On January 1, 2024, Israel was hit by 20 rockets fired by the Qassam Brigades, a Hamas militant group, the first large-scale attack on Israeli territory by Hamas since the outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on October 7 last year. This incident shows that Hamas has not given up its counterattack against Israel, but has adopted a strategy of guerrilla warfare under the strong offensive of the Israeli army, using the tunnels and urban terrain of the Gaza Strip to wage a war of attrition. The Israeli military is also aware that long-term fighting and planning are needed to end this war, so it is adjusting and training its combat units to deal with a possible long-term war.
The spillover effects of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have also brought a serious crisis to the Red Sea shipping lanes. The Yemeni Houthis, as Iran's leading people in the Middle East, have been supporting the people of Palestine and the Gaza Strip against the policies of Israel and the United States. In order to express their position, Yemen's Houthi rebels repeatedly attacked merchant ships in their passage in the waters of the Red Sea, even at the expense of exchanging fire with the US Navy. The most recent incident occurred on December 31, when Yemen's Houthi rebels attacked a merchant ship called Maersk Hangzhou, resulting in a U.S. Navy sortie, sinking three armed speedboats and killing 10 Houthi members. It was the first time the United States had killed a member of the Houthis in Yemen and a new climax in the crisis of the Red Sea shipping lanes.
The United States and Britain are very unhappy about this, and they believe that the actions of the Houthis in Yemen threaten the security of the Red Sea shipping lanes and affect their interests in the Middle East. As a result, they jointly issued an "ultimatum" demanding that the Yemeni Houthis stop attacking merchant ships or face military action. British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps also warned that the UK will have to take "necessary and appropriate action" if Yemen's Houthis continue to threaten the "lives and **" of ships in the Red Sea. However, Yemen's Houthis did not heed the "ultimatum" of the United States and Britain, and their spokesman, Yahya Sareya, confirmed the attack on the "Maersk Hangzhou" merchant ship, while also saying that it was "solidarity and support for the Palestinian people" and that they would not stop supporting the humanitarian obligations of Palestine and the Gaza Strip.
In such a situation, Iran did not sit idly by, but sent a frigate named "Alborz" to pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and enter the Red Sea on January 1. Although this frigate is very old, its appearance is undoubtedly a kind of Iranian support and encouragement for the Houthis in Yemen. Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has stressed the need for Iran's navy to strengthen and maintain its presence in international waters, and the dispatch into the Red Sea may be aimed at achieving that goal. However, Iran's move may not be of much help to resolve the crisis in the Red Sea lanes, because the protagonists of the Red Sea are still the Houthis in Yemen and the United States and their allies, and Iran is only symbolically expressing its attitude and will not directly participate in the fighting.
The root cause of the crisis in the Red Sea shipping lanes is actually the escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which in turn is due to Israel's inhumane methods against the people of Palestine and the Gaza Strip, which have led to their resistance and hatred. In order to protect its interests in the Middle East, the United States does not hesitate to form an alliance to exert pressure on Yemen's Houthi rebels, but in doing so, it will only make the Red Sea shipping crisis more difficult to resolve and may even lead to a larger conflict. The ancients said, "There is no greater misfortune than discontentment, and no greater blame than desire", which means that there is no more serious calamity than discontentment, and the greed of the United States will eventually make them unable to extricate themselves.