After half a year of conflict, the US has failed to dissuade Houthi rebels from attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea, while Yemeni fighters continue to sink commercial boats and disrupt global trade, posing an increasingly difficult challenge to the American military. , much larger.
Repeated US bombings of Houthi positions have done little to deter the Iran-backed group that has managed to employ advanced weapons such as surface drones and anti-ship ballistic missiles to disrupt US troops. And they have kept up the pace of attacks with more than 190 drone and missile launches since the effort began in late October.
Although the US has thwarted most Houthi attempts to damage merchant ships, Yemeni fighters have sunk or seriously damaged at least four commercial ships, along with hijacking one. They also killed four commercial sailors.
The last successful attack occurred on June 23, when the Houthis attacked the Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned merchant ship, the Trans World Navigator. The last ship to sink, another Greek-owned ship, the Tutor, occurred on 12 June.
Bruce Bennett, deputy senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, said the Houthis are being fueled by religious determination and a “political motivation” that embraces sacrifice, while their insurgent war, with weapons spread across Yemen, represents a great challenge.
“The US military was designed for regular warfare. It’s designed to eliminate an adversary that’s out there and targeted,” he said. “It’s really a very difficult type of military threat to control.”
The conflict’s impact on global trade only increases as it drags on. Earlier this month, the shipping industry sent a scathing condemnation of the Houthi attacks, calling it “an unacceptable situation” and pushing for stronger international action to ensure the attacks “stop now.”
Although the economic costs have largely been absorbed by the shipping industry and direct sellers, this could change.
Adnan Mazarei, a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who focuses on Middle Eastern and Central Asian economies, said traffic is down 50% in the Red Sea corridor. The impact is regional, he added, mainly affecting Egypt, which collects maritime revenue through the Suez Canal, along with the reduction in port traffic to countries such as Israel.
But a prolonged conflict could start to have an impact in other parts of the world, especially Europe, as rising transport costs fall on the average consumer. This could worsen significantly if a possible imminent war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon materializes, Mazarei added.
“Unless there is a war in Lebanon, we are in a somewhat stable situation,” he said. “It’s not a good situation, but I think things have stabilized a little bit.”
The Houthis launch drones and missiles daily from locations in Yemen, using fishing boats for radar tracking and relying on advanced weapons shipments and other target assistance from Iran.
The scope of their efforts has also expanded outside the maritime corridor, with the Houthis in recent months abducting dozens of United Nations aid workers, Human Rights Watch said. said in a new report.
The US Navy has been constantly on alert since full engagement began in January to quickly shoot down drones and launch counterattacks on the rebel group’s assets.
But the Houthis need only insert one drone or missile through defenses to cause damage, while the US cannot miss once or risk an attack, the commander said. Eric Blomberg with the USS Laboon, a destroyer that faced the Houthis, who told the Associated Press that people may not be aware of “how deadly serious what we are doing is and how endangered ships continue to be.”
The USS Eisenhower aircraft carrier strike group, made up of four ships and around 6,000 sailors, left the Middle East this month. The US is sending reinforcements to the region for the Eisenhower group, which has been deployed since October to prevent regional escalation and combat the Houthis.
Washington believes it can harm the rebels enough to impede the effectiveness of their campaign, although authorities are now highlighting the challenge of achieving that goal.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Wednesday that the Houthis “got a lot more wrong than they got right” because of the Navy’s surveillance.
Kirby explained that the US was focused on “taking away their ability to conduct attacks,” but also acknowledged that the Houthis remain determined and well-supplied, despite the military working to intercept Iranian boats bound for Yemen.
“They instilled this kind of religious fervor and made it kind of a cause célèbre, and when you do that, it becomes even more difficult,” he said. “We’re doing everything we can to try and decrease their capacity, but they’re still being supplied. They are still receiving resources from Iran.”
Bryan Clark, a senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Defense Concepts and Technology, said the U.S. could eliminate assembly and distribution centers in lieu of the main counterattack strategy at launch sites, but that increases the risk of target civilians.
“There are reasons why the U.S. chose to go after these targets,” he said of the launch sites, “but what that means is that the threat never really goes away and we are constantly in this defense game.”
The Navy is also spending a lot of resources on the fight, typically firing a $4 million surface-to-air missile to shoot down much cheaper Houthi drones.
The Biden administration says the cost of not defending commercial shipping would be much higher, but Clark said the strategy may not be sustainable.
“If this goes on for another year and the Navy doesn’t change its tactics, the Navy would be in trouble because it would start to run out of these interceptors that it’s using to shoot down the drones,” he said.
The Houthis, who control much of war-torn Yemen after years of fighting against the government, have disrupted about 12% of global trade flowing through the Red Sea. Yemen is situated on the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean.
Since December, commercial shipping companies have largely avoided the Red Sea, opting instead for the long route around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope, which is adding days to the journey and inflating costs. Ships crossing the Red Sea also face higher insurance costs and disruptions are reducing the amount of cargo transported.
According to Congressional Research ServiceHouthi attacks have also disrupted humanitarian aid flows in the Middle East and Africa region and, if the conflict continues, could contribute to inflation and “damage the global economy”.
Caroline Freund, dean of the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California San Diego, said the impact on the global economy remains small, but the true cost of the disruptions is unclear.
“It’s definitely contributing to higher transportation costs and potentially higher prices,” she said, “but not to the point where it can be observed without some kind of data analysis.”
In other efforts, Washington has designated the Houthis as specially designated global terrorists, which restricts funding sources but is not as severe as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designation. And the Treasury Department sanctions announced this month that targeted several individuals and entities that help supply the Houthis, including one person from China.
Republicans criticize the US failure to control the Houthis and have called for an FTO designation, which could imperil Washington’s desire to end the Houthi-Yemeni government’s civil war, now in a fragile ceasefire. Yemen’s economy, one of the poorest in the world, could also suffer from an FTO.
But Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the U.S. must issue an FTO designation to deter the Houthis and carry out more lethal attacks on weapons depots, accusing President Biden of making Americans “less safe.”
“When our country’s enemies go unpunished for attacking Americans and crippling the global economy, we are inviting them to continue their reckless and unbridled aggression,” he wrote in a statement. Thursday opinion piece.
It is unclear how to end the fighting. Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in May, the situation is unlikely to change with the Houthis and it was “possible” that they would continue to fight if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza.
Mohammed al-Basha, a Yemen expert at analytical firm Navanti Group, said the Houthis will likely continue to fight because they fight for influence, pointing to the group that has recently created networks in Somalia and Iraq.
“They are now seeing themselves more as a transnational movement [similar to] global freedom fighters. They are going far beyond Yemen,” he said. “The Houthis will continue to grow and be a thorn in the side of the international community.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
