Analysts: US Fails on Houthis After Six Weeks of Bombing

After nearly six weeks of intensive US airstrikes on different areas and cities of Yemen the Houthi Ansar Allah continues to assert that its military operations in the Red Sea and against Israeli targets will not stop until the ongoing Israeli war on the Gaza Strip ends.

Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree, Saturday, announced the targeting of the Israeli Nevatim Air Base in the Negev with a ballistic missile, as well as two other sites in the Tel Aviv and Ashkelon areas and the targeting of warships on the US aircraft carrier SS Harry Truman in the northern Red Sea are just part of the continuing ongoing military strikes.

However in response to these attacks the US aircraft launched two airstrikes last Friday night on the Ras Isa oil port in the coastal province of Al Hudaydah, which Washington considers a major source of fuel used to finance the Ansar Allah group’s activities.

According to Dr Liqaa Makki, senior researcher at the Al Jazeera Center for Studies, the USA has failed miserably in its strikes against the Houthis because of its inability to move to the second phase. He said that as a result they are  discussing an alternative scenario for this military campaign against the Houthis.

Makki believes that US President Donald Trump has reached a dead end, and that the ceiling he set regarding the Houthis is proven unrealistic, pointing out the United States, despite its military strength, is failing in Yemen because it is fighting a group, not a state.

On the other hand, military and strategic expert Brigadier-General Elias Hanna, believes that both sides are losing, whilst the image of the United States is being damaged, given the scale of the US military campaign and Trump’s engagement with the Houthis, who previously declared that  “we [US] will withdraw from all the world’s wars.”

Reports estimate the cost of the airstrikes carried out by the US military on Houthi positions amounted to approximately $1 billion in the first three weeks of the military campaign alone.

The Associated Press reported the value of the seven downed American drones made by the Houthis exceed $200 million, and the continued loss of American drones makes it difficult for the US leadership to accurately determine the extent of the damage to the Houthis’ weapons stockpiles.

Brigadier-General Hanna said that Washington lacks a comprehensive strategy in its dealings with the Houthis, and that the political goal it announced—restoring deterrence and opening shipping lanes—has not been achieved.

He also pointed out the US military is targeting the centers of gravity within the Houthi military system to disrupt it, a strategy Israel has used with the Palestinian resistance but has failed to achieve.

Appeasing the Houthis

In light of Washington’s inability to achieve its goals against the Houthis, Brigadier-General Hanna believes the pressure being exerted on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip is part of an effort to appease the Houthis so that they will halt their operations in the Red Sea and against Israeli targets.

Trump’s upcoming visit to the region also requires a de-escalation. According to the military and strategic expert, the US president cannot arrive while the Houthis are launching missiles.

In the same context, the senior Al Jazeera’s Makki expects  that a Gaza ceasefire will soon be reached before Trump’s visit, allowing the Houthis to halt their operations as they have initially linked the cessation of their operations to an end to the war on Gaza and to the cessation of US strikes against them.

American officials have previously revealed to CNN that the US military has struck more than 700 Houthi targets and carried out 300 airstrikes since the campaign began in mid-March, “forcing them underground and creating confusion and chaos within their ranks.”

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US Warplanes Makes 1200 Strikes on Yemen Since 15 March

US warplanes launched 1200 airstrikes on Yemen since 15 March the Houthis announced on Friday. The Houthis stated the airstrikes resulted in the killing and wounding hundreds of civilians.

In a statement by the Houthi Foreign Ministry stated the United States ” launched more than 1,200 airstrikes and naval bombardments since mid-March, resulting in the death and injury of hundreds of civilians and the destruction of numerous civilian objects, including residential neighborhoods, ports, health facilities, water tanks, and archaeological sites, in flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law.”

It indicated that what the USA is doing in Yemen is “full-fledged aggression and a flagrant violation of the UN Charter and all international norms and conventions.”

The statement considered that Washington is trying, in a “miserable attempt to evade its responsibility for the crimes it is committing in Yemen.”

The group accused Washington of “working to cover up its sinful aggression against Yemen and its crimes against civilians and civilian objects, which are shameful to humanity, as well as its abject failure,” according to Anadolu.

On 15 March, the United States resumed its attacks on Yemen after President Donald Trump ordered his military to launch a “major attack” against the Houthi group, before threatening to “completely eliminate” them.

However, the group ignored Trump’s threat and resumed bombing sites inside Israel and ships in the Red Sea heading to Israel, in response to Tel Aviv’s resumption of its war of extermination against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, which began on 18 March.

With full American support, Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza since October 7, 2023, leaving more than 168,000 Palestinians dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and more than 11,000 missing.

