The New York Times has just reported that the Pentagon launched a third round of airstrikes against the Houthis in Northern Yemen. Analysts appear to be in consensus that this will not deter them, nor is it possible to limit their capacity to undermine commerce to Israel in the Red Sea without on-the-ground engagement in Yemen.
The United States has been at war with the pro-Iran Houthi rebels since 2015, when the Obama administration cobbled together a coalition of Gulf monarchies to invade Yemen and prop up the local puppet regime banished to the country’s south. The purpose of this was largely to protect Israeli interests in the region, as Washington predicted (in hindsight, accurately) that a Houthi government in Sanaa would wreak havoc on the Jewish state.
The war intensified under Donald Trump. The Pentagon outfitted the Saudi-UAE effort with $100 billion dollars in modern weaponry, as well as logistical support and diplomatic cover for the horrific embargo on the port of Hodeidah. Hundreds of thousands of innocent people, a high number of them children, died in a man-made famine during this blockade.
It wasn’t enough to break the Houthis. As the Ottomans, British, and most recently the Saudis have learned, Yemen is a furnace that melts armies.
In Northern Yemen, the Houthis served the Saudis the most embarrassing defeat any nation has endured in the 21st century. Through their resourcefulness and sheer will power, the Houthis neutralized the massive Saudi edge. A few years into the war, the Gulf State’s mercenary forces pretty much gave up on combating the rebels and decided instead to take out their frustration on Yemen’s civilians.
The final blow to the Saudis came in September 2019, when the Houthis began Operation Victory From God. Houthi forces lured the Saudi military into a massive ambush, killing 500 coalition soldiers and capturing thousands more.
As the Houthis paraded scores of captured enemy soldiers and vehicles, they shocked the world again with a massive drone attack in the Saudi heartland, wrecking two oil refineries and triggering the largest sudden spike in global energy prices in history. The plucky Houthis forced Riyadh to its knees, and soon after to the negotiating table.
Fast forward to 2024. The United States and Britain have, without legal permission from their own governments, effectively entered the Israel-Palestine conflict through the initiation of Operation Prosperity Guardian. So far, the campaign has been firing $2 million dollar Tomahawk missiles at the buzzing flies pestering Israeli economic interests at sea, without any tangible results.
The Houthi ruling council have made their demands clear: they are only interested in attacking ships destined for Israeli ports or owned by Israelis in accordance with international law that compels nations to intervene against acts of genocide. They have vowed to stop when the killing of Gazans ends and humanitarian relief is allowed to reach the suffering Palestinians.
Ships traveling from China to Europe have so far had no issues sailing through the Red Sea. Their secret is to not involve themselves on the side of Israel. There are reports in US media of Houthis hitting random cargo vessels, but this should be taken with a grain of salt. The government in Northern Yemen has provided advanced warning that agents of the UAE were targeting non-Israeli vessels from parts of Yemen the rebels do not control in hopes of dragging the international community into the fray.
There are straight-forward solutions to the Houthi problem, especially now that major companies are too afraid to travel through these waters as long as the dispute lingers. One is to ditch the Israeli maniacs and let the Houthis have at them in exchange for guarantees that non-Israeli ships will be given free passage.
The other is to pressure the Israelis to negotiate a two-state solution with the Palestinians and let the children of Gaza have food and medical aid — Yemen’s demand. Houthis have done their part in respecting the terms of the 2022 negotiated ceasefire with the Saudis. They are reasonable actors as long as you deal with them politically, threats and violence have consistently failed.
Sadly, these are not viable options for America’s ruling Jewish elite. Washington would rather make a scene that disrupts global commerce over attempting to restrain Bibi and Ben Gvir. The limited and highly avoidable conflict with the Houthis is instead being used to call for a direct American attack on Iran, as a writer named Elliot Cohen recently suggested in The Atlantic. Dragging America into a wider regional war against the anti-Zionist Axis of Resistance (Iran, Houthis, Hezbollah, PMU in Iraq, and Syria) is a stated objective of many Jewish foreign policy leaders in the West, as well as the Benjamin Netanyahu government.
This puts the Biden administration in a no-win situation. Prosecuting a new Middle East war in an election year, even one limited to boots on the ground in Yemen, will basically guarantee the Democrats are voted out of power. Aside from the established perils of sending troops into mountains to fight Houthis, US forces stepping into the trap would weaken the deterrent to Hezbollah and other regional actors, which will put Israel’s existence at risk and force the US and UK to commit far more than expected.
