Houthi leader calls direct war with US and Israel “a great honor”

The leader of Yemen’s Houthis said it was a “great honor” to be in direct confrontation with Israel, the US and the UK. Yemenis are bracing for more Western bombing as sentiment in Washington suggests a commitment to a sustained offensive to stop Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

The latest round of US bombing of Houthi targets in Yemen comes as little surprise and raises the prospect of a prolonged military campaign affecting an Arab country already impoverished by years of civil war, Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defense and security editor, writes in an analysis.

The new US strikes imply a de facto recognition by Washington that any effort to try to completely stop attacks on Western shipping in the southern Red Sea will require a second intervention due to Yemen’s Houthi group’s ability and determination to resist.

After an initial barrage of 150 bombs by British and US forces on Friday morning – plus a subsequent attack on a radar installation 24 hours later – Houthi rebels fired a missile at a US Navy destroyer (which was shot down), hit two commercial ships with missiles, slightly damaging each, and aimed the drone at the third vessel, again causing some damage but no casualties.

On Thursday, the movement’s leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said in his first speech since the US intervention that he was “honored” to be in direct confrontation with the Israelis, Americans and British, characterizing it as part of the Houthis’ attempts to intervene in support of Palestinians in Gaza. – a moral cause that would be politically difficult to abandon.

In narrow military terms, this is not a fair fight, although asymmetrical conflicts are nothing new, The Guardian notes. The problem is that the US and its allies have the ability to continue bombing Houthi targets in Yemen for a long time, while the Houthis still retain the ability to close the southern Red Sea to commercial shipping and thus impose economic costs on the West.

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, shipping volumes through the Red Sea were already down 70% in December, forcing goods to be rerouted around Africa, increasing costs and delivery times by about 10 days, while Lloyd’s List estimated on Monday that 23 trade the vessels stopped or turned around in response to last Friday’s wave of missile attacks.

Since then, confidence for shipping has not returned, writes The Guardian. Insurance premiums have tripled in the past week, although some of this is purely theoretical, with marine insurers also reporting a sharp decline in claims as oil majors and container operators abandon the most direct sea route between Europe and Asia.

At a briefing earlier this week, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder was vague about the amount of damage the U.S. believes it has done to the Houthis’ missile and drone capabilities, declining to confirm New York Times leaks suggesting the Yemeni group’s strike capabilities were reduced by approximately 25%.

Avoiding such simplistic calculations was almost certainly wise, not least because destroying the launchers takes longer than expected. Earlier this week, Hamas, under sustained Israeli bombing in Gaza, fired 25 rockets at the southern city of Netivot using hard-to-detect launchers buried in the ground. Iranian Shahed drones of the type used by the Houthis are designed to be launched from the back of modified trucks that are easy to move, The Guardian emphasizes.

The question for the US in particular is how far it is willing to go. It may take many more attacks to stop the recalcitrant Houthis targeting Western shipping. But while fighting continues, the risk remains that either side could launch an attack with devastating consequences for Yemeni civilians or American or British sailors, prompting further calls for escalation and revenge.

Meanwhile, the real losers will be ordinary Yemenis, predicts The Guardian. This week, the non-governmental organization Action Against Hunger warned that Yemen is almost entirely dependent on imported food and medicine and that it is becoming increasingly difficult for humanitarian groups to deliver medicine. An estimated 17 million Yemenis lacked access to food in 2023, while rates of acute malnutrition among women and children in Yemen remain among the highest in the world.