This recording is from “The Houthis and the Red Sea: can the Houthis be deterred?” which was an hour long webinar by Noel Brehony and Edmund Fitton-Brown held on 7 February 2024.

Co-host: Mishcon de Reya

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Some of the areas the talk addressed, were:

• Who are the Houthis and what accounts for their rise?
• How powerful and secure is the Houthi position in Yemen
• How to they maintain control
• The Houthis, Iran and Hezbollah
• Houthi-Saudi relations and the peace process
• How can the Houthis be deterred?
• Negotiation with the Houthis
• The risk of a widening conflict
• Risks to Red Sea shipping
• Are there better strategies for deterring the Houthis?

Speakers

Noel Brehony – The former chairman of Menas Associates and the British Yemeni Society has known Yemen since the 1970s when he was a diplomat based in Aden. He wrote Yemen Divided (2011) and co-edited Global, Regional and Local Dynamics in the Yemen Crisis (2020). He was Middle East director for Rolls-Royce and President of the British Society for Middle East Studies.

Edmund Fitton-Brown – a former British diplomat, works for the Counter Extremism Project. He graduated from Cambridge University and joined the Foreign Service in 1984. His career included postings in Finland, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Italy and the UAE; and culminated as UK Ambassador for Yemen. He joined the United Nations in 2017 as an Expert with the ISIL/Al-Qaida/Taliban Sanctions Monitoring Team before taking over as Coordinator of the Team in January 2018, a position which he held until July 2022. He speaks Arabic and is best known as a specialist in the Middle East, regional security and international counter-terrorism. He is married, with his home base in Austin, Texas, and has three adult children: a daughter and two sons.

Greg Falkof, Partner in the International Arbitration Practice, Mishcon de Reya