The escalation in the Red Sea, a lifeline for the Houthis and Israel

This Sunday, as we mark 100 days since the massive attack by Hamas and the subsequent Israeli bombings in Gaza, where the majority of the population is now displaced and hundreds of thousands struggle to eat even one meal a day, the world's attention will be more than almost 400 kilometers from the Strip: Yemen. There, the Armed Forces of the United States and the United Kingdom killed at least five people on Friday when they launched 73 bombings against positions linked to the Huthi rebel militia. It was the response to the most intense of the 27 attacks that it had launched since November against ships crossing the Bab el Mandeb Strait, in the Red Sea, in retaliation for the Israeli invasion of Gaza. A day later, in the early hours of this Saturday, the US army carried out another, smaller one and without causing injuries, near the Sana'a airport, used by the rebels to launch projectiles against merchant ships.

The two attacks have increased both the geographical space and the number of actors in the conflict and, therefore, their explosive potential. The dynamic suits the Houthis, by fueling their discourse of challenge to the West and true defenders of the Palestinian cause in the Arab world, thanks to their strategic ability to alter a key global maritime trade route, forcing ships to circumnavigate all of Africa. . It also benefits Israel: its main ally, the United States, is directly involved against a group supported with money and weapons by the common enemy, Tehran, and the focus of attention moves away from the Strip, where the bombings have decreased in intensity, but They still kill at least a hundred people every day (135, this Saturday).

Huthi militia spokesman Nasruldeen Amer assured Al Jazeera television that the latest attack “will receive a firm, strong and effective response.” Hans Grundberg, UN special envoy for Yemen, a country in which 80% of the population needs humanitarian aid, has expressed his “serious concern” about the “increasingly precarious regional context” and asked “to avoid those actions that worsen the situation in the country, increase the threat to maritime trade routes or further fuel regional tensions at this critical time.”

The decision to attack Houthi targets in Yemen was not made lightly in Washington. If there is something that the Joe Biden Administration does not want, it is to be dragged into a conflict in the Middle East with unpredictable consequences months before an election where a new mandate is at stake. The green light was preceded by weeks of deliberations by the president with his team, including during the vacation days he spent with his family. This Saturday, Biden indicated that his country sent a message to Iran about the actions of its allied rebel militia: “We sent it privately and we are confident that we are prepared.”

Washington insists that it does not want an open confrontation with the Houthis, much less with Iran. Neither does Tehran, explains Kirsten Fontenrose, from the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative think tank. “He has no reason to accentuate his links with this conflict or with the Houthis at this time,” considers the expert. It is already achieving its strategic goals without the need for direct intervention: the United States' popularity in the world is declining and the push to normalize relations between Israel and new Arab countries has faded, she argues.

It is Israel that has dragged its ally into involvement, after weeks “trying to open a new front” with its attacks against positions of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, in Syria, and of Hamas and Hezbollah, in Lebanon, in the opinion of Ignacio Álvarez-Ossorio , specialist in the Middle East and professor of Arab and Islamic Studies at the Complutense University of Madrid. The expert considers that the expansion of the conflict “benefits” the Jewish State because it puts Washington in the fray with one of Iran's satellites and “displaces the attention of the international community”, which “gives it a boost of oxygen to continue its plans in Gaza.” “In some way, many countries are entering a trap, because this does not benefit Western interests, but Israeli interests,” says the expert by videoconference.

The expansion of the battlefield also reinforces Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's account of the conflict in Gaza as a broader struggle between “the forces of light and those of darkness,” in which Israel would be the spearhead. of the former (represented by the West) and Iran would lead the latter. More and more Israeli commentators fear that Netanyahu – sinking in the polls and facing many questions about his policy towards Gaza in the years before the attack – will seek to prolong the race for personal rather than national interests. According to a survey published this Friday by the newspaper Maariv, 63% of the population wants early elections. It would not be Netanyahu who would win, but Benny Gantz, who was in the opposition until he entered the concentration government formed in October. expressly for the war.

Houthi attacks began in November. In theory, against merchant ships owned or flagged by Israel or that had the country as their destination or origin. In addition to those they have wrongly included in those categories, they have ended up harassing other vessels, so the main shipping companies avoid passage. In the last two months of 2023, the number of containers that travel the route each day fell by 66%, from 500,000 to 200,000, due to assaults in a sea that collects 30% of the world's container traffic. Now, ships circumnavigate Africa through Cape New Hope, which has increased freight rates by 170%.

After weeks of rising tension, Tuesday marked a turning point. The Yemeni movement launched its biggest attack. The UN Security Council passed a resolution a day later ordering the Houthis to immediately cease their harassment. The White House's demands for the rebel group to stop its hostile acts had fallen on deaf ears. If he did not take forceful measures, he felt that he risked losing credibility and deterrence power in the area. In the early hours of Friday, US and British forces attacked anti-aircraft surveillance systems, radars and arsenals of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles in different parts of Yemen under the control of the Houthi rebels. The price of a barrel of Brent crude rose more than two dollars, although it later fell by half as fears of a supply cut dissipated.

This is, in the opinion of Ibrahim Jalal, an expert on the Gulf, what the Houthis were hoping for “to gain even more popular support, to exploit the undeniable pro-Palestinian and anti-foreign intervention sentiments for their political purposes.”

Gerald M. Feierstein, former US diplomat and Middle East expert at the Middle East Institute think tank, agrees. He sees in “the Houthis' effort to enter the Gaza conflict” an ambition to “strengthen their support base in the country and cement their movement more firmly in the so-called 'axis of resistance', to which Hezbollah and Hezbollah also belong. Hamas. He wins points even among his detractors. Even more s
o when its enemy, the internationally recognized Government of Yemen, has talked more about the attacks on shipping in the Red Sea than about the deaths in Gaza. On Friday, hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in the Houthi-held capital Sanaa to protest the bombings of Washington and London.

Last Wednesday, the Arab Center for Research and Political Studies, based in Qatar, published an analysis of public opinion in 16 Arab countries regarding the war in Gaza. The results show 69% solidarity with the Palestinians and support for Hamas. Another 23% only support their Gazan brothers, but reject the Islamist movement that launched the October attack, which left some 1,200 dead. On the contrary, 94% criticize the position of the United States (which vetoes a ceasefire and finances and arms Israel) in the crisis. 82%, in fact, define it as very bad. Iran, despite regional rivalries and differences between the Sunni and Shiite axes, does not fare badly, with 37% approval and 48% condemnation.

The US military intervention has raised alarm in other Middle Eastern countries to which it could spread and which host pro-Iranian militias hostile to Israel. “We strongly denounce attempts to expand the war, and affirm that fiery adventures, in this case, can burn us all,” said Iraqi President Abdellatif Rashid. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lebanon – in whose south the Hezbollah militia maintains daily clashes with the Israeli army that in other circumstances would have led to open war – expressed in a statement its “extreme concern about the latest escalation, military operations at sea Red and the aerial bombardments against Yemeni territory”, as well as his fear that it “will spread to the entire Middle East.”

Concern has also arisen in the United States that the conflict will escalate. Democratic parliamentarian Elisa Slotkin, a former member of her country's intelligence services, pointed out on the social network . “We should be worried about a regional escalation,” said the legislator, who has supported Thursday's military action. “Iran uses groups like the Houthis to fight its battles, to be able to deny that it has any hand in the matter and to avoid a direct confrontation with the United States or others… This has to stop, and I hope that [Teherán] understood the message.”

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