The Gaza war’s impact on Washington’s geopolitical agenda in West Asia is becoming starker each passing week. The region’s Axis of Resistance counter-offensives cast doubt on yet another White House project: the viability of the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a US-designed route that relies on Israel as a crucial link between east and west.
Security and regional integration
Studies have shown a direct correlation between security and regional integration, indicating that insecurity within a country can undermine its pet regional projects. A recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report released on 7 May shows countries re-evaluating their trading partners based on economic stability and security concerns.
The study reveals that foreign direct investment (FDI) is increasingly guided by geopolitical risks. It further notes that the Ukraine war has shifted policymakers’ focus towards enhancing economic resilience, which is crucial for maintaining operations during crises. This shift may reduce interest in economic integration projects like trade corridors designed by the west to counter China’s ambitious, multi-trillion-dollar Belt and Route Initiative (BRI).
The report also discusses the heightened geopolitical risk associated with Israel following multiple attacks by the Resistance Axis, notably Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which conducted 1,194 attacks against the occupation state between 8 October 2023 and 5 March 2024 – the highest attack rate in Israel’s short history.
This is in addition to attacks from Iraqi resistance factions, Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned forces, and Iran’s direct retaliatory strikes on 14 April in its Operation True Promise. These developments have significantly disrupted Israeli port and shipping operations, most markedly at its southernmost port.
In December, the chief executive of the Eilat Port toldReuters that the port’s activity had dropped by 85 percent since Yemeni forces began their attacks on Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.
At the onset of the Gaza war, the port of Ashkelon and its oil refinery, the closest to the Gaza Strip, were shuttered. Ashdod Port, located about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Gaza on the Mediterranean coast, while continuing to operate, has been partially damaged. According to Eli Bar-Yosef, acting executive director of the latter facility, in the first two weeks after 7 October, Israel was forced to redirect some 11,000 containers bound for Ashdod to other northern ports. Even the port of Haifa has been made vulnerable to attacks from the Iraqi resistance, which undermines the confidence of companies relying on the port as a connecting point between Asia and Europe.
On 27 April, a new party entered the resistance mix. The Bahraini Al-Ashtar Brigades announced its targeting of an Eilat site belonging to Israeli company Trucknet, which is also linked to the massive IMEC project. This raises further doubts about the US-backed route’s viability.
IMEC’s uncertain future
During the G20 summit last September, US President Joe Biden announced the IMEC initiative, which would involve the participation of India, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, along with Israel, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States.
According to a White House statement, the envisioned trade corridor will feature a rail line, clean hydrogen pipelines, and economic zones stretching from India through the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel to the port of Piraeus in Greece.
Since the announcement of its corridor project, US statements have focused on the perceived benefit of IMEC in helping to promote economic integration and partnership within West Asia.
However, the war on Gaza and an ever-elusive ceasefire agreement have raised serious doubts about the feasibility of the IMEC. The project’s success largely depends on regional peace, particularly along the corridor’s route, where current tensions could dampen investor confidence. The Axis of Resistance’s ability to target all Israeli ports further complicates reliance on Tel Aviv as a key corridor hub, most recently Yemen’s intention to extend anti-Israeli operations to the Mediterranean Sea.
In addition, the corridor’s success requires formal relations between its parties, which the US administration has been working on for years. Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza has stalled normalization talks with Saudi Arabia, a key stakeholder in IMEC and other US-backed projects in West Asia.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to refuse to implement Riyadh’s conditions for normalization, which include halting the carnage in Gaza and establishing a Palestinian state within pre-1967 borders.
While Saudi Arabia has long insisted that Israel’s approval of the two-state solution was a key condition, it has watered down its demand – despite worsening Israeli behaviors – to merely asking Tel Aviv to agree to “set a path to the establishment of a Palestinian state.” This, of course, was already done in the 1993 Oslo Accords, a deal which Israel promptly set about violating over the next three decades.
With renewed global calls for Palestinian statehood, some skeptics argue that Saudi Arabia’s precondition for normalizing relations with Israel, contingent on this development, might primarily aim to appease Arab public opinion rather than significantly advance the Palestinian cause.
‘Game-changing’ or game over?
According to Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times, there’s a growing debate in the US about whether Israel still serves as a strategic asset or has become a strategic liability – a perspective supported by John Hoffman’s “Israel is a strategic liability for the United States,” published two months ago in Foreign Policy.
