The residents of Sana seem stunned and angry at what they view as the wildly disproportionate international attention garnered by every single Houthi missile or drone attack on Saudi Arabia, compared to the regular, destructive Saudi-led coalition bombings Yemenis have endured since March 2015.

It is hard to know how freely locals can speak. Many perhaps privately fault the Houthis for recklessly taking on their northern neighbor. If so, the sentiment is well hidden. Even the leaders of a party traditionally close to the Saudis and at odds with the Houthis expressed heartfelt fury at Saudi Arabia.

A quip doing the rounds in Sana: If the Saudis just handed me the price of a missile, I would destroy my house for them. Sana residents are exasperated at the bombing of a cemetery: even our dead are unsafe, they tell you.

Houthi supporters are also puzzled as to why their attacks on Saudi Arabia are attributed to Iranian dictates, as if their being at war with the kingdom wasn't explanation enough. The world's focus on their cross-border operations has only further convinced them that this is what it will take to attract global interest and get the Saudis to change course. Saudi Arabia has too much to lose to risk it; Yemenis have too little to lose to care.

A visitor in Sana also notices a surprising sense of internal stability. The Houthis are building something akin to a police state -- the lack of checkpoints or other markers of security in the capital announcing their effective stranglehold.

Most people in Sana, rightly, consider the United States to be complicit in the war, an enabler of the Saudi-led coalition that wages it. Americans, understandably, would recoil at the Houthis embracing "Death to America" and "Curse the Jews" as their slogans, scrawled as graffiti on the city's walls. But Sana's residents warmly welcome the rare American visitor.

The Houthi leadership knows all this -- the popular hostility toward the Saudi-led coalition; the remarkable control the movement has achieved -- and finds other justifications for self-confidence. Time, they feel, is on their side. Despite formidable military disparities, they have stood up to a coalition of wealthy, powerful states backed and armed by the West.