Within days of the unprecedented massacre of Israelis by the Iran-backed terror group Hamas, Iranian cutouts across the Middle East embarked on a campaign of terrorism targeting Western assets and the symbols of American geopolitical dominance. But while the Israelis retaliated against Iranian proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah and U.S. forces occasionally responded in kind to the dozens of attacks on U.S. forces by Iran-backed Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, the Houthis in Yemen were the exception. Even as that insurgent militia crippled international shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden and drafted Western naval assets into a full-time effort to interdict its attacks, the Houthis faced no repercussions. That is, until last night.
On Thursday, the United States and its allies conducted a coordinated series of strikes on 60 targets in 16 Houthi-controlled locations in Yemen involving roughly 100 precision-guided munitions. The targets included munitions depots, air-defense and radar installations, weapons-production facilities, the systems used to launch missiles and drones at naval assets and maritime commercial traffic, and the Houthis’ command-and-control nodes.
The strikes were a long time coming, as a statement attributed to Joe Biden conceded. “More than 50 nations have been affected in 27 attacks on international shipping,” the president observed. “Crews from more than 20 countries have been threatened or taken hostage in acts of piracy.” The president’s necessary, albeit reluctant, response to Houthi aggression is a welcome development. But what took so long?
The joint assault was reportedly carried out by U.S. aircraft, ships, and submarines in the region. British naval assets and warplanes stationed in Cyprus joined in the mission. The strikes were reportedly supported by Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands, but their contributions seem to have been limited to auxiliary roles like intelligence-sharing. Most member states in the coalition assembled to participate in Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational naval operation purportedly tasked with restoring security in the Red Sea, did not participate in these strikes. The U.S. and U.K. assets that did take part have been operating in the region for months defending themselves and commercial interests from Houthi assaults, so we cannot conclude that the White House’s delayed response was necessary to build a multinational consensus in support of this operation. In the end, as is so often the case, the Americans and the British did the heavy lifting.
Previously, the White House’s passivity was attributed to the Biden administration’s concerns that striking Houthi targets risked triggering a wider conflict in the region, but that, too, is unsatisfying. The wider conflict in the region has been a fact of life since early October of last year. The administration’s actions on Thursday night merely constitute an acknowledgment of the ongoing conflict’s existence.
Occasionally, administration officials would share with reporters conflicting diplomatic rationales that supposedly justified their passivity. The administration was, we were told, leery of engaging in a conflict against the Houthis when it had committed itself to condemning Saudi Arabia’s conduct in its war against the Yemeni terrorist group. After all, the Biden White House stripped the Houthis of their terrorist designation early in the president’s tenure as part of its effort to isolate Riyadh. Sometimes, reporters were told that the White House’s reluctance was an act of deference to the Saudis, who wanted nothing more than to preserve a tenuous truce with the Houthi rebels. Thursday night’s strikes indicate that neither of these rationalizations bind the Biden White House, if they ever did.
Another outstanding question is whether this tailored, punitive response to Iran-sponsored Houthi aggression will restore deterrence around the Horn of Africa. The total absence of any reference to Iran in the president’s statement announcing these strikes suggests the answer is “No.”
The costs these strikes impose on the Houthis in no way are proportionate to — much less do they exceed — the benefits Iran has enjoyed as a result of its regional campaign of terror. Tehran has demonstrated the capacity to humiliate the U.S. and its allies, force them to move assets in the region and expend pricy defensive ordnance, and shown that it can all but close the Gulf of Aden at a time and place of its choosing — all for the low, low cost of a few drones and rockets and some expendable terrorist fighters. The Biden administration’s calibrated retaliatory strikes on the Shiite militias attacking U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria have not imposed caution on those organizations. We can expect a similar outcome to follow Biden’s belated exercise in self-defense.
But we will know soon enough whether Iran and its proxies are deterred. Whether it’s Hezbollah withdrawing assets from the Israeli border in response to Jerusalem’s recent strike on Hamas commanders in Beirut or Tehran’s calibrated volley of missiles into Iraq to protest the 2020 strike that neutralized Qasem Soleimani, the Iranians know how to communicate de-escalatory intention in ways Americans recognize. If deterrence is not restored, Iran’s region-wide campaign of terrorism and piracy will continue apace. If that is what follows, Biden has no one but himself to blame.
The months the president spent dithering in the face of terrorist aggression raised the stakes of this conflict. The Biden administration’s hostility toward Iran’s Sunni adversaries, its ceaseless diplomatic overtures to Iran despite the hopelessness of their quest to revive the defunct 2015 nuclear accords, and the president’s weakness in the face of a direct challenge to U.S. hegemony have emboldened America’s enemies. It will take more than a few dozen cruise missiles to restore what Joe Biden sacrificed.