The IMEC, announced by Biden as a “game-changing investment,” aligns with Washington’s strategic interests, particularly in countering China’s BRI with significant investments in Asia, including India.
But the Gaza war, heavily supported by Washington, has exposed the challenges Israel’s political instability and military engagements pose to US strategic interests throughout West Asia and beyond. First up on the chopping board of US-backed geopolitical projects may very well be IMEC. It is also unlikely to be the last of Washington’s regional projects to unravel because of Tel Aviv.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Zarqawi, once a petty criminal turned Al-Qaeda leader in Iraq and the US posterchild for takfiri terrorism, served as a US intelligence asset tasked with quelling Iraq’s resistance to occupation and fanning sectarian hate for the benefit of both Tel Aviv and Washington.
Ranked second only to Osama bin Laden, the US’s most notorious declared enemy during the so-called War on Terror was Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
But a closer examination of Zarqawi’s life and his impact on events in Iraq shows that he was likely a product and tool of US intelligence.
Neoconservative strategists within the administration of George W. Bush utilized Zarqawi as a pawn to justify the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American public.
Moreover, he was instrumental in fomenting internal discord within Iraqi resistance groups opposing the US occupation, ultimately instigating a sectarian civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.
Israel’s plan unfolds in Iraq
This deliberate strategy of tension in Iraq advanced Tel Aviv’s goal of perpetuating the country’s vulnerabilities, dividing populations along sectarian lines, and weakening its army’s ability to challenge Israel in the region.
It has long been known that the CIA created Al-Qaeda as part of its covert war on the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and supported Al-Qaeda elements in various wars, including in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya in the 1990s.
Additionally, evidence points to CIA support for Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups during the clandestine war in Syria launched in 2011 amid the so-called Arab Spring.
Despite this history, western journalists, analysts, and historians still take at face value that Zarqawi and AQI were sworn enemies of the US.
Without understanding Zarqawi’s role as a US intelligence asset, it is impossible to understand the destructive role the US (and Israel) played in the bloodshed inflicted on Iraq, not only during the initial 2003 invasion but in launching the subsequent sectarian strife as well.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah but later changed his name to reflect his birthplace, Zarqa, an industrial area near Amman, Jordan. In and out of prison in his youth, he would become radicalized during his time behind bars.
Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the CIA-backed mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Upon his return to Jordan, he helped start a local Islamic militant group called Jund al-Sham and was imprisoned in 1992.
After his release from prison following a general amnesty, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 1999. TheAtlantic notes that he first met Osama bin Laden at this time, who suspected that Zarqawi’s group had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence while in prison, which accounted for his early release.
Zarqawi then fled Afghanistan to the pro-US Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and established a training camp for his fighters in the fateful year of 2001.
The missing link
Eager to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks, it wasn’t long before the Bush administration officials soon used Zarqawi’s presence to shroud Washington’s geopolitical agendas there.
In February 2003, at the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq proved Saddam was harboring a terrorist network, necessitating a US invasion.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “This assertion was later disproved, but it irreversibly thrust Zarqawi’s name into the international spotlight.”
Powell made the claim even though the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Zarqawi established his base, was effectively under US control. The US air force imposed a no-fly zone on the region after the 1991 Gulf War. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was also known to have a presence there, a reality that Iran actively acknowledges and remains vigilant about.
Curiously, despite Zarqawi’s base being nestled within the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration opted for inaction when presented with a golden opportunity to neutralize him.
The Wall Street Journalreported that the Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002 to strike Zarqawi’s training camp but that “the raid on Mr Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House.”
Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, justified the inaction by claiming “the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons,” even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was supposedly the most important reason for toppling Saddam Hussein’s government.
In contrast, General John M. Keane, the US Army’s vice chief of staff at the time, explained that the intelligence on Zarqawi’s presence in the camp was “sound,” the risk of collateral damage was low, and that the camp was “one of the best targets we ever had.”
The Bush administration firmly refused to approve the strikes, despite US General Tommy Franks pointing to Zarqawi’s camp as among the “examples of the terrorist ‘harbors’ that President Bush had vowed to crush.”
As soon as Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq had accomplished its initial purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the US public, and after the March 2003 invasion was already underway, the White House finally approved targeting his camp with airstrikes. But by then, the Wall Street Journal adds, Zarqawi had already fled the area.
