The Houthis have run a shell company in London for a decade now, raising concerns about sanctions evasion, intelligence collection, and national security, an investigation first published by The National and later confirmed by The Jerusalem Post has found.
Experts told the Post that the propaganda network poses a significant risk as it opens new doors for Iranian-backed terrorists to enter the UK and provides a way for Tehran and the Houthis to evade sanctions.
The Houthi-owned Al-Masirah TV registered a company under the name Almassira TV Channel Ltd., listing a mailing address at a cafe in West London. According to filings, one of the company’s directors is also listed as the director-general of the Yemeni television station.
The owner of the cafe told The National that he frequently received mail for companies that had no physical presence at the address and said he knew nothing about the media channel.
Corporate records show that Ibrahim al-Dulaimi, who was previously listed as a director of the media company, now serves as the Houthis’ ambassador to Iran and sits on the group’s political council.
The company’s current director is listed as Ammar Al-Hamzy, a Yemeni national residing in Yemen.
Multiple London-registered TV companies associated with Al Masirah TV
The London-registered entity was not the first television company associated with Al-Masirah TV to appear in UK records. A previous company registered with Companies House under the same name was established in 2012, the year the station was founded in Beirut.
Jonathan Hackett, a US Marine Corps veteran specializing in counterintelligence and the author of Iran’s Shadow Weapons: Covert Action, Intelligence Operations, and Unconventional Warfare, warned that there were two main concerns.
Firstly, the media content being pushed by the Islamist group has the potential to radicalize and contribute to lone wolf attacks on UK-soil. Lone-wolf attacks come at a lower financial cost and are harder to detect and, in turn, prevent, he explained.
Second, a more material concern is that terrorists can enter the United Kingdom “to facilitate movement of money, material persons under the cover of journalism.”
The UK, Hackett cautioned, has fallen far behind its American ally when it comes to tackling the threat posed by the IRGC and the groups backed by the Tehran regime.
While he stressed it was the responsibility of every level of law enforcement, from MI6 to local police, to target these networks, the issue is managing the line between “liberty and security.”
“It’s hard to stop it earlier, because you say, ‘Well, we shouldn’t stop this small thing, because it’s their freedom to say that, even though I don’t like it.’ But then there’s this intangible point where it crosses a line, and I’m not sure who describes what that line is, but it certainly is crossed at some point when we have lone wolves [becoming] radicalized…
“It seems that the UK’s parliament is trying to debate where this line is and trying to figure out a way to handle this without infringing on liberties and freedoms,” he explained. “But security also is an interest, and I wonder when security will win out in this situation. I don’t think it has yet.”
The former Almassira TV Channel, which listed Lebanese citizen Ali Krayem as its sole director, was registered at the same Mayfair address as Al Ittihad TV.
Al Ittihad TV’s stated director, Nayef Krayem, was the former chairman of Hezbollah’s TV station, Al-Manar. Both Krayem men share the middle name Ali.
Financial filings show that the earlier company reported assets of £500,000 before it liquidated in 2014, only days before the current media company was registered under the same name. The new company has never reported assets exceeding £200.
The missing £499,800 is likely spread throughout a wider Houthi network, Hackett suggested, adding that some centers may not even be aware of the source of the funds they are holding.
“The cultural centers, language centers are very commonly used as cover organizations. Even if parts of them are completely legitimate and perhaps even unwitting, they’re used,” Hackett explained.
“The regime will use whatever it wants to hurt people. They will use these organizations as easy access points to control things that keep them out of obvious attention.”
The funds were likely directed to provide support agents by purchasing things like “mailboxes, paying for travel, paying for apartments, paying yearly subscription fees for different things that they have to have access to through various intermediaries,” he continued.
Dr. Lynette Nusbacher, a former British Army intelligence officer and one of the architects behind two of the UK’s National Security Strategies as part of Britain’s National Security Secretariat, told the Post that the Houthis’ approach closely mirrors tactics used by the former Soviet Union.
“When Communist Bloc states operated secretly in the West, they used embassy staff and diplomatic cover, but they also had assets creating businesses and networks that they could use independently,” Nusbacher said.
“There were rules restricting Communist Bloc diplomats and their families, so they created businesses, some of them functional businesses, even successful ones, that could support intelligence assets working in Western countries.”
She explained that such entities could later be activated if needed, “so, if tomorrow a Houthi operator in the UK wanted to run a business properly, they could use this company’s registration and 10-year business history as a basis to start operating, hiring people, opening bank accounts, contracts with mobile providers, cloud providers, suppliers…”
While Nusbacher noted this strategy was widely employed during the Cold War, she said Iran has since refined the model, particularly through media organizations, and is likely the actor that passed the approach on to the groups it backs.
The strategy was more widely utilized after 2020, Hackett explained, as COVID-19 made it difficult for Iran’s forces to enter Yemen, leading the Houthis to export much of its activities.
More troubling, she warned, is what the existence of the UK-registered media company suggests about long-term planning.
As the Houthis have not yet been designated a terrorist organization by the UK, this company “will be an asset at their disposal” should sanctions tighten or Britain take a tougher stance toward the group.
Nusbacher added that Tehran could also benefit from such an arrangement. The business structure could provide a plausible mechanism to launder Iranian funds or sponsor work visas for individuals from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen or from Iran.
British freedoms could be “exploited” against the UK and intelligence targets based there, putting the country at “significant risk” of becoming “a base of operations for Iran and their Houthi proxies.”
“During the Cold War, the Soviet intelligence services used their ‘fraternal socialist allies’ to provide intelligence support overseas,” she said.
“The Bulgarian secret service worked for the Soviet KGB, followed their methods, and did their bidding. I think that we’re seeing the Iranians doing the same with their Houthi proxies.
“We know that the Houthis operate as an extension of the Iranian state in Yemen and that they attack shipping in the Red Sea using Iranian weapons to achieve Iranian aims,” Nusbacher added.
“This could very well be something similar in the UK: a Houthi-provided Iranian asset.”