Three principles to handle the Houthis
Three principles to handle the Houthis
The Houthi threat to global freedom of navigation is an easy target that Biden should take the opportunity to knock down.
It is becoming increasingly clear from Beltway reporting that a longer, sustained campaign to displace the increasingly brazen Houthi threat to maritime commerce is afoot. The details are not yet clear, but I think that an American campaign is justified and should adhere to the following three principles:
No American boots on the ground in Yemen.
No aspirations of regime change in Yemen.
The goals of the campaign should be limited to destroying the Houthis’ ability to disrupt shipping and destroy Iran’s supply lines to the Houthis.
A campaign that adheres to these principles should be politically feasible, if not outright popular. Iran is wildly unpopular in the United States, (82% of Americans view Iran unfavorably) so the campaign should be explicitly framed as a limited action to displace Iranian interests.
(Unemployed) talking heads like Mehdi Hasan may try and demagogue the question, but the general tone of their proclamations (how many Americans know who the Houthis were until recently) reveals a strength for the Biden administration - a fight against a largely unknown and fundamentally weak enemy is easy to frame for a domestic audience.
To return to the third principle, the meat and potatoes of the campaign should be as follows:
Preemptively strike and disable Houthi launch sites that are being used to target commercial shipping through the Bab el Mandeb strait and US/British naval personnel in the Red Sea.
Destroy as much of the Houthi radar array as possible since that is used to inform their offensive operations in the Red Sea.
Ground and destroy the (tiny) Houthi air force.
Disrupt Iranian arms smuggling to Yemen, which occurs by both sea and land, and completely cut off the Houthis from their financial and military backers in Tehran.
Enforce all existing sanctions against Iranian oil shipping and intercept their ghost armada, the revenue of which is used to fund terror not only in Yemen but also in Syria and Iraq where Iran-backed terrorist groups routinely target American troops.
The initial 10-day campaign by the British and American air forces to deter further attacks in the Red Sea has failed to achieve its purpose. This isn’t the “fault” of Biden or Sunak or any other leader - it was a hypothesis that was tried, and it didn’t work. So now, it is time to try something new and bolder.
It is important to stick to these principles and explicitly limit the scope of operations because that is how we avoid being sucked into protracted and wasteful wars that Americans are rightly skeptical of, especially those in the Middle East.
Is there an “exit strategy” to this plan? Sure - simply removing our naval and air assets from the region once our objective of restoring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea is achieved. Not having boots on the ground is a good limiting principle to rebut the exit strategy argument from defeatists. There are no reasons to compare this campaign to the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq other than being in the same general region, which is not a meaningful point.
The Houthi excuses for their terrorism in the Red Sea are weak. Israel’s campaign in Gaza is clearly just a flimsy pretext as many non-Israeli ships have been targeted with raids and missile strikes.
The Houthis are just one of the many tentacles that make up the Iranian octopus-like threat to regional stability and American interests. Hitting the head of the octopus may not be in the cards at the moment, but there is growing support, particularly from European countries that are most affected by the shipping disruption, to take a hefty shot at one of the tentacles, and doing so while fulfilling our duty to protect global commerce is clearly in America’s interests.