Singling out Shiites
Then, in January 2004, the key pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for war unraveled. David Kay, the weapons inspector tasked with finding Iraq’s WMDs, publicly declared, “I don’t think they exist,” after nine months of searching.
TheGuardianreported that the failure to locate any WMDs was such a devastating blow to the rationale for invading Iraq that now “even Bush was rewriting the reasons for going to war.”
On 9 February, as the WMD embarrassment mounted, Secretary of State Powell again claimed that before the invasion, Zarqawi “was active in Iraq and doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis. And we’re still looking for those connections and to prove those connections.”
Two weeks before, US intelligence had conveniently made public a 17-page letter it claimed Zarqawi had written. Its author claimed responsibility for multiple terror attacks, argued that fighting Iraq’s Shia was more important than fighting the occupying US army, and vowed to spark a civil war between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities.
In subsequent months, US officials attributed a series of brutal bombings targeting Iraq’s Shia to Zarqawi without providing evidence of his involvement.
In March 2004, suicide attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 200 worshippers commemorating Ashura. In April, car bombings in the Shia-majority city of Basra in southern Iraq killed at least 50.
Regarding the Karbala and Kadhimiya attacks, Al-Qaeda issued a statement through Al-Jazeera strongly denying any involvement, but Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer insisted Zarqawi was involved.
Zarqawi’s alleged attacks on Iraq’s Shia helped drive a wedge between the Sunni and Shia resistance to the US occupation and sowed the seeds of a future sectarian war.
This proved helpful to the US army, which was trying to prevent Sunni and Shia factions from joining forces in resistance to the occupation.
‘Dividing our enemies’
In April 2004, President Bush ordered a full-scale invasion to take control of Fallujah, a city in Anbar province that had become the epicenter of the Sunni resistance.
Vowing to “pacify” the city, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt launched the attack using helicopter gunships, unmanned surveillance drones, and F-15 warplanes.
The attack became controversial as the Marines killed many civilians, destroyed large numbers of homes and buildings, and displaced the majority of the city’s residents.
Eventually, due to widespread public pressure, President Bush was forced to call off the assault, and Fallujah became a ‘no-go’ zone for US forces.
The failure to maintain troops on the ground in Fallujah had US planners turning back to their Zarqawi card to weaken the Sunni resistance from within. In June, a senior Pentagon official claimed that “fresh information” had come to light showing Zarqawi “may be hiding in the Sunni stronghold city of Fallujah.”
The Pentagon official “cautioned, however, that the information is not specific enough to allow a military operation to be launched to try to find al-Zarqawi.”
The sudden appearance of Zarqawi and other Jihadists in Fallujah at this time was not an accident.
In a report written for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) entitled “Dividing our enemies,” Thomas Henriksen explained that the US military used Zarqawi to exploit differences among its enemies in Fallujah and elsewhere.
He writes that the US military maintained the goal of “fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters” so that America’s “enemies eliminate each other,” adding that “When divisions were absent, American operators instigated them.”
The Fallujah Case Study
Henriksen then cites events in Fallujah in the fall of 2004 as “a case study” that “showcased the clever machinations required to set insurgents battling insurgents.”
He explained that the takfiri–Salafi views of Zarqawi and his fellow jihadis caused tension with local insurgents who were nationalists and embraced a Sufi religious outlook. Local insurgents also opposed Zarqawi’s tactics, which included kidnapping foreign journalists, killing civilians through indiscriminate bombings, and sabotaging the country’s oil and electricity infrastructure.
Henriksen further explained that US psychological operations, which took “advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces” in Fallujah, led to “nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces.”
These divisions soon extended to the other Sunni resistance strongholds of Ramadi in Anbar province and the Adhamiya district of Baghdad.
The divisions instigated by US intelligence through Zarqawi in Fallujah paved the way for another US invasion of the restive city in November 2004, days after Bush secured re-election.
BBC journalist Mark Urban reported that 2,000 bodies were recovered after the battle, including hundreds of civilians.
Conveniently, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not among the dead,” having slipped through the US cordon around the city before the assault began, Urban added.
Domestic consumption
US military intelligence later acknowledged using psychological operations to promote Zarqawi’s role in the Sunni insurgency fighting against the US occupation.
