Aggression by the Iran-backed Houthis continues unabated - analysis

The Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, better known as the Houthis, attacked a US Navy destroyer and two civilian vessels on Sunday. According to a statement by General Yahya Saree, the Houthis’s spokesman, “Triumphing for the oppressed Palestinian people and in retaliation for the American-British oppression against our country, the missile forces and naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out two military operations in the Red Sea as follows:

“The first targeted an American destroyer with a number of ballistic missiles. The second targeted the ship Captain Paris with a number of suitable naval missiles. The Unmanned Air Force carried out a third military operation as well, targeting the Happy Condor ship in the Arabian Sea, using a number of drones.”

These acts of aggression by the Iran-supported Shi’ite Islamist force, which controls most of the country’s coastline and its capital, Sana’a, are the latest in a campaign that commenced last November. The campaign has succeeded in severely disrupting shipping on the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea corridor, a vital global waterway. 

As of now, efforts by US and allied forces have succeeded in intercepting many attacks.

Houthis succeed in causing havoc and damage

This is testimony to the Houthis’s current success. It adds enormous costs to the maritime transport of goods, generating a knock-on effect on the global economy. 

The DIA report notes that the necessity of using an alternative route – namely, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, i.e., around Africa – adds “about 11,000 nautical miles, one to two weeks of transit time, and approximately $1 million in fuel costs for each voyage.”

The report also notes that “shipping via the Red Sea typically accounts for approximately 10-15% of international maritime trade.” The DIA document goes on to observe that “insurance premiums for Red Sea transits have risen to “0.7-1.0% of a ship’s total value, compared to less than 0.1% prior to December 2023.”

An Axios report that quotes the DIA document notes that the US Navy has so far spent $1 billion in munitions as it contends with the Houthis’s campaign of aggression in the Red Sea. 

The southern port of Eilat, meanwhile, has been effectively closed since November. The ports of Ashdod and Haifa continue to ensure the flow of international trade to Israel. But the closure of Eilat’s port has had a severe effect on the city’s economy. The city has also, of course, been targeted by the Houthis’s ballistic missiles as part of the same campaign. 

Regarding Ashdod and Haifa, it is worth noting that another Iranian ally, Hezbollah, possesses advanced anti-ship missiles supplied by the Iranians. If the Israel-Lebanon front descends into open conflict, as seems likely, this will probably have a maritime component as well as a land one, with implications for trade for Israel’s Mediterranean ports. 

THE GULF of Aden/Red Sea arena shares an additional component with the Israel/Lebanon front: it is the pro-Iranian side, in both cases, that has taken the initiative, with the Iran-associated element initiating the current round of conflict. 

The US and its allies in the Red Sea, and Israel vis a vis Lebanon, are seeking to defend against the aggression. Given their greater conventional capacities, the US and Israel have scored considerable tactical successes. 

But, in both cases, these have not translated into anything resembling strategic achievement. Rather, the strategic initiative remains in the hands of the pro-Iranian element. In the Lebanon/Israel context, Hezbollah has succeeded in imposing an emptying out of Israel’s border communities. 

In the Red Sea area, the Houthis have essentially hijacked a key artery of global maritime trade and show no signs of relinquishing control of it. Clifford May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, noted in a recent interview that the key and problematic dynamic is one in which the US is following a defensive strategy.

This has high costs and has not persuaded the adversary to desist. It also projects an image of weakness and lack of will. 

What lies behind this problematic stance? Global media coverage continues to focus on Israel’s fight with Hamas, treating the Gaza war as a single-front conflict. From this point of view, the Red Sea front and the other arenas are sideshows, which will (as the Houthis and Hezbollah make clear) fall silent when the Gaza war ends. 

This perspective has been accepted by the West. As a result, an effort is underway simply to contain the aggression on these other fronts. 

To accept this framing of the conflict, however, is to concede the advantage to the pro-Iran camp. The current conflict is the debut of the alliance that Tehran has been busy assembling in the region since the early 1980s, and with renewed vigor over the last decade. It is currently engaged, in a partial but very consequential way, on three fronts in addition to Gaza: the Red Sea, Lebanon, and Syria/Iraq. 

The Lebanon front involves a confrontation with Israel. The Red Sea and Syria/Iraq, meanwhile, involve an Iranian client (the Houthis, Iraq’s Shi’ite militias) targeting Israel, but also hitting Western targets. 

At present, therefore, the issue being tested is not only Israel’s ability to respond effectively to Hamas’s October 7 assault. 

Rather, the broader test is whether Iran’s carefully built alliance of heavily supported Islamist militias can impose its will on the region and the West at a time and place of its choosing, or whether the West and its allies can successfully push back against such attempts. 

At the moment, as exemplified in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the verdict is that the Iranians can activate their proxies at minimal or no cost to themselves, achieve a severe disruption with implications for the global economy, force the US to spend a billion dollars on ordnance, and incur no major cost, either to themselves or to their proxies.