The Iran-backed Houthis have seized new territory along Yemen's Red Sea coast, including the strategic port city of Mocha, and are advancing toward the Bab el-Mandeb Strait — a waterway that carries a significant share of global maritime trade and energy shipments. The advance is drawing fresh scrutiny to the sprawling financial network that has transformed the group from a Yemeni insurgency into a heavily armed regional power capable of threatening global commerce.
For the Trump administration, the Houthi push is becoming as much a financial challenge as a military one. Washington is intensifying efforts to choke off the money sustaining Iran and its proxies, but the Houthis have built a sanctions-evasion system that operates across multiple countries and sectors. The central dilemma for the Treasury Department is how to cut off the cash fueling the group without cutting off food, fuel and other lifelines to civilians in a country that depends heavily on imports.
According to Adam Rousselle, founder of Between the Lines Research, the Houthis operate a financial network that extends far beyond Yemen. In a 2025 investigation for the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, Rousselle traced a financing system spanning Houthi-controlled ports, tariffs, Iranian oil, informal hawala networks, cryptocurrency exchanges and foreign facilitators across Russia, Türkiye and Southeast Asia. «We're dealing with a very well-capitalized group,» Rousselle told Fox News Digital.
Control of ports has historically been central to Houthi revenue because Yemen depends heavily on imports. Rousselle's GNET report said the Houthis have imposed steep fees at ports they control and tariffs on goods brought into their territory from rival Yemeni ports. The group's latest territorial gains could strengthen that economic base even further.
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.» She added that the territorial base allows them to recruit, generate revenue, manufacture and store weapons, control smuggling routes, and regenerate capabilities degraded by airstrikes and sanctions.
Rousselle cautioned against understanding Houthi finances simply as Tehran handing cash to a 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. Miad Maleki, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that the Houthis are «sanctions-adapted» rather than sanctions-proof. «Most of their money is made inside Yemen — customs and taxes at Hodeidah and Ras Isa, and fuel above all,» Maleki said. 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. 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, with Rousselle saying Chinese-linked private commercial actors appear in parts of the network.