At what point does a calculated escalation get out of control? The question must be starting to resonate in Washington, a week after the start of strikes targeting Houthi militiamen in Yemen. The movement is stepping up its attacks in the Red Sea, a strategic trade route, as a sign of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, who have been under constant Israeli bombardment since Hamas's attack on October 7.
In the face of these indisputable breaches of international law, the initial response by the United States, backed by the United Kingdom, on January 11, failed to have the desired dissuasive effect. Similarly, the reinstatement of the Houthis onto the US list of terrorist organizations did little to dissuade the movement. The Houthis, close to Iran through their adherence to a particular form of Shi'ism and their virulently anti-Western rhetoric, have held the country's capital, Sana'a, with an iron fist for almost a decade.
The Biden administration has emphasized concerns over freedom of navigation that has in the past led Washington to intervene in the waters around the Arabian Peninsula, without having to go back to the barbaric wars waged in the Mediterranean by the fledgling American nation. This was notably the case during the Tanker War, a protracted series of anti-shipping campaigns between Iran and Iraq from 1980 to 1988. Washington is being careful to ensure that its strikes will cease as soon as the Houthis put an end to their attacks and that the Houthis return to its blacklist is linked solely to these attacks.
A tragic mistake
The reluctance of the countries bordering the Red Sea to re-establish normal maritime traffic – starting with Egypt, which is cruelly dependent on revenues from the Suez Canal – bears witness to the US's awkward position. Riyadh knows the vanity of using force, even disproportionate force, after years of unsuccessful military action against the Houthis, at the cost of tens of thousands of deaths among Yemeni civilians and a nagging humanitarian crisis. Experts on Yemen have emphasized the extent to which this conflict works well for the country, both inside and outside its borders.
The escalation in the Red Sea highlights the growing divergence of interests between Washington and its Israeli ally, at a time when the beginnings of an initiative to restore calm to a region dangerously destabilized by Hamas massacres and the destruction of Gaza are timidly emerging.
This initiative involves rectifying a tragic error: the neglect of the Palestinian question in the wave of normalization between Israel and countries from the Arabian Peninsula to Morocco. The completion of this historic turning point, with the establishment of official relations between Israel and the Arabian Peninsula, guardian of Islam's holy places, must involve the creation of a Palestinian state, one of the very few points of convergence between the West and the Global South, and the long-term guarantee of Israel's security.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose long tenure in power will be forever marred by the October 7 massacres, is viscerally opposed. It is Netanyahu's intransigence that is indirectly dragging the US into conflicts in the Red Sea that it cannot win.