How much longer can this go on? It seems like there are so many parties whose economic interests all align that this would just be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Am I just naive? Is there no reasonably straightforward way to stop the Houthis? Wouldn't much of Europe, Saudi Arabia and others be very interested in ending this as quickly as possible?
Ever since Houthi's with shit tier commodity Iranian hardware started successfully hitting Saudi Refineries (extrapolate to all oil/lng infra in region), they are effectively in position to hold 1/3 of global energy supplies hostage. Hitting a few ships in Bab el-Mandeb that can be redirected around Africa at +2-5% cost to global shipping/inflation is best of bad situation. In the mean time, USN stuck with trading interceptors that cost 100x more than what they're hitting. Which is somewhat sustainble in terms of pure costs, but Houthis tying up 1-2 carriers (when normally only 3-4 are deployed) while running already aging US DDG hulls / sailors ragged on prolonged deployments is more than a little concerning.
From what I understand, and I could be very wrong, the fear is that directly attacking the Houthis will be seen as an escalation by Iran. The west doesn't want to get mired in yet another war in the Middle East, so instead they've adopted a defensive posture around their shipping lanes with Prosperity Guardian. This is also why Saudi Arabia's own navy vessels are conspicuously absent from the operation, despite the Houthis being a geographically prominent thorn in their side.
> fear is that directly attacking the Houthis will be seen as an escalation by Iran
It would, but that’s not really a constraint. Iran is in no position to risk direct strikes on its territory. It’s more simply that nobody wants to get bogged down in Yemen. So there is an element of hoping someone else will start bombing or Tehran getting their proxies under control.
Yes, and it was a disaster. The Houthis could aim their missiles at Saudi oil infrastructure again. Much simpler to let America handle both finding a solution and taking the fire.
Those are the same conflict though. The saudis are fighting the Houthi’s in the Yemeni civil war. The same group that’s attacking the ships in the Red Sea.
An "easy" response against the houthis would not be particularly effective -- lob a bunch of cruise missiles at them, which would be more annoying than anything else. An "effective" response would be the full shock-and-awe treatment -- wiping out their air defense, followed by a massive bombing campaign that destroys their ability to fight. Then -- what next? Yemen's in the middle of a civil war as it is... does the US then have a responsibility to stabilize it to prevent a humanitarian crisis? And then how does Iran react? Do we have to get into war with Iran, too? And then presumably hezbollah would launch a war against Israel.
If there is anything the wars in Afghanistan, against Isis and especially against Ukraine has thought me, it is that the answer to that question is always a lot longer than we like.
