As the Washington Examiner reported two weeks ago, a range of U.S. and British military forces are deployed and ready to launch strikes against Houthi rebel positions inside Yemen.
I understand from sources that the reason no strikes have yet occurred is that the Biden administration has been obsessed by the risk of escalation with Iran. That said, strikes are likely now imminent as international shipping through the Red Sea remains crippled and the Houthis repudiate a multilateral demand that they cease their attacks.
The challenge for President Joe Biden is that by waiting so long to carry out defensive strikes, he has risked appearing hesitant not only in Iran’s eyes, but also those of China and Russia. This is a particular concern with regard to China. Beijing ultimately seeks to hold hostage trade flows through the South China Sea in a way similar to the Houthi effort to hold Red Sea trade flows hostage in return for a Gaza ceasefire. Where the Houthis and their Iranian sponsors want to impose a cost on the West over the Israel-Hamas war, Beijing wants Pacific Rim nations to adopt political loyalty toward Beijing in return for trade transit rights through the South China Sea.
This geopolitical concern is what makes the White House more concerned over what’s happening in the Red Sea than Iranian-directed militia attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. In response to that latter category of attacks, the White House apparently remains willing to tolerate U.S. military casualties. After all, its military response to those militia attacks has generally been highly limited.
Biden faces another challenge. This time from an ally.
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Achieving success in degrading Hamas across Gaza, Israel clearly believes it has earned the military flexibility to escalate its action elsewhere. Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service is known by Western intelligence services to be ramping up its targeting intelligence activity across the globe, searching for Hamas operatives it holds responsible for the Oct. 7 attacks and developing ways to capture or eliminate them. This has concerned some U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle East over fears that any Israeli assassinations on their soil will lead to undermining their sovereignty and exacerbate domestic political tensions over the war in Gaza. Still, at least publicly, the White House appears to recognize that these Mossad operations are unavoidable. The U.S. hope is that these Israeli actions will be clandestine in nature and target specific individuals without encompassing those around them.
What the Biden administration fears is an escalation of the kind that Israel evinced in its drone strike against senior Hamas leader Saleh al Arouri on Tuesday. That strike in the Lebanese capital, Beirut, was highly public in nature and killed other Hamas operatives along with al Arouri. And while Israel appears to have accurately judged that Lebanese Hezbollah wants to avoid a full-scale conflict, Hezbollah's calculation may change on very short notice. Especially if Iran believes that Israel and, via prospective U.S. military action against the Houthis, the U.S. are moving to undermine its regional strength and credibility.
Again, however, the public nature of the Israeli attack in Beirut will be a preeminent issue on White House minds. In both the manner and action of its strike on al Arouri, Israel signaled its willingness to act overtly and globally in a way that carries significant political ramifications. Lebanon, for example, is already unstable due to an enduring political crisis and economic implosion. The White House fears a regional conflagration that risks both an Israel-Hezbollah war and a second Lebanese civil war. Although it was overdue for a return to port, the decision this week to bring the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier strike group home from the Eastern Mediterranean Sea was perhaps also a signal to Israel that if it escalates its skirmishing with Hezbollah into a full-blown conflict, it will not be able to rely on the U.S. to fight that conflict alongside it. While a Marine expeditionary unit remains off the Lebanese coast, that force is ground combat-centric in nature. It is highly improbable — and highly inadvisable — that Biden would order a ground force deployment into Lebanon.
Israel likely recognizes as much. Top line: at this moment, the U.S. is playing an increasingly nonexistent role as the Israelis and the Houthis shape their respective strategies.