Weaponizing Commercial Airspace Disruption: An Emergent Strategy for Iran and the Houthis

Introduction

On May 4, 2025, the Houthis launched a missile from Yemen—built with Iranian-supplied components—that evaded Israeli and American air defenses and struck within the perimeter of Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. The strike triggered a cascade of flight suspensions that grounded many non-Israeli airlines, left Israelis stranded abroad, and discouraged tourism and business travel to Israel. Between 2015 and 2022, during the US-supported, Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, Saudi Arabia faced a similar threat when nearly 1,000 missile and 350 drone attacks—executed by the Iran-backed Houthis—targeted critical infrastructure, particularly airports, resulting in repeated disruptions to civil air traffic. Most notably, al-Abha International Airport in southwestern Saudi Arabia was hit twice in June 2019.

The outbreak of war between Israel and Iran on June 13, following Israel’s preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, has opened a new frontier for this warfare model. Iran’s initial aerial retaliation targeted Israel’s defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, but its subsequent aerial retaliations focused on civilian population centers—a shift that underscores its evolving tactical priorities, given its diminishing missile arsenal. How might Iran adapt its strategy in response to the reopening of Israel’s airspace to commercial traffic? This analysis explores how the intentional targeting of commercial air traffic has become a potent instrument of asymmetric warfare for Iran and the Houthis.

Missile Strike at Ben Gurion International Airport

Despite Israel’s robust air defense system successfully intercepting dozens of missiles launched from Yemen in prior attacks, on May 4, 2025, a single missile evaded interception and landed within the grounds of Ben Gurion International Airport. At 9:18 am Israel time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) detected a launch and promptly relayed a warning to air traffic controllers who then activated their prearranged response protocols and airborne aircraft were diverted away from potential interception zones. One aircraft on final approach was permitted to land at 9:21 am. Air raid sirens sounded at 9:22 am across central Israel, including the airport’s vicinity. At 9:24 am a missile struck a field near an access road leading to an airport parking lot. According to Israel’s Civil Aviation Authority, “Following approximately thirty minutes of runway inspections, landing operations resumed.”

To protect its skies and population, Israel employs a multi-layered missile defense system developed primarily by its own defense industries, with US funding and collaboration. It includes the Iron Dome for short-range rockets and drones, David’s Sling for intermediate missiles, the Arrow series for long-range ballistic missiles, and a laser-based technology for neutralizing various aerial threats. Complementing these indigenous solutions, is the US- deployed THAAD system, operational in Israel since Iran’s aerial assault on October 1, 2024. Though no system can guarantee absolute protection, Israel’s integrated launch detection and interception system—along with its air traffic safety protocols—are regarded as reliable and effective. This reliability was sufficient to sustain operations for Israeli airlines, El Al, Arkia, Israir, and Air Haifa. Additionally, a number of international airlines—including Etihad Airways (UAE), Azerbaijan Airlines, TAROM (Romania), and Ethiopian Airlines—resumed service to Israel. Unlike many Western flagship carriers that suspended operations indefinitely, these airlines, along with budget carriers such as Flydubai, Blue Bird Airways, Smartwings, Tus Airways, HiSky, Georgian Airways, Cyprus Airways, Electra Airways, and Hainan Airlines, continued their routes without prolonged interruptions.

Most full-service international carriers cancelled their flights to and from Tel Aviv, initially cancelling and rerouting flights as the crisis unfolded on May 4, then announcing staggered updates of one-week or multi-week suspensions of Tel Aviv routes that were repeatedly extended—leaving passengers with confirmed tickets stranded amid a succession of mounting delays and uncertainty. Delta resumed its nonstop daily service to Israel on May 20, while United, Lufthansa Group, Air Canada and British Air extended the suspensions of their routes.

The Houthis’ Shifting Targets

Encouraged by their success, the Houthis vowed to keep firing “hypersonic” missiles at Ben Gurion airport in order to impose a “full aerial blockade” on the enemy. The movement warned all international airlines to “preserve the safety of their aircraft” by cancelling their scheduled flights to Israel. The pattern of targeting Israel’s main airport continued, and although the subsequent missiles were intercepted, their success in deterring commercial air traffic was nonetheless proclaimed. Statements about the almost daily launches were disseminated by the Houthis’ spokesperson Yahya Sareʿe—either via his Telegram and X account or through the official media outlet, al-Masirah TV.

The X account conveying messages from Sareʿe, active since 2020, shows that his statements once celebrated attacks on Saudi and Emirati airports and oil installations. After joining the Israel-Hamas war on October 7, 2023, in support of Hamas, the Houthis shifted their declared focus to Israeli economic targets—most notably shipping and aviation. But an announcement pinned to his feed since January 18, 2022, boasts of targeting the Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports with ballistic missiles and warns the “countries of aggression”: the US, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). To fully appreciate the progression of Houthi targeting from Muslim Arab states to the Jewish state, we now turn to the origins of the Houthi movement and the wider context of regional dynamics.