TheWashington Postreported in April 2006 that “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which helped “the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.”
The Post quotes US Colonel Derek Harvey as explaining, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will – made him more important than he really is.”
As the Post reports further, the internal documents detailing the psychological operation campaign “explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”
The campaign to promote Zarqawi also proved helpful to President Bush during his re-election campaign in October 2004. When Democratic challenger John Kerry called the war in Iraq a diversion from the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by claiming:
“The case of one terrorist shows how wrong [Kerry’s] thinking is. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans, is a man named Zarqawi.”
Who killed Nick Berg?
Nick Berg, a US contractor in Iraq, was allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi. In May 2004, western news outlets published a video showing Berg, dressed in an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, being beheaded by a group of masked men.
A masked man claiming to be Zarqawi stated in the video that Berg’s killing was in response to the US torture of detainees in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Berg was in Iraq trying to win reconstruction contracts and disappeared just days after he spent a month in US detention in Mosul, where he was interrogated multiple times by the FBI.
On 8 May, a month after his disappearance, the US military claimed they found his decapitated body on the side of a road near Baghdad.
But US claims that Zarqawi killed Berg are not credible. As the Sydney Morning Heraldreported at the time, there is evidence the beheading video was staged and included footage from Berg’s FBI interrogation. It was uploaded to the internet not from Iraq but from London and remained online just long enough for CNN and Fox News to download it.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also lied about Berg having been in US military custody, claiming instead he had only been held by the Iraqi police in Mosul.
But the video cemented in the minds of the American public that Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda were major terror threats.
Such was the impact in the US, that following the video’s release, the terms ‘Nick Berg’ and ‘Iraq war’ temporarily replaced pornography and celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as the internet’s main searches.
Sectarianism, a key US–Israeli goal
Large-scale sectarian war erupted following the February 2006 bombing of the Shia Al-Askari Shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra in central Iraq, although the full extent was mitigated thanks to religious guidance issued by the highest and most influential Shia authority in the land, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Al-Qaeda did not take credit for the attack, but President Bush later claimed that “the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.”
Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike a few months later, on 7 June 2006. An Iraqi legislator, Wael Abdul-Latif, said Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone at the time of his death, further showing Zarqawi was being used by elements within the US-backed Iraqi government.
By the time of Zarqawi’s death, the neoconservative agenda to divide and weaken Iraq through instigating chaos and sectarian conflict had reached its pinnacle. This goal was further exacerbated by the emergence of a successor group to AQI – ISIS – which played an outsized role a few years later in destabilizing neighboring Syria, igniting sectarian tensions there, and providing the justification for the renewal of a US military mandate in Iraq.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The new US-led coalition in the Red Sea will struggle to overcome Yemen’s naval blockade on Israel, as Ansarallah’s domestically-produced and inexpensive drones and missiles have leveled the technological playing field.
Given the renewed focus on Yemen’s de facto government led by Ansarallah and its armed forces, it is time to move beyond the simplistic and dismissive characterization of the Houthis as merely a ‘rebel’ group or a non-state actor.
Since the start of the war by the Saudi-led coalition against Ansarallah in 2015, the Yemeni resistance movement has transformed into a formidable military force that has not only humbled Saudi Arabia but is also now challenging Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza as well as the superior firepower and resources of the US Navy in the world’s most important waterway.
Economic fallout of Yemen’s naval operations
In response to Israel unleashing unprecedented violence on Gaza, killing over 20,000 people, predominantly women and children, Yemen’s Ansarallah-led armed forces announced on 14 November their intent to target any Israeli-linked ship passing through the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. This crucial waterway serves as the gateway to the Suez Canal, through which approximately 10 percent of global trade and 8.8 million barrels of oil travel each day.
On 9 December, Ansarallah announced it would expand its operations further to target any ship in the Red Sea on its way to Israel, regardless of its nationality. “If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” an Ansarallah Armed Forces spokesperson said in a statement.
To date, Ansarallah has successfully targeted nine ships using drones and missiles, and managed to seize one Israeli-affiliated ship in the Red Sea, according to their official statements. These operations have prompted the largest international shipping companies, including CMA CGM and MSC, and oil giants BP and Evergreen, to re-route their Europe bound ships around the horn of Africa, adding 13,000km and significant fuel costs to the journey.
