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Hello and welcome to Coffey House shots,

the Spectator's daily politics

podcast I'm Oscar Edinson and I'm joined by Katie Ball's and Simon Mayor,

former British Army officer and Middle East advisor at the MOD. So last night

Britain and the US launched airstrikes against Huthy rebels in Yemen

whose attacks were disrupting trade in the Red Sea. Simon I wanted to come to you

first because I think it could be good maybe to get a little bit of background,

maybe on who are the who the's, why are they targeting this trade route, and also just your

reaction on the decision that the government took last night?

Yeah, certainly, Oscar, thank you.

The Huthies, you know, have been around for a very, very long time.

They're a very militant, mountainous tribal grouping of Shia views heretics by many even within the Shia community

because they're fibers and certainly by the majority Sunni adherents of the Muslim world. But they've been a very powerful

influence in North Yemen and of course by dominating North Yemen and eventually

taking Sano I think back in 2014 they've really become the the leading

militant power within Yemen they've got a huge amount of internal problems themselves at the moment

which is I just say that as context for a discussion of why they're doing

...