Disapproval is growing at home and abroad as the US avoids direct action against Houthi rebels

Disapproval is growing at home and abroad as the US avoids direct action against Houthi rebels

While much of the world is keeping an eye on Israel’s battles with Hezbollah and Hamas, the U.S. Navy has set its sights on another of Iran’s proxies, Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

With a mission to keep the peace on international waterways, the Navy must now grapple with fending off attacks from the shadowy band of pirates, who no longer arm themselves with assault rifles, pickup trucks and motorboats, but with a seemingly endless supply of drones , rockets and other weapons.

The Houthis frequently attack unarmed Western ships carrying goods through the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden – while the US has responded with drone strikes in Yemen.

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That has created dangerous waters along a trade route that normally carries about $1 trillion worth of goods and aid to war-torn Sudan and the Yemeni people.

And as the attacks continue, some experts argue that the U.S. response has not been strong enough to stop the Houthis from inflicting billions of dollars in damage to the global economy.

Yemen-Houthis crackdown

Houthi rebel fighters gather outside Sanaa in support of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and against US attacks on Yemen. (AP photo)

“The U.S. response was ineffective,” Can Kasapoglu, a Turkey-based Hudson Institute fellow who specializes in political-military affairs in the Middle East, told Fox News Digital.

“We have very limited information about it [the Houthis] And they are in another part of the world, in a distant corner of the Middle East. But this corner also happens to be right next to a bottleneck in global trade… The Houthis are the bravest representatives of the Iranian proxy network. And the US never entered a preemptive phase in which it targeted the Houthi leadership.”

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The U.S. responded to attacks with air and missile defense efforts as well as intercepting drones and missiles and only attacked the Houthis when an attack was imminent, Kasapoglu said.

“We have never seen a highly effective targeted killing campaign by the United States that killed Israel, for example.” [Hezbollah leader] Hassan Nasrallah. Or just as Israel attacked the senior, high-ranking generals of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, for example, what is missing here is what is missing: the US taking action against critical leadership.”

In addition to destroying goods destined for the West, regular Houthi attacks also drive up insurance costs and, for some, premiums shot up tenfold. They force some ships to travel a long way – around the Horn of Africa, which can add $1 million to fuel costs for a round-trip trip.

“They are bringing relatively inexpensive weapons systems to market and inflicting great economic damage on the West on behalf of Iran. This is a very lucrative business,” Kasapoglu said.

One argument for restraint could be the cost of the operation: Houthi drones are estimated to cost a few thousand dollars each. The naval missiles that the US fires at them can go around $2 million per shot.

Houthi attacks increased after Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel, in which 80 merchant ships were attacked with rockets and drones last year.

They captured one ship, sank two and killed a total of four sailors. The rebels say at least 16 people were killed in a series of air strikes led by the US in May.

Houthis burn flags

Houthi supporters burn the Israeli and American flags on the outskirts of Sana’a, Yemen, on January 14, 2024. (Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images)

Oil tankers in the Red Sea

The oil tanker Sounion burns in the Red Sea on Saturday, September 14, 2024, following a series of attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen. (European Union’s Operation Aspides via AP)

Biden admin needs ‘more aggressive’ plan to take on Houthis

On Tuesday, the rebel group claimed it shot down a multimillion-dollar U.S.-made MQ-9 Reaper drone that was flying near Yemen. The US admitted it lost one of the drones, which cost around $30 million apiece.

In January, Iranian-backed militias killed three US soldiers and injured 40 others in an attack on a US base in Jordan. The US responded forcefully to this attack with a barrage of airstrikes on 85 targets in Iraq and Syria.

“This response has proven effective, and I think we could certainly do more of it — take that approach,” said retired Lt. Gen. Mark Schwartz, a former Israeli-Palestinian Authority security coordinator.

Since the Houthis captured the north of the country and its capital Sanaa in 2014, the US military has seen Reapers shot down in Yemen in 2017, 2019, 2023 and 2024. The US military admitted that the Houthis shot down two MQ-9s in September.

The Houthis continue to fire rockets at Israel. In response, Israeli forces launched aggressive retaliatory strikes in Yemen’s key port city of Hodeida.

The rebels have claimed they are targeting ships with ties to Israel, the US or the UK to force an end to Israel’s campaign in Gaza against Hamas. But many of the ships they attacked had little to do with the conflict – some were even on their way to Iran.

British cargo ship sank in the Red Sea

The British-registered cargo ship Rubymar sinks after it was attacked by Yemeni Houthi forces in international waters in the Red Sea on March 7, 2024. (Al-Joumhouriah Channel via Getty Images)

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Last month they attacked the Greek-flagged oil tanker Sounion, which was carrying 1 million barrels of oil in the Red Sea.

And last week, Houthi rebels fired half a dozen ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles and two drones at three U.S. ships traveling through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. All were intercepted by Navy destroyers, a US official said on Friday.

“This will be resolved when we end our dealings with Iran, whatever that looks like in the long term,” said Seth Krummrich, a retired Army colonel and former chief of staff for Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT).

Sources say the US lacks the willingness to take action on the ground against the Houthis. At the heart of the Biden administration’s global strategy is concern about escalating tensions that could lead to a full-scale confrontation with Iran – a country that by many estimates is just weeks away from building a nuclear bomb.

“The Israelis have the will to fight the Houthis, but their capabilities are limited and they are also embroiled in two wars currently underway. Therefore, American intervention is necessary if the West really wants to stop them,” Kasapoglu said.

US troops destroy Houthi weapons

“Avoiding escalation is currently an obsession. It is a psychological case, not a political case. And it weakens America’s military capabilities.”

Krummrich argued that the Pentagon “has stared at the Houthi problem long enough to understand that there is a limit to what you can do without using ground troops.”

Yemen map

Ships sailing through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea risk Houthi attacks. (AP photo)

“It would be like a giant sponge. It can absorb infinite amounts of our resources,” he said. “But the Houthis are also smart. They take off and then quickly retreat…if they stay outside of our rules of engagement they are less likely to get hit.”

But others say there is more to be done than just deploying ground troops.

“Yemen has proven time and time again that it is willing to endure many deadly U.S. and coalition activities and still attack ships and Israel,” Schwartz said.

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“There is this fear of escalation, of doing something so provocative that we will have a broader war. From their perspective, Yemen is at war with the United States, right? Just as the Lebanese Hezbollah is and was at war with Israel, and the same goes for Hamas before October 7.”

“We are overestimating our concern about an escalation of the conflict because at the end of the day, the Houthis in particular are not a viable military force,” Schwartz continued.

“We could be much more aggressive in our military response to the Houthis and achieve an overwhelming response that is far from drawing the U.S. into a larger conflict.”