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Trump, Iran And The ‘Nuclear Fight’

Experts say the Middle East region is poised on an impending war with the top protagonists being the USA, Israel and Iran.  They stand on a military pedestal of violent conflict where Armageddon has become the new catchphrase.

The man at the center of it all is US president Donald Trump who has been elected on a so-called global “peace” ticket but is fueling the worldwide escalation with his rhetoric.

He is telling Iran, nay warning it, to either hitch out and agree to a new accord on the country’s nuclear file or face the American wrath where its Persian cities and nuclear facilities would be wildly attacked in a first-time development that is turning international relations upside down.

And so a war of words began between Tehran and Washington since Trump sent a stern letter to Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, telling him to submit to a new nuclear agreement to stall his country’s nuclear facilities or face extensive US bombing. 

This was a callous, stark warning. The international system has never, till now, faced such discursive diplomatic parlance, even at the height of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The Iranian leadership saw Trump’s verbiage as an outright threat and refused to submit, even telling US president that Iran will not be bullied and he can to “go to hell”, a comment made by Iranian president Massoud Pezeshkian. He was speaking for the Ayatollah and the top leadership in the country.

Since then however, and in spite of the occasional utterings, recently made by Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Iraghchi that Tehran would respond quickly and heavily to any outside attack, both sides have been involved in a “jostling affair” issuing different and irk statements short of the war-mongering tirade Trump started.

Military brink

Today, and on the face of it, both sides appear to want to pull back from the military brink. The Iranians are now saying they would be prepared to negotiate but only indirectly through Oman, the country that has traditionally served as a consummate link between Washington and Tehran.

Whilst the Trump administration may be contemplating such a fact, although it’s on record for stating it would prefer direct face-to-face negotiations involving fully-fledged American and Iranian expert teams in the field of nuclear weapons and proliferation, Washington has not closed the doors to such an offer from Tehran and it is still considering it which means it might be softening its position.

But there is another snag to this. Iranian officials have stated they want confidence-building measures from the Trump administration and don’t believe in negotiations under threat but this appears to be what is happening today.

As the diplomatic chit chat continues, Washington is sending military reinforcements with jet fighters, mass bombs and missiles to the Indian Ocean, Arabian Sea and the Red Sea as part of their stepped-up fight against the Houthis and potentially against Iran, both of whom are against the Israeli military onslaught on the Gaza Strip which is being financed by the USA.

Thus, what is happening now is that both sides are involved in sending out mixed signals despite the military escalation and war of words with Trump in what is becoming his customary U-turns. He is now saying that he doesn’t want a fight with Iran and is prepared for negotiations. 

But the ball is turning so to speak. For one thing Israel has long sought deadly strikes on Iranian cities and nuclear facilities and for it, today this is a “golden opportunity” being flanked and supported by US warships in the area.

Israel sees such a series of strikes as more urgent than before because after 2018 when Trump got the USA out of the nuclear deal, Iran started once again to boost its uranium enrichment program and many argue it’s very near to achieving a nuclear bomb and capability.

But that may be over-stating the fact, because Iran has always stated its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes and its officials have maintained an official dialogue with the countries it originally made a deal with in 2015 officially named as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

So the current escalation may be tinged with diplomatic talk for although Trump maybe rash in what he says, there is usually a back up plan up his sleeve of not reaching beyond the military brink with brinkmanship being played at the highest levels.

This comment is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

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The Middle East Octopus

By Dr Khairi Janbek

When we think of contemporary Iran, one always believes that the Arab Middle East had always been dominated by three Non-Arab American allies: Iran of the Shah, Turkey and Israel. One thinks that those “neighborhood police stations” were the guarantors of stability through their convergence, and at times contradictions in the age of Cold War and oil. However, the Shah of Iran was deposed and the anti-communist Cold War ended, but that didn’t mean that oil stopped becoming important nor that both Russia and China were no longer threats.

One would say, that the rehabilitation of Iran and possibly turning it into a negotiations partner aims at keeping the third angle of the police stations triangle going, because non of the Arab countries, no matter how much they tried, could never replace Iran, because no “Arab police station” is permitted to emerge as a third angle.

Having said that, it would be beyond naive to think that the expansion of Iran’s power and influence happened by stealth or escaped the notice of the US and NATO. After all, Iran grew to become a Red Sea country through its influence on the Houthis in Yemen, a Mediterranean country through its influence in Syria as well Lebanon through Hezbollah, and the major Gulf country through its supporters in Iraq. In fact this Iranian domination of space is what has created a common space between all its long arm organizations in the region.