Once a decision is made to escalate and mobilize a full American intervention in the Near East every geopolitical simmering pot the Washington empire is desperately trying to keep the lid on — Ukraine, Taiwan, and even some surprises like a new Korean war — will explode. This would spell the end of the liberal world order.
A war with Iran and its allies will extract a significant cost in American lives and economic power, yet if Joe Biden continues to show reluctance to fight Israel’s enemies more forcefully, his Jewish donor base will spend money to undermine him in 2024 and help elect someone (even Donald Trump) who will give them what they want. We will see the application of the Jewish sabotage strategy deployed against pliant Zionist George H.W. Bush’s re-election bid for the crime of merely deferring a decision on an outrageous Israeli demand.
That is not to suggest Biden is a dove. His administration is simply more prudent and seeking to exhaust every option before committing imperial suicide.
Here is a summary of some recent developments in the US/Israel proxy war with Iran and its allies.
1) Ship Interference/Yemen Strikes
Reporting on Biden’s decision to bomb the Houthis has indicated that the administration chose the hardest and most thorough of the optional responses drawn up for them by the Pentagon. In other words, the US is already throwing everything it has at the Houthis. Washington is contending with a dearth of actionable intelligence on the ground in North Yemen along with Houthi mobility. The rebels’ arsenal of cheap drones and alleged supply of intelligence about the ships they are hitting from Iran means that targeting their ballistic missile capabilities and radars from the air will have little impact on their abilities to punish the Israeli economy.
2) ISIS-K Attacks in Iran
Since the start of the Israel-Palestine war in October, the previously defunct terrorist group ISIS has suddenly come roaring back in Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. ISIS forces, despite professing Sunni Islam, have ignored Israel’s attacks on their fellow Sunnis in Gaza and instead decided to focus their belligerence on the Zionist state’s enemies.
This asymmetrical warfare has created problems thanks to Tehran’s porous borders. Earlier this month, a group of Central Asians affiliated with a so-called ISIS-K entered Iran and detonated suicide bombs in a crowd mostly composed of civilians, killing 100.
Iranian intelligence has publicly complained that ISIS’ violent and destabilizing activities are being funded and directed by the CIA, MI6 and especially Mossad, who they claim have given the group a shot in the arm in order to take attention off of the US and Israel while also providing an excuse to increase the American military presence in Middle Eastern countries.
Their accusation has sound evidence to support it. In 2021, the Wall Street Journal reported that “ISIS-K,” the offshoot of the Islamic state that appeared out of nowhere in Afghanistan in the spring of 2021 after the United States agreed to withdraw, is full of asymmetrical warfare experts and assassins that were trained by the CIA for use against the Taliban during the occupation.
The Iranians believe these men never stopped working for Israel and the US. According to their theory, this resurrection of ISIS in Afghanistan is a “stay-behind” used to recruit suggestible and illiterate zealots and direct them to destabilize the Taliban government and kill people in China and Iran.
3) Tit-For-Tat In Iraq and Syria
Earlier this month, the US assassinated the leader of the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Units, who have been increasing their pressure on American military bases in the country with drone attacks.
It is notable that the Iraqi government, who Washington is supposedly an ally of, has once again demanded that US forces leave and end the illegal practice of the New York Federal Reserve confiscating money made from Iraq’s oil sales. This is falling on deaf ears. The Biden administration is sending an extra 1,500 US soldiers to Iraq and Syria under the flimsy pretense of fighting ISIS.
Iran has responded to harassment from US and Israeli intelligence operatives using Kurdish controlled parts of Northern Iraq as their base with its own ballistic missile strike, which damaged the US consulate with its shockwaves. The Iranian attack killed Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizaiy, chairman of the Falcon Group, which serves as a massive real estate and military contracting firm intertwined with Israeli interests.
In a related action, they also bombed an ISIS training facility reportedly in US-occupied Syrian territory.
Washington and Israel have conveyed that they are not interested in any diplomatic solutions to the ongoing crisis. Iran and its allies seem ready to meet this challenge.
Is a new war in the Middle East imminent? Under normal circumstances, no. But the way US foreign policy works is not normal. The war is currently in its skirmish phase, but it is well underway.
Littoria is a free publication. If you enjoyed this article please support us by becoming a paid subscriber.
The All Father's Valkyrie wake him... "Famine and Pestilence have overtaken Midgard."
Odin rises, "Let us descend, my children. Our time has come, for I am War and you are Death."
I am recommending your work on The Duran