Regional Dynamics

Originating as an opposition movement in northern Yemen, Ansar Allah—more widely known as the Houthis—emerged as a local insurgency that eventually seized control of roughly half the country. In October 2023, they burst onto the world stage as the group behind attacks on civil maritime routes in the Red Sea. The domestic conflict in Yemen is overshadowed by a broader geopolitical struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia has stood with the internationally recognized regime, Iran has been the patron of the Zaydi Houthi rebel camp, turning a civil conflict into a battleground for a proxy struggle between the regional rivals.

The proxy conflict in Yemen is part of a broader Middle East cold war fought between Iran and Saudi Arabia via a number of proxies on different battlegrounds. It originated when Iran lunged at the opportunity to create a zone of influence in post-Saddam Iraq, cultivating its cultural, religious and commercial ties with the Shiʿi majority, supporting Shiʿi militias in their sectarian fighting against Sunnis in particular and supporting resistance to the American occupation in general. Encouraged by its successes, Iran continued to project its power throughout the region—bringing its influence to bear on factional and sectarian fighting in Lebanon, Yemen and the Palestinian arena. In each of these arenas, governments and factions supported by Sunni Arab states and aligned with the West found themselves mired in bloody sectarian conflicts with factions supported by Iran. As the regional crisis deepened, the United States intensified its involvement by assuming a coordinating leadership role among its allies and partners in the region that opposed Iran’s burgeoning, destabilizing regional role.

Yemen became a central battleground of the conflict between the Iran-led axis and the US-led axis when Iranian-backed Houthi militants seized the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, along with a sizeable swathe of territory in September 2014 and then forced the resignation of Saudi-backed Yemeni president four months later. The Houthi rebel takeover of al-Hudaydah (a port city located 200 km southwest of Sanaa) and in March 2015 also Aden, situated on the route to the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, provided the formerly landlocked Houthis with supply lines by which they could receive direct military aid from Iran. Iran’s acquisition of a foothold on the Arabian Peninsula through its support for the Houthis in Yemen ultimately provided the casus belli for the 2015 US-supported, Saudi-led military intervention in which the UAE also played a prominent role.

Saudi Airports in the Line of Fire

Saudi Arabia coordinated a multi-pronged military campaign against the Iran-backed Houthis, which saw the Houthis retaliate by firing nearly 1,000 missiles and 350 weaponized drones at Saudi Arabia and the UAE between 2015 and 2022. The Houthis targeted a range of strategic infrastructure in the Gulf, predominantly airports. The Saudi government enacted the Emergency Security Control of Air Traffic covering the airspace over its southwestern provinces, including the airspace around Jeddah—a key hub for Hajj pilgrims. The disruption of this airspace threatened the flow of millions of pilgrims and the associated tourism revenue. The arrival of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps to Houthi-controlled Yemen and the transfer of sophisticated technology extended the range and lethality of the cross-border Houthi threat. In November 2017, an Iranian missile launched by the Houthis from Yemen was intercepted near King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, and in June 2019, a Houthi-fired cruise missile struck al-Abha International Airport—a key regional hub in southwestern Saudi Arabia. The missile strike on the arrivals hall—injured 26 people. Two days later, a drone strike on the same airport killed 1 and injured 21 people. These strikes marked a rare lapse in the otherwise effective Peace Shield defense system. When threats of missile or drone launches endangered Saudi airspace, Saudi Arabia’s air force—detected, tracked, and intercepted incoming threats while coordinating with the General Authority of Civil Aviation to divert inbound flights, halt departures, and reroute overflights. These procedures often shut down commercial air traffic for hours until threats were neutralized, restrictions were lifted, airplanes in holding patterns were permitted to land and departure backlogs were cleared.

The March 10, 2023, Saudi-Iranian agreement paved the way for Saudi Arabia and the UAE to scale back their military operations in Yemen, but the onset of the war in Gaza after October 7, 2023, and its rapid regionalization thrust back into the spotlight the regional fault line that positioned Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE on the same side of the regional cold war. Following Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7, 2023, Israel launched an extensive military campaign in the Gaza Strip. In response, Iran-backed proxies—the Lebanese Hizballah, the “Islamic Resistance” groups in Iraq, and the Yemeni Houthis—began launching missiles at Israel, transforming the conflict into a broader, multi-front struggle. American deployments and strategic repositioning shored up the Israel-Arab entente with carrier strike groups off the coast of Lebanon, anti-ballistic missile systems in the Gulf, and troop deployments to Jordan. The events surrounding Iran’s direct assault on Israel on April 13 brought the new US-sponsored Middle East entente into sharp focus as the militaries of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar risked Iranian retaliation to work side by side with the US and its European allies in tracing and intercepting more than 300 Iranian drones and missiles as they streaked through their skies toward Israel. Most of the analysis described Iran’s attack as expensive and ineffective.

Iran’s New Playbook: Weaponizing Flight Suspensions

By October 2024, Iran learned that actual strikes were unnecessary—mere threats and the cascading effect of flight cancellations can wear down the Israeli population and deepen Israel’s economic isolation by discouraging tourism and business travel (see Figure 1). This lesson became evident during the events that followed Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas—a group that forms part of Iran’s regional axis, in Tehran on July 31, 2024. Iran threatened retaliation—a move widely interpreted as a precursor to another aerial assault—that prompted most international carriers to cancel their flights to Israel. Airlines initially suspended flights for a week, only to extend suspensions again just days before scheduled resumptions—a pattern that repeated as Iran took its time before striking.

