Last week, the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, better known as the Houthis, claimed to have downed a US-made MQ-9 drone over Yemen’s Marib Province, a key and contested oil and gas-rich area of the country. The US dismissed the claim. The dismissal notwithstanding, US and British aircraft carried out strikes against Houthi targets over the Hodaidah area of Yemen.
The latest exchanges of fire reflect the curious dynamic that governs the undeclared (and largely ignored) war between the Iran-supported Shia Islamist movement and the US and UK.
In every round of fighting, the Western allies demonstrate an obvious tactical superiority over their opponents. Yet for all this, the Houthis continue to enjoy the strategic advantage. Their nine-month drone and missile campaign against shipping on the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea route has succeeded in imposing a near complete closure of this route for commercial traffic. So how have the rag-tag rulers of a dusty stretch of Yemen and their Iranian backers managed to enforce their will on a key global maritime trade route? And what does this imply for the future?
First, a few facts and figures: the Houthi campaign against shipping on the Gulf of Aden/Red Sea route started in November. It forms an element of a partial but significant mobilisation by the Iranians of assets across the region in support of the Hamas war effort in Gaza.
Hamas’s leaders may have expected that the Iranians would launch all-out war to save their Gaza enclave from destruction. That hasn’t happened. The Sunni Hamas occupies a fairly lowly place among the hierarchy of Islamist militias supported and nurtured by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The Iranians are smart enough to know not to sacrifice castles and knights to save a pawn. Nevertheless, since October 2023 they have induced their various proxies to engage in limited but significant shows of support for their beleaguered Gaza colleagues.
The array of activities includes Lebanese Hezbollah’s ongoing attacks on Israel’s north, which has turned 60,000 Israelis into refugees in their own country. The more than 150 attacks on US forces deployed in Iraq and Syria since October 2023 constitute an additional element.
But it is the Houthis’ terrorising of commercial shipping that has been of most consequence. Indeed, in its impact (though not in the cost in human lives) it is of more strategic significance than the Gaza war itself, which triggered it.
According to a report by the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), container shipping passing through the Red Sea had declined by 90 per cent three months into the Houthis’ campaign, and has stayed at the same level in subsequent months. Prior to November 2023 (when the attacks began) that route had accounted for 10 to 15 per cent of total global maritime trade. The alternate route around the African continent adds 11,000 nautical miles to the journey, extending travel times by two weeks and adding $1 million in fuel costs per trip.
Yet despite the extra costs, companies evidently prefer the safety that the longer journey around Africa brings. Twenty-nine major companies have chosen to cease routing through the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea. Israel’s Eilat port, meanwhile, which depends entirely on shipping passing along the Red Sea, has been effectively shuttered.
The Houthis have been able to register this unprecedented disturbance to international shipping because of the hesitant and partial nature of the international response. The USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Force went steaming down to the Red Sea in November. Its grim grey ships were no doubt supposed to make the Houthis think again. They haven’t. Once the mainly defensive nature of the US-led effort became apparent, the impact receded.
The Houthis understand that while the US Navy will effectively defend itself, and seek also to defend commercial ships, it will undertake no significant retaliation against the attackers. Once this became clear, there was no particular reason for the Houthis to cease attacks and they have not done so. The result? US and British ships are still deployed, carrying out their defensive mission with great tactical success. And the route remains closed.
For as long as the West fails to grasp that trying to avoid confrontation with Iran and its proxies only has the result of encouraging further aggression, this Houthi success will stand, forming an example and an incentive for similar activities on other fronts.
Karl Marx said that history repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce. Our own historical period, however, manages to combine aspects of both. Supplying the farcical element to the Houthis’ triumph on the Red Sea are the movement’s new found Western supporters in London and elsewhere, with their chants of “Yemen, Yemen, make us proud, turn another ship around.”
The ultra-conservative Houthis have established themselves as a kind of royal family in the zones they control. Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the dominant member of the family, is the absolute ruler in these areas. A network of Houthi family members supervises and controls all aspects of the administration.
The Houthis have reintroduced the practice of slavery in these areas.
The movement’s central slogan is openly antisemitic, calling for “death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.”
Absolute monarchy, the practice of slavery and open antisemitism are apparently no longer enough to prevent excited cheerleading from London’s progressive set. As long as you’re fighting against Israel. As I said, farcical.
But the tragic element, whereby a brutally repressive, third- rate militia can impose its will on one of the world’s main waterways, despite the active opposition of the most powerful navies in the world, deserves greater attention. Come to think of it, maybe there’s an element of farce in that aspect, too.
