As one U.S. official bloodlessly told Politico Pentagon reporter Lara Seligman on Wednesday, the two who died and the six who were injured on a ship in the Red Sea by a Houthi missile “speaks to how the Houthis are terrorizing international commercial shipping.” That’s one way to put it. Another would be that the ongoing, sophisticated campaign of violence and piracy being waged by an Iranian proxy speaks not only to the terror sect’s resolve but Joe Biden’s lack thereof.
It wasn’t until early January, following months of sustained attacks on international shipping and allied naval assets off the coast of Yemen that the Biden administration finally summoned the requisite gumption to take the fight to the Houthis. Since then, the U.S. has conducted periodic airstrikes on Houthi targets, both in response to the terror sect’s aggression and preemptively. Biden’s goal of “deterring Houthi attacks in the Red Sea” has not been achieved. Indeed, the flurry of intensifying activity out of Houthi-controlled Yemen suggests the organization lacks neither the weapons it needs to disrupt shipping in the Gulf of Aden nor the willingness to court reprisals from the U.S. and its allies.
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