Houthis Asked for War, and Now They Will Get It

By Hugh Fitzgerald | July 29, 2024

The Houthi Shi’as in Yemen have for the past six months been firing on ships — mostly commercial shipping — in the Red Sea, in an effort to cut off Israel’s maritime lifeline to Asia. They have been wildly successful; almost all of the traffic going from or to Asia via the Red Sea has had to be rerouted around the Horn of Africa. The American military has lobbed some rockets at the Houthis to discourage them from carrying on with these attacks, but it has been a drôle de guerre, a phony war, both too little and too late.

The Houthis have not been deterred, but have kept up their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Finally, on July 21, the Israelis let loose with a massive bombardment of the Houthi-held port of Hodeidah, destroying much of it and making it largely unfit for the offloading of food and goods. More on the Houthis, who now realize that the IDF is prepared to deal blow after heavy blow, far more destructive than anything meted out by the Americans, can be found here: “What will happen to the Houthis as tensions continue? – opinion,” by Amotz Asa-El, Jerusalem Post, July 26, 2024:

…Now, as Yemen’s Islamist regime [that is, the Houthis] wages war on international trade, the question arises: What’s going on, what does it mean, and how will it end?

What’s going on, many say, is piracy; vessels attacked in broad daylight while sailing innocently in the open sea. Well, that’s wrong.

Piracy is an economic act; plundering ships in order to rob what’s on them. For centuries it was a common, legitimate, and at times even an honorable profession, the way Queen Elizabeth I awarded a knighthood to Sir Francis Drake for robbing ships and raiding towns while circumnavigating the world.

That is not what Yemen’s Houthis are up to. Unlike pirates, these people are not seafarers, and their attacks on the Red Sea’s traffic are not about loot….

Unlike the Somali pirates who in recent years clambered aboard commercial ships and seized both the ships – held for ransom – and their contents, the Houthis do not board ships to loot their contents or to hold the ships for ransom; they want only to disrupt the shipping traffic in the Red Sea. They are not out for material gain, but to deprive Israel of its maritime lifeline to Asia.

Some 40 attacks on commercial ships last fall has made major container liners like Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, Denmark’s Maersk, and France’s CMA CGM suspend their vessels’ passage through the Red Sea, where 30% of global container traffic previously sailed, along with 12% of all international trade, according to The Economist.

Why are the Houthis doing this, if not for booty?…

The Houthis started a civil war in Yemen in 2014, which began when they rose in revolt against the majority Sunnis and seized the capital Sana’a. In 2015 the Houthis seized Hodeidah, the port through which 80% of Yemen’s food entered the country; now the Sunnis must rely on other supply routes into Yemen to feed their people. The Shi’a Houthis are rightly seen as proxies of Iran, which has supplied them with both weapons and money. Acting as Tehran’s proxy, the Houthis have attacked Saudi targets, including both cities and oil installations.

Since the Houthi attacks began last fall, freight rates through the Red Sea soared 150%, as tankers and containers – not to mention holiday cruises – sailing between Asia and Europe were forced to circle Africa, and thus reverse maritime history by more than 150 years.

The Suez Canal was completed in 1869, 155 years ago.

What this means to the billions of earthlings who buy what those containers carry is that shipment schedules lag, shortages abound, the vessels’ gas consumption multiplies, and consumer prices soar….

When ships are forced to go around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, rather than using the Suez Canal-Red Sea route between Europe and Asia, this makes their trajectory much more expensive: it requires more gas to fuel the ships on that longer route, as well as more pay for crew members who will have to spend many more days at sea.

Both Saudi Arabia and Egypt have suffered from the actions of the Houthis. The Saudis have suffered directly from Houthi attacks on their key oil installations. The Egyptians have the Houthi attack on shipping in the Red Sea, that has led to such a colossal drop in ships using the Suez Canal, resulting in nearly a $5 billion loss in revenue for the Egyptian state. Yet both countries are apparently content to let the West do the heavy lifting against the Houthis, without themselves contributing to a joint strike force. And the West has proven ineffective in stopping the Houthis from their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, despite having attacked the Houthis over more than six months, but only intermittently, from a distance, and never on major targets.

All that has now changed, with Israel’s attack on the port of Hodeidah on July 21.

Now Israel, not for the first time, has shown the West how to deal with terrorist entities. Israel has now delivered — on July 21 — its most devastating blow to Houthi-controlled infrastructure, and if the Houthis dare to respond to by, for example, managing to hit Eilat, the Jewish state will deliver even more severe attacks, including further attacks to render the port at Hodeidah completely unusable, and striking Houthi targets in Sana’a itself, the Yemeni capital that the Houthis seized and have held since the beginning of the civil war, in 2014.

The Houthis will now face an enemy, Israel, that means business, because the Israelis understand that they are fighting for their state’s very survival, and every proxy of Iran in the Middle East — Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis — is hellbent on their destruction. Now, just as Hamas has been surprised by the ferocity of the IDF’s implacable response to the October 7 atrocities, the Houthis will rue the day they roused Israel to a response for which nothing has prepared them. A world of woe awaits the Houthis. They’ve earned it.