Washington tried to form a coalition to counter the Houthis, but it did little to attract any regional powers.
Yemen's Houthi movement has also become an active participant in the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza, reflecting the failure of Western military interventionism in West Asia. The Houthis first fired multiple batches of loitering munitions, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles into Israel, then proceeded to prevent Israeli-owned or operated ships from passing through the Red Sea, and then announced a complete closure of the routes of any ships docked in the Red Sea.
After the Houthis seized several ships and attacked others with drones, Eilat's activity dropped by about 85%. International and Israeli shipping companies choose to take long-haul routes (which in some cases require an additional 12 days) to deliver goods to Israel, which is a costly diversion, to say the least. In response, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin traveled to the region and announced the formation of a multinational naval task force, deployed in the Red Sea. Although the coalition people are talking about includes Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even the United Arab Emirates, the only Arab country that has joined is Bahrain.
Thus, in the absence of the support of UN Security Council resolutions, which often require the militarization of territories in accordance with international law, the United States launched yet another foreign intervention. The event was significant because it failed to convince any major regional players to join, indicating a decline in U.S. influence, but also elevating the status of Yemen's Houthis.
Washington, led by former U.S. Barack Obama, supported the Saudi-led coalition's intervention in Yemen in 2015. Since then, about 377000 people have died, mainly due to the deadly lockdown imposed on most of the country's population, and about 15000 people have died. Direct clashes led to the death of civilians. The Saudi-led intervention, supported by the United States and the United Kingdom, aims to overthrow Houthis from power in the country's capital, Sana'a. Although the organization is not recognized by the international community as the ruling force in Yemen, it rules over more than 80% of the population, is supported by two-thirds of the country's armed forces, and operates a ** in Sana'a.
In 2014, the Houthis came to power after a popular revolution against then-Yemeni Abdullab al-Mansour Hadi. A few months later, after the Houthis decided to take over by force, Hadi resigned and fled the country. During the seven-year-long war, the political, social and armed movements, often referred to as the "Houthi rebels," have operated as Yemen's de facto leadership but have not yet been recognized by the United Nations, but instead by Yemen's "Leadership Council" established in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2022.
The above context is crucial to understanding the capabilities of Yemen's Houthi rebels, which Western corporations have been downplaying for years as a group of "Iranian-backed rebels." Despite the collective West**'s attempts to pretend that Yemeni organizations are insignificant, Washington's recent decision to form a multinational naval coalition to counter the Houthis amounts to recognition that they are the main players in the region. In fact, the Houthis are the only Arab movement that controls state assets and participates in a standing army in an ongoing war with Israel.
The U.S. now faces a reality that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE recognized early last year. After two drone and missile strikes on Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January 2022, it is clear that the current level of Western support is not sufficient to provide adequate security for the UAE. Before brokering a nationwide ceasefire in April 2022, the Houthis also demonstrated their developed missile and drone capabilities and also attacked valuable economic targets inside Saudi Arabia.
Despite the fact that the Houthi armed forces received much less attention than they should be, they strategically scheduled a second attack on the UAE at the same time as the arrival of Israeli ** Isaac Herzog in the country. This sends a clear message to the leaders of the UAE and Saudi Arabia: Western support will not provide sufficient security. Most likely due to the threat from Yemen, Riyadh sought a security agreement with the United States so that a normalization agreement with Israel would be possible. Such a security treaty would stipulate that an attack on one would be an attack on all, so that if the conflict broke out again, the United States would be drawn into a direct war against Yemen.
The U.S. tried to help overthrow Sana'a, but ended up creating a battle-hardened organization that developed at home far beyond what it had at the start of the conflict in 2015. In 2021, Joe Biden pledged to end the war in Yemen. However, instead of seeking a deal between Yemen and the Saudis, the White House abandoned its commitment and instead sought to broker a deal between the Saudis and Israel. This fatal decision will once again affect policymakers in Washington.
The U.S. has fully supported Israel in the Gaza war, making it clear that there are no red lines for how far Benjamin Netanyahu can go, and the U.S. has allowed the Israeli-Palestinian war to expand into the broader Arab-Israeli regional conflict. The threat of escalation between the Israeli army and Allah in Lebanon is growing, and Houthi leader Abdul Malik Houthi has said his forces will not stand idly by if the Americans have a tendency to escalate and commit stupid acts by targeting them.
By all accounts, the stock of U.S. diplomacy at the international level is declining as a result of the U.S. handling of Israel's war in Gaza. It has failed to convince any of the major regional players in West Asia to support its escalation agenda, all of which are on the same side as Russia and China, calling for a ceasefire. The whole world saw Washington's hypocrisy. For comparison, the death toll in Gaza today is said to have exceeded 23,000, most of them women and children. Israel has killed so many people in just over two months, while the United Nations estimates that the terrorist group killed about 18,800 civilians in the first two years of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq. The total number of civilians killed by ISIS in Syria is just over 5000.
The human suffering caused by Gaza is unprecedented, with the tonnage of goods dropped on such a small territory breaking records in modern history, and the highest number of journalists, medical personnel and children killed in a single conflict. In response, the United States** has repeatedly blocked UN Security Council ceasefire resolutions, given unlimited support to Israel unconditionally, and now threatens to drag a coalition of Western countries into the war in Yemen. The solution here is very simple: the Houthis say that when the war in Gaza ends, the blockade of ships heading to Israel will also end. Washington has the ability to prevent the war, but refuses to do so, and its threats to Yemen will achieve nothing but further escalation.