S8 Ep1099: Edmund Fitton-Brown. Fitton-Brown describes Houthis as autonomous Iranian proxies testing regional blockades. He notes Oman serves as a critical, unpressured hub for smuggling weapons and illicit goods, enabling Houthis to recover from strikes. (12)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
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🗓️ 7 July 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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Summary
Edmund Fitton-Brown. Fitton-Brown describes Houthis as autonomous Iranian proxies testing regional blockades. He notes Oman serves as a critical, unpressured hub for smuggling weapons and illicit goods, enabling Houthis to recover from strikes. (12)
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel, Bill Raggio, my colleague and friend from the FD is here as my co-host, we're speaking |
| 0:21.4 | with Edmund Fitton Brown, of the day after the funeral of the Ayatollah and what is to be |
| 0:28.5 | done. The Strait of Hormuz, open, closed, open close. And then we look at the Houthis and their |
| 0:35.2 | possible threat to the Babel Mende Deb, the Red Sea choke point at the |
| 0:40.0 | southern end. And where are the Houthis in this equation of Iran and the U.S. and a ceasefire? |
| 0:47.3 | Edmund, the Houthis have not been in the news for firing drones and missiles, which was |
| 0:51.8 | their commonplace way of getting a headline. And yet they |
| 0:55.8 | remain extremely unsolved and a threat to Babam and Deb. Is that a tool that Iran can turn on at |
| 1:02.0 | will, or was it just the special conditions of the Israeli conflict? I wouldn't say at will, |
| 1:09.1 | John, but equally I think it's not just the special conditions of the |
| 1:12.9 | Israeli conflict. I think that it's somewhere between the two. The Houthis are an Iranian proxy, |
| 1:18.0 | but they're quite an independent-minded one. They will often do what Iran wants them to do, |
| 1:22.4 | but they want it also to be perceptibly in their interests. And their interests and the Iranian interests do |
| 1:29.4 | overlap very substantially. They will be delighted with what the Iranians have done about the Babel Mandab, |
| 1:34.7 | excuse me, what the Iranians have done about the Strait of Hormuz, because it has, it's given them |
| 1:40.8 | more influence. It means that their previous campaign in the Babel Mandep and in the |
| 1:45.3 | Red Sea now looks as if it could be repeated and would be even more effective. They can even make |
| 1:51.1 | the argument that, you know, oh, come on, it's not worth people even trying to enforce freedom |
| 1:56.4 | of navigation through the Red Sea because that's been tried in the Gulf and in the Strait of Hormuz, |
| 2:02.6 | and it hasn't worked. So in other words, they will feel that their hand has been strengthened. |
| 2:08.4 | Now, they've had another four months to recover from the pounding that they took last year |
| 2:12.4 | since the start of the Iran-Israel-US war on the 28th of February. They didn't intervene initially, |
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