Still, he said that he wanted peace and that although the Houthis have fired missiles at Saudi Arabia, his side would pose no threat to Saudi Arabia if the Saudis would only end their assault on Yemen.

“There’s no need for enmity with the United States,” he told me in Arabic, and that seemed a message he wanted me to convey to Washington and the American people.

I asked President Houthi about the sarkha, the group’s slogan: “God is great! Death to America! Death to Israel! Curses on the Jews! Victory to Islam!” That didn’t seem so friendly, I said.

“It’s nothing against the American people,” he replied. “It’s directed toward the system.”

When I asked about Saudi and American suggestions that the Houthis are Iranian pawns, he laughed.

“That’s just propaganda,” he said. “I ask you: Have you ever seen one Iranian in Yemen? Do we speak Farsi?” This was all a trick, he said, analogous to the allegations of weapons of mass destruction used to justify war with Iraq.

While the Houthis are called “rebels,” they clearly rule their territory. In contrast, the Saudi- and American-backed “internationally recognized government” of Yemen is a shell that controls almost no territory — hence it is based in Riyadh. The “president” of this exile government, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, is said to be gravely ill, and when he is gone it will be even more difficult to sustain the fiction that this is a real government.

More broadly, I don’t see any hint of a Saudi or American strategy. There’s little sign that bombing and starvation will actually dislodge the Houthis, while the Saudi military action and resulting chaos has benefited the Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. In that sense, America’s conduct in Yemen has hurt our own national security.