When Joe Biden gave the order for airstrikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, he was taking a step that now imperils one of the primary aims of his own Middle East policy – to prevent a regional war.
US and allied officials argue he had little choice. Diplomacy, back-door channels, signalling and threats had failed to halt relentless Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, which the Iranian-backed group has claimed are being carried out in solidarity with Gaza.
Container ships have been forced to reroute all the way around Africa, raising global transport costs and threatening to reverse the gains the Biden administration has made against inflation, just as his re-election campaign gets going.
Since the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel and the ferocious Israeli response against Gaza, the Biden administration has worked hard to contain the conflict, persuading the Israelis for example, not to carry out an all-out pre-emptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon. That has worked for now, but preventing escalation in the Red Sea is proving even harder.
A multinational naval coalition, Prosperity Guardian, launched on 18 December to protect shipping, has succeeded in intercepting almost all the drones and missiles the Houthis have hurled at the tankers plying the seas off Yemen, but each attempted strike costs the US and its allies many millions of dollars to defend against weapons that sometimes cost just thousands. And it would just require one Houthi projectile to pierce this shield to trigger a geopolitical and environmental disaster. On 13 December, for example, Houthi missiles narrowly missed a tanker carrying a vast cargo of jet fuel.
Rather than pulling back, Houthi attacks became bolder. On New Year’s Eve, Houthi fighters launched a daring assault on a container ship, the Maersk Hangzhou, racing towards it in four small boats. US ship-launched helicopters came to the ship’s protection, sinking three of the boats and killing the crews, bringing US forces into direct combat with the Houthis for the first time since the crisis began.
The next day, Biden convened his national security team to discuss options. According to administration officials, he ordered diplomats to focus on building consensus at the UN, leading to a security council resolution on Wednesday, upholding the right of free navigation and condemning the Houthi attacks.
Biden also wanted a continued expansion of Prosperity Guardian as a defensive measure and for detailed preparations to begin in earnest for an offensive response. Target lists were refined to maximise impact on Houthi capabilities while minimising potential civilian harm.
Houthis call the west’s bluff
Before any attacks were launched however, Biden insisted a final formal warning should be delivered, and on 3 January, the US and 13 of its allies issued a statement warning that the Houthis would “bear the responsibility of the consequences” if the attacks continued. It was left unspoken but abundantly clear that it would involve attacks on Houthi targets in Yemen.
The warning failed. On Tuesday, the Houthis launched one of the biggest salvoes to date, three missiles and up to 20 drones, against commercial shipping and the US-led naval force.
“As soon as the attack was defeated, the president again convened his national security team and was presented with military options for a collective response together with close partners,” a senior administration official said.
The defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, took part in the meeting via a secure link from the Walter Reed Military Medical Centre where he was being treated for prostate cancer. At the end of the meeting, Biden gave him the green light for the strikes which would be launched around 48 hours later.
The Pentagon and White House declined to give details on the number of air- and sea-launched missiles fired and the number of targets hit, but the attack seems to have been at the higher end of the range of options presented to Biden on Tuesday. Whether it will be enough to deter further attacks, officials refused to predict.
“This is about sending a message, but I think the key question is, if the message doesn’t get through, then what’s the next step that the US and the UK have at their disposal? Do they just bomb more targets? Do they bomb longer?” Gregory Johnsen, a non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, asked.
Administration officials said on Thursday night that if the Houthis could not be deterred, their capabilities could at least be degraded, missile sites could be blown up and command centres destroyed.
Johnsen pointed out that Houthis are accustomed to living and fighting under heavy bombardment. They assemble some of their missiles underground and deploy forces in civilian areas. “Saudi Arabia and the UAE [United Arab Emirates] bombed Yemen for several years and were unable to bring the Houthis to their knees,” Johnsen pointed out.
The US-UK strikes could paradoxically even strengthen the Houthis, some analysts argue, raising their profile in the Iran-led “axis of resistance” in an existential struggle with Israel and the west. It makes them a global player.
“The Houthis have been desperately waiting for 20 years to engage with ‘America and Israel’. Since 7 October, they recruited 45,000 fighters for the ‘battle of promised conquest and holy Jihad’,” Nadwa Dawsari, a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, said on social media. “Today the US and the UK made their dream come true.”
Risk of confrontation with Iran grows
The Houthis have continually defied expectations with their resilience. When the Saudis waded into the Yemeni civil war in 2015, they thought it would be over in a few weeks. Nine years on, they are desperate to stay out of a conflict that was an embarrassment for Riyadh and a catastrophe for Yemen, clinging to a truce agreed in April 2022.
Meanwhile, the civil conflict between the increasingly radical, mostly Shia Houthis, and a loose assortment of Sunni groups, the Presidential Leadership Council, continues.
The greatest fear is that in the aftermath of the overnight strikes, the US, the UK and their allies are a significant step closer to direct confrontation with Iran.
“Iran has been involved operationally in the conduct of these attacks,” a senior US administration official said on Thursday night. “They provided information and intelligence to the Houthis. They provided the Houthis the very capabilities that they have used to conduct these attacks.”
The official said the administration’s policy response would be to stick to the campaign of economic pressure and isolation the US has been leading against Iran for years. But any effort to blunt the Houthi threat to shipping is likely to require more, including aggressive action to stop the Houthis replenishing their arms supply, which in turn means stopping ships coming from Iran.
For now however, the US is planning for further strikes if the Houthis keep up their harassment of maritime trade, in the hope that at some point, they change their calculations of costs and benefits.
“This may or may not be the last word on the topic,” a US official said after the overnight strikes. “When we have more to say, or more to do, you will hear from us.”
