overcome suffering and continue the campaign against the Zionist entity despite the many victims and the conspiracy against us. I appeal to the Zionists: Our blood will not be silenced. We will wait for dark days for what your treacherous government has done. We will continue and respond with defiance to defiance until victory, and you Zionists will not know another day of security.” 

In a statement on Saturday evening, Defense Minister Israel Katz called the strike “a daring and brilliant operation by the IDF.” 

“The day before yesterday, we delivered an unprecedented crushing blow to the top echelons of the security-political leadership of the Houthi terror organization in Yemen, in a daring and brilliant operation by the IDF,” Katz said. “The Houthi Prime Minister and most of his ministers and other senior officials were neutralized and harmed.” 

Katz also used biblical terminology to warn the Houthis against further escalation. 

“I warned that after the plague of darkness, the plague of the firstborn would follow, and now we have fulfilled that warning,” Katz continued. “The fate of Yemen is the same as the fate of Tehran – and this is only the beginning.” 

Israel, meanwhile, appears to be taking the threat of a Houthi retaliation seriously. On Sunday it was announced that the cabinet meeting, originally scheduled to take place at the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem, would instead be held in a secure facility. 

The decision came after a recommendation by the the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and appears to be designed to prevent the Houthis from achieving a similar result as the Israeli strike. 

On Saturday, the Mashat confirmed that the Israeli strike had killed the Houthi prime minister, Ahmad Ghaleb al-Rahwi, along with several other ministers in a strike on the capital city of Sanaa. 

The Shin Bet recently came under criticism for allowing a meeting of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, and most of the security leadership to take place in Re’im, only 2-3 kilometers from the Gaza border. 

A military source told Ma'ariv that the IDF has recently increased security for several senior officers based on intelligence indicating that Iran is actively seeking to assassinate senior defense and security officials. 

At the same time, the IDF has also reinforced systems used for aerial detection and defense in preparation for an expected retaliatory attack by the rebel group.