Essentially, if we compare Iran to an octopus, all those various groups are its tentacles, and they all serve the purpose of Iran’s strategic interests, albeit not through a push-button approach, but through not taking any action which would not please their master Iran. Of course, this puts Iran in a strong position to be a major player in the region and an inescapable negotiations partner for the US, which is also convenient for the Americans, in order to remind their Arab allies who is their protector in a region policed by Turkey, Israel and Iran.

Of course, this takes us to the point of saying that, for all intents and purposes, for the Americans a trusted adversary is more important than distrusted friends, and that it would be absurd to think that all those long arms of Iran in the Arab world can be amputated by military means; they certainly can be weakened, but without the consent of Iran and without the right price, so long as it remains behind them, nothing much can change.

At this point, from what one can only see, is that no one in their right mind or otherwise, will permit a war to emerge in which Israel is pitted against Iran and the US as well as NATO putting all their weight behind Israel and forcing the Arabs to choose their camp. That would be the scenario of the end of the world as we know it , or with major civil wars in the Arab countries controlled by the tentacles of Iran, and no one wants that.

Dr Janbek is a Jordanian writer based in Paris

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Houthi Missiles, Trump and The Israeli depth

The Houthis are back firing at the heart of the Israeli depth. The military escalation is increasing despite US President Donald Trump’s warning that the Yemeni group, also called Ansar Allah, are set to be destroyed. But there is no proof of that as yet!

Ever since Israel restarted its military campaign on Gaza on 19 March, exactly two months after it ceased its military operations on the enclave, the Houthis reinitiated its trajectories, drones and hypersonic missiles on Israel. It adopted an eye-for-eye point of view — that is as long as Israel stops humanitarian aid to Gaza, Houthi missiles would continue on the Zionist state. 

The latest Houthi ballistic missiles were fired Wednesday during the day, a first-time shocker for these trajectories are delivered in the middle of the night. It was reported by the Hebrew media that millions hurried to underground shelters where sirens went off in 250 cities, towns, and settlements to the chagrin of many Israelis whose lives were turned upside down in the war on Gaza.

Wednesday will be remembered as a hard day for many as the ballistic missiles, which according to the Israeli army were intercepted and shot down from the air by counter trajectories. Such a series of Israeli military actions sent an intense amount of debris hurling down across a wide area of central and southern Israel including in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.

Analysts are saying it’s back to the old days of attempting to readdress the strategic equilibrium of Houthis and Hezbollah missiles targeting the Israeli depth. While Hezbollah is on the border with Lebanon, the Houthi missiles, and their success in reaching their targets, were fired all the way from Yemen, 2000 kilometers away into Israel.

This time, and like before during the course of 2024 where hundreds of trajectories were fired on the Zionist entity, the hypersonic missile was meant for the Ben-Gurion Airport, a busy hub for international travelers. Because of the timing of the trajectories it was reported that a significant number of the incoming planes had to be diverted and re-routed to Larnaca in Cyprus as a stopover and wait for the calm to set in.

Again this is a first-time development because the disruption usually lasted for no more than 30 minutes whilst this time around it paralyzed the airport and its aviation systems and meant to send a Houthi signal to the Israelis and their American allies especially, that this would be the status quo from now on unless the onslaught on Gaza is stopped and humanitarian aid allowed in the enclave.

Today, the incoming missiles on the different parts of Israel have been almost daily, at least for the last one week. This is seen as a signal that a new and forceful strategic approach is being adopted by the Houthis who are daring the Americans despite their daily military strikes on Yemen that Israel would continue to be a legitimate target.

The American navy through its USS Harry Truman destroyer in the Red Sea is striking Yemen with such force and vehemence whilst assuring the Israelis that they will do the job and end the Houthi presence.

But this is not having the military effect the Americans would like it to have for Yemen is a big country with its harsh setting and difficult geographical terrain that makes such strikes seem like ‘bee stings” rather than painful blows. On Tuesday, the US struck different locations in Yemen 17 times and before that the strikes were carried out with the same level of intensity.

But the Houthis are not being brought to their knees, a proving fact that has cost the preceding Biden administration an estimated $2 billion to attempt to rein in the Houthis but with no apparent success despite the level of destruction inside the country for Yemenis, across-the-board, and not just the Houthis, have proven to be a formidable force over the years.

It’s still too early to see for how long Trump will follow in the footsteps made by former US president Joe Biden. This is bearing in mind that the new man in the White House doesn’t like to spend US money and therefore will likely lose steam as the days pass bye and especially because the Houthis started to target the US destroyer and any other ships going to Israel with the group determined to continue to upset the international trading system unless their is a reprieve on Gaza.

The above-analysis is written by Dr Marwan Asmar, chief editor of the crossfirearabia.com website.

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