From Marib to Midi: How Muslim Brotherhood Strongholds Became a Transit Corridor for Houthi Weapons

21st December 2025

2 minutes read

From Marib to Midi: How Muslim Brotherhood Strongholds Became a Transit Corridor for Houthi Weapons

Amid escalating geopolitical tensions in the southern Red Sea region, field developments and intelligence reports from 2025 have revealed a new map of cross-ideological alliances. Arms smuggling networks have emerged as a unifying link between groups with divergent objectives, foremost among them the Muslim Brotherhood, through its political arm, the Al-Islah Party, in an unprecedented coordination with Houthi rebels and branches of Al-Qaeda.

According to field sources cited by the newspaper Al-Amin, the takeover of Al-Mahra and Hadramout governorates by forces of the Southern Transitional Council in early December 2025 led to the disruption of the vital artery used for smuggling Iranian weapons through the eastern land borders. This development pushed smuggling networks, in coordination with military wings loyal to the Al-Islah Party (the Muslim Brotherhood), to activate newly established maritime landing points along the northwestern coastline, particularly in the vicinity of Midi Island and in areas under the group’s influence east of the capital, Marib.

Political indicators from 2025 suggest that the Al-Islah Party, facing mounting international pressure amid Washington’s move toward designating the Brotherhood as a terrorist organization, has found in “functional cooperation” with the Houthis a means of preserving its remaining spheres of influence. This cooperation takes the form of exploiting checkpoints controlled by military zones loyal to the Brotherhood to allow the passage of drone shipments and advanced weaponry destined for the Houthis, as well as providing security cover for small boats transporting camouflaged consignments from vessels arriving from regional ports under the guise of commercial activity.

This dynamic is not confined to Yemen alone. A 2025 report by the UN Panel of Experts revealed an “organic linkage” between the Houthis, Somalia’s Al-Shabaab movement, historically associated with Muslim Brotherhood ideology, and Al-Qaeda. This triangular network seeks to undermine maritime security in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden in order to raise the cost of international shipping, exchange expertise through the transfer of drone technologies between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, and manage a shared war economy based on arms trafficking and cross-border smuggling.

International observers view 2026 as a critical deadline for ending the state of “security fluidity” in Yemen. The Yemeni state, backed by its regional partners, has come to recognize that the continued control of strategic gateways such as Midi and Marib by factions loyal to the Muslim Brotherhood represents a strategic vulnerability that allows the conflict to be prolonged through the ongoing flow of Iranian weapons.