Are the Houthis Gaining the Upper Hand?

On November 14, 2023, a month into Israel’s genocidal attack on the Palestinians in Gaza, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, one of the leaders of Ansar Allah and of the government of Yemen, delivered a speech that was broadcast on Al-Masirah television. “Our eyes are open to constant monitoring and searching for any Israeli ship,” he said. “The enemy relies on camouflage in its movement in the Red Sea, especially in Bab al-Mandab, and [does] not dare to raise Israeli flags on its ships.” The Bab al-Mandab, the Gate of Grief, is the 14-nautical-mile wide waterway between Djibouti and Yemen. What is interesting is that, by United Nations treaty, a country claims 12 nautical miles as its territorial limit; this means a large part of the waters are within Yemen’s jurisdiction.

Five days later, Yemeni commandos flew in a helicopter over Galaxy Leader, a cargo ship that is registered in the Bahamas and is operated by the Japanese NYK shipping line but that is partially owned by Abraham Ungar (one of Israel’s richest men). The ship continues to be held within Yemen’s territorial waters in the port of Saleef, with its 25 crew members as hostages in Al-Hudaydah governorate. This assault on Galaxy Leader, and then on several other Israeli-owned vessels, halted the traffic of goods to the Port of Eliat, which sits at the end of the Gulf of Aqaba. Squeezed between Egypt and Jordan, this port, which is the only non-Mediterranean Sea access for Israel, no longer has the level of cargo ships that it had before October 2023 and the private operator of the port has said it is almost bankrupt. Over the course of the past year, the port has been hit by drone and missile strikes emanating from Bahrain, Iraq, and Yemen.

U.S. Strikes Are Not Working

Yemen’s government said that it would desist from any attack if Israel stopped its genocidal war against the Palestinians. Since the Israeli attack continues, Yemen’s attacks have also continued. These Yemeni attacks have provoked massive assaults on Yemen’s already fragile infrastructure—including an Israeli attack on Yemen’s port city of Hodeidah in July and punctual missile attacks by the United States. When U. S. President Joe Biden was asked if the U. S. airstrikes and missile strikes on Yemen were working, he answered bluntly: “When you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No. Are they going to continue? Yes.” In other words, Yemen’s government—erroneously called the Houthis after the Zaydi tradition of Islam followed by a quarter of the Yemeni population—is not going to cease its attacks on Israel just because the U.S. and the Israelis have been hitting their country. Yemeni opposition to the Israeli genocide exceeds the Zaydi community, the Ansar Allah movement, and the Yemeni government. Even Tawakkol Karman, who received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 2011 and is a critic of the Yemeni government, has been vocal in her criticism of Israel.

Biden’s admission that the U.S. missile strikes will not stop Yemen from its attacks has been accurate. Yemen faced a murderous bombardment from Saudi Arabia from 2015 to 2023, with the Saudis destroying large parts of the infrastructure in Yemen. And yet, the Yemenis have maintained the ability to strike Israeli targets. In October 2024, the United States military deployed B-2 Spirit bombers to hit what the Pentagon called, “five underground targets.” It was not clear if these weapons depots were destroyed, but it does show the increasing desperation of the U.S. and Israel to stop the Yemeni attacks. The names of the U.S. missions (Operation Prosperity Guardian and Operation Poseidon Archer) sound impressive. They are backed by a roster of carrier strike groups to protect Israel and to hit Yemen as well as groups that attempt to deter Israel’s genocide. There are at least 40,000 U.S. troops in the Middle East and at any given time at least one carrier strike group with aircraft carriers and destroyers. According to the U.S. Navy, there are two destroyers in the Mediterranean Sea (USS Bulkeley and USS Arleigh Burke) and two in the Red Sea (USS Cole and USS Jason Dunham), with Carrier Strike Group 8, anchored by the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, en route to the Mediterranean as USS Abraham Lincoln goes off to the Pacific Ocean. There is a considerable amount of U.S. firepower in the area around Israel.

A Political Solution

Biden has not been the only person to say that the U.S. attacks on Yemen have failed. U. S. Vice Admiral George Wikoff, who leads Operation Prosperity Guardian, addressed an audience in Washington, D.C. from his headquarters in Bahrain in August. Wikoff said that the United States cannot “find a centralized center of gravity” for the Yemenis, which means that it cannot apply “a classic deterrence policy.” If the United States cannot strike fear into the leadership of the Yemeni government, then it cannot halt the Yemeni attacks on Israeli shipping or infrastructure. “We have certainly degraded their capability,” Wikoff said referring to the drones and missiles shot down by the U.S. weapons. Wikoff did not mention that each of the Yemeni missiles and drones cost about $2,000, while the U.S. missiles used to shoot them down cost $2 million. In the end, the Yemenis might be the ones degrading the U.S. military (the Wall Street Journal reported in October that the U.S. is running low on air-defense missiles, and the same paper reportedin June that the U.S. had spent $1 billion on its war on Yemen since October 2023). Like Biden, Wikoff reflected: “Have we stopped them? No.” In an interesting aside, Wikoff said, “The solution is not going to come at the end of a weapon system.”

As far as the Yemeni government is concerned, the only solution will come when Israel ceases its genocide. But even a ceasefire might not be sufficient. In early November, the United Nations official Louise Wateridge posted a video on X of the desolation in northern Gaza, and then wrote, “An entire society now a graveyard.” The ability of the Yemeni government to cease shipping to Israel and to pin down the United States off its coast might embolden it to continue with this if Israel continues its illegal policies of genocide, ethnic cleansing, and apartheid. Both Wikoff and Biden agree that the U.S. policy has not worked, and Wikoff even said that the solution is not going to be through military force. It will have to be political.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

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