The figure below uses data from the airport’s activity reports to illustrate total passenger movements through Ben Gurion International Airport. It compares pre-pandemic (and pre-war) baseline levels with the traffic recorded before and after Iran’s threat of an aerial assault on July 31, 2024.

Figure 1. Passenger Movements > Data derived from Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport Activity Reports (accessed May 27, 2025). Graph created by Brianne Bernhardt using Python (Version 3.11.8).

The anticipated aerial assault came two months later. Given its military disadvantage, Iran had more to gain from prolonged uncertainty than an immediate strike, as the looming threat paralyzed Israel’s commercial aviation and tourism. Finally, the strike came on October 1, 2024. Israel’s airspace was closed, as was the airspace of Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan during the aerial assault which lasted about an hour. With vital support from the US-led Middle East Air Defense coalition of which it is a member, Israel traced and intercepted roughly 180 ballistic missiles alongside an additional number of drones. Israel reopened its airspace for civil traffic that same evening; however, most international carriers continued to extend cancellations, leaving their Tel Aviv routes suspended until mid‑2025.

Though the aerial assaults have failed to inflict significant material damage on Israel, Iran and its proxies have learned that disrupting the skies of an adversary can set off a chain reaction: airlines face heightened security risks, steep regulatory compensation obligations, soaring insurance premiums, and robust pressure from flight crews and their unions to halt service for weeks or even months. This confluence of operational and financial pressures, compounded by the safety concerns associated with conflict zones, dissuades travelers and effectively isolates the target country.

Following the October 7, 2023, massacre, Israel launched a war in the Gaza Strip with the aim of eliminating Hamas, and in response to Hizballah’s relentless rocket barrages on northern Israel in the fall of 2024, it crippled Hizballah and assassinated its leadership. Moreover, its aggressive dismantling of Iran’s terror infrastructure in Syria not only weakened the Iranian-backing that sustained Assad’s regime but also inadvertently paved the way for the anti-Shiʿi, anti-Iran coalition led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus. The regime change in Syria broke Iran’s “ring of fire” around Israel. Seeing Iran’s weakened deterrence as an opportunity, the Trump Administration issued an ultimatum to Tehran: either surrender the nuclear weapons program at the negotiating table or face a US-supported Israeli strike on the nuclear facilities. To uphold the credible threat of force, the Trump Administration concurrently launched punitive airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen. Trump’s May 6, 2025 announcement of a truce with the Houthis—aimed at advancing progress with Iran at the negotiating table—did not address the ongoing missile launches toward Ben Gurion International Airport, which continued unabated.

Israel and Iran at War

Israel’s June 13 early morning assault on Iran’s nuclear weapons program led to a full-scale conflict between Israel and Iran. In response, Iran has launched multiple daily aerial missile strikes, with the Houthis participating in a limited capacity. These retaliatory strikes involved an average deployment of around 100 ballistic missiles and varying numbers of drones; however, the volume of Iranian missile launches fell short of expectations due to the significant degradation of Iran’s arsenal and launchers. While Iran’s opening retaliatory salvo targeted the Israeli Ministry of Defense headquarters in Tel Aviv, subsequent salvos targeted the civilian population. Instead of expending scarce missile resources on high-value military targets—a choice that has historically produced only superficial damage—Iran has increasingly opted to target civilian population centers. The question surfaces, how might Iran adapt its strategy in response to the eventual reopening of Israel’s airspace to commercial traffic?

The outbreak of the Israel-Iran war closed Middle Eastern airspace to civilian traffic, and flights to and from Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran were cancelled. In the days that followed, Israel’s airport remained shuttered indefinitely, while other Middle Eastern airports, including some in Iran, announced resumed operations and achieved varying success in luring back commercial airlines. Unlike its neighbors, Israel faces the added challenge that its commercial airspace is a deliberate target. In the absence of Iran capitulating over its nuclear program—an unlikely outcome—or of a regime collapse, which remains within the realm of possibility, the beleaguered leadership is likely to increasingly rely on asymmetric warfare. One weapon it may deploy is the deliberate disruption of Israel’s commercial air traffic—a strategy designed to offset Iran’s inferior capabilities by isolating the country, exhausting the population, and inflicting economic damage.

Conclusion

The deliberate targeting of civil airspace illustrates an emerging trend in the use of asymmetric warfare by Iran and its proxies. It serves as a cost-effective means by which to threaten the US’s allies and partners. As malign actors continue to build their operational experience, the approach is likely to gain traction and may become an increasingly potent tool in their wider strategy. While integrated aerial defense architectures—such as those employed by Israel and Saudi Arabia—offer highly effective protection, they are not a comprehensive solution. These systems operate within a reactive framework and address only the symptoms of a broader strategic challenge. The reliance on adaptive and irregular warfare by Iran and its proxies exploits vulnerabilities that sophisticated military defenses alone cannot fully neutralize.

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