How the Houthis Built a Multibillion-Dollar Network Despite US Sanctions

The Houthis’ swift push toward a vital global shipping passage has renewed attention on the vast financial machinery behind the Iran-backed movement. Once primarily a Yemeni insurgency, the group has developed into a heavily armed regional force with the capacity to disrupt international commerce.

After capturing additional ground along Yemen’s Red Sea shoreline, including the strategically important port city of Mocha, the Houthis have moved closer to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The narrow waterway links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and serves as a crucial route for worldwide trade and energy cargoes.

For the Trump administration, the Houthi expansion presents a financial problem alongside the military threat. U.S. officials are stepping up attempts to restrict the funding available to Iran and its allied groups. Yet the Houthis have created an extensive system for evading sanctions while overseeing ports, commercial routes and the daily lives of millions of Yemenis. That leaves the Treasury Department facing a complex balance: stopping money that supports the group without disrupting essential supplies of food, fuel and other humanitarian necessities.

According to Adam Rousselle, founder of Between the Lines Research, the Houthis’ financial reach stretches well beyond Yemen’s borders.

“We’re dealing with a very well-capitalized group,” Rousselle told News Media.

In a 2025 investigation published by the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, Rousselle documented a funding structure that runs through Houthi-held ports, customs charges, Iranian oil, informal hawala transfer systems, cryptocurrency platforms and overseas intermediaries in Russia, Turkey and Southeast Asia.

Ports have long been a cornerstone of Houthi income, particularly because Yemen relies so heavily on imported goods. Rousselle’s GNET report found that the group levies substantial port fees in areas under its control, while also charging tariffs on products entering Houthi territory from ports held by rival Yemeni factions.

The Houthis’ newest territorial advances may give the group an even stronger foundation for generating revenue.

Nadwa Al-Dawsari, a Yemen expert and associate fellow at the Middle East Institute, told lawmakers in Sept. 1 testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that territory is central to the Houthis’ ability to withstand outside pressure.

“The most important source of that leverage is territory,” Al-Dawsari testified. “The Houthis have been able to consolidate their power and build increasingly sophisticated military capabilities because they control significant territory, a large population, ports, infrastructure, and resources.”

“That territorial base allows them to recruit, generate revenue, manufacture and store weapons, control smuggling routes, and regenerate capabilities degraded by airstrikes and sanctions,” she added.

Rousselle said the Houthis’ finances should not be understood simply as Tehran handing cash to an Iranian proxy.

“It’s a bit of a misunderstanding that the Iranians just give them money,” he said, describing the Houthis instead as embedded in a broader Iranian commercial ecosystem.

“The Houthis aren’t sanctions-proof; they’re sanctions-adapted,” Miad Maleki, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told News Media. “Most of their money is made inside Yemen — customs and taxes at Hodeidah and Ras Isa, and fuel above all.”

Treasury has estimated that the Houthis generate more than $2 billion a year from oil sales, while Iran provides the group with a free monthly oil shipment through Iranian-owned or affiliated companies based in Dubai. Treasury has also documented Houthi revenue from taxes imposed on petroleum imports.

“Sanctions can’t reach domestic extraction,” Maleki said. “What they can reach is the plumbing between Sana’a and the outside world; the exchange houses, the Dubai and Muscat correspondents, the tankers and the wallets.”

At the center of that system is Sa’id al-Jamal, whom the Treasury Department has identified as an Iran-backed Houthi financial official operating an international network that sells Iranian commodities and channels proceeds toward the group.

Treasury said in April 2025 that al-Jamal’s network had procured tens of millions of dollars in weapons, sensitive goods and commodities from Russia and identified eight digital-asset wallets used by the Houthis. Blockchain analytics cited in Rousselle’s GNET research identified nearly $900 million in outflows across those addresses.

Rousselle cautioned against treating that figure as a complete picture of Houthi wealth.

“The system is more important than the number itself,” he said, describing the network as fluid and difficult to quantify.

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Russia, he argued, has become a particularly significant part of the network. “The Russians are definitely more hands-on in their support,” Rousselle said.

Al-Dawsari’s congressional testimony similarly highlighted the Houthis’ expanding relationships beyond Iran, saying the group is “deepening ties with other U.S. adversaries, particularly Russia and China.”

She cited reports that Russia provided targeting data used to help the Houthis attack Western ships in the Red Sea and that Russian petroleum products were transferred ship-to-ship into a Houthi-controlled tanker before reaching the Houthi-controlled port of Ras Isa.

The China connection is more complicated. Rousselle said Chinese-linked private commercial actors appear in parts of the network but distinguished that activity from proven direct Chinese government involvement.

“The Chinese are kind of… turning a blind eye,” he said.

His GNET report described Iranian oil flowing to privately owned Chinese “teapot” refineries and examined transactions linked to Southeast Asian financial networks, while cautioning that the available evidence did not establish direct Chinese government control of Houthi financing.

Al-Dawsari pointed to a broader Chinese role in Houthi supply chains. Citing U.S. officials, she said a Chinese satellite company with ties to the Chinese military provided satellite imagery supporting Houthi attacks against U.S. warships and international shipping. She also cited interdiction data showing that 60% of the components and materials used in the Houthi Qasef-2K drone came from China, compared with roughly 15% from Iran.

That sprawling network is now testing Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s broader effort to isolate Tehran economically and disrupt the financial channels sustaining Iran and its proxies.

Rousselle said decentralized illicit-finance networks present a fundamental challenge.

“You’re dealing with a ‘you shut down one, another pops up’ kind of situation,” he said.

Maleki argued that Washington should concentrate on the points where Houthi money intersects with the formal financial system.

“The soft spots are wherever Houthi money touches the formal system,” he said. “Treasury has named the Yemeni banks and the Sana’a exchange houses that pay for missile components; it should now name the foreign correspondents still clearing for them. That is the one tool that changes behavior overnight.”

Oman represents another potential pressure point. “Oman is the Houthis’ land bridge and their mailing address,” Maleki said.

But squeezing Houthi finances presents another dilemma: Yemen remains one of the world’s most fragile humanitarian environments, and the Houthis control ports and infrastructure through which civilians receive food, fuel and other basic goods.

“I would be lying if I had a concrete answer to it,” Rousselle said when asked how Washington could disrupt Houthi revenue without worsening the humanitarian crisis.

“The humanitarian argument is the Houthis’ best shield, and it’s backwards,” Maleki said. “Food and medicine are licensed and should stay that way.”

“Keep the goods flowing and take away the toll,” he added, arguing that Washington should seek ways to prevent humanitarian trade from generating taxes and fees for Houthi authorities.

Rousselle warned that the challenge extends far beyond Yemen.

“This isn’t just about the Houthis,” he said. “This is about any sanctioned actor worldwide capable of harnessing financial systems that are completely outside of regulatory control.”

The Treasury Department did not immediately respond to News Media’s request for comment.