Delays, transit times, and insurance fees for commercial shipping have skyrocketed, threatening to spark inflation worldwide. This is especially worrisome for Israel, which is already contending with the economic repercussions of its longest and deadliest conflict with the Palestinian resistance in history.
Additionally, Ansarallah has launched multiple missile and drone attacks on Israel’s southern port city of Eilat, decreasing its commercial shipping traffic by 85 percent.
The disruption in the Red Sea directly undermines a key element of the White House’s 2022 National Security Strategy, which unequivocally states that the US will not permit any nation “to jeopardize freedom of navigation through the Middle East’s waterways, including the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab.”
Coalition of the unwilling
On 18 December, in response to Sanaa’s operations, Secretary of State Lloyd Austin declared the establishment of a naval coalition named Operation Prosperity Guardian, with some 20 countries called to counter Yemeni attacks and ensure safe passage of ships through the Red Sea.
Austin announced the new maritime coalition would include, among others, Britain, Canada, France, Italy, Spain, Norway, the Netherlands, the Seychelles, and Bahrain.
Map of the US-led Combined Maritime Forces (CMF) in West Asia and North Africa.
In response to the announcement, Ansarallah politburo Mohammed al-Bukhaiti vowed that Yemen’s armed forces would not back down:
“Yemen awaits the creation of the filthiest coalition in history to engage in the holiest battle in history. How will the countries that rushed to form an international coalition against Yemen to protect the perpetrators of Israeli genocide be perceived?“
The embarrassment for Secretary Austin and White House advisor Jake Sullivan was swift. Shortly after the coalition’s announcement, key US allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt declined participation. European allies Denmark, Holland, and Norway provided minimal support, sending only a handful of naval officers.
France agreed to participate but refused to deploy additional ships to the region or place its existing vessel there under US command. Italy and Spain refuted claims of their participation, and eight countries remained anonymous, casting doubt on their existence.
Ansarallah has therefore destroyed another pillar of the White House National Security Strategy, which seeks “to promote regional integration by building political, economic, and security connections between and among US partners, including through integrated air and maritime defense structures.”
Revolutions in naval warfare
The Pentagon plans to defend commercial ships using missile defense systems on US and allied naval carriers deployed to the region.
But the world’s superpower, now largely on its own, does not have the military capacity to counter attacks from war-torn Yemen, the poorest country in West Asia.
This is because the US relies on expensive and difficult to manufacture interceptor missiles to counter the inexpensive and mass-produced drones and missiles that Ansarallah possesses.
Austin made his announcement shortly after the USS Carney destroyer intercepted 14 one-way attack drones on just one day, the 16th of December.
The operation appeared to be a success, but Politico swiftly reported that according to three US Defense Department officials, the cost of countering such attacks “is a growing concern.”
The SM-2 missiles used by the USS Carney cost roughly $2.1 million each, while Ansarallah’s one-way attack drones cost a mere $2,000 each.
This means that to shoot down the $28,000 worth of drones on 16 December, the US spent at least $28 million in just one day.
Ansarallah has now launched more than 100 drone and missile attacks, targeting ten commercial ships from 35 countries, meaning the cost of US interceptor missiles alone has exceeded $200 million.
But cost is not the only limitation. If Ansarallah persists with this strategy, US forces will quickly deplete their interceptor missile stocks, which are needed not only in West Asia but in East Asia as well.
As Fortis Analysis observed, the US has eight guided missile cruisers and destroyers operating in the Mediterranean and Red Seas, with a total of 800 SM-2 and SM-6 interceptor missiles for ship defense between them. Fortis Analysis further notes that production of these missiles is slow, meaning any ongoing campaign to counter Ansarallah will quickly deplete US interceptor missile stocks to dangerously low levels. Meanwhile, the US weapons manufacturer Raytheon can produce less than 50 SM-2 and fewer than 200 SM-6 missiles annually.
If these stocks are diminished, this leaves the US Navy vulnerable not only in the Red Sea and Mediterranean, where Russia is also active, but also in the Pacific Ocean, where China poses a significant threat with its hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
Fortis Analysis concludes by observing that the longer Ansarallah continues “throwing potshots” at commercial, US Navy, and allied maritime assets, “the worse the calculus gets. Supply chains win wars – and we are losing this critical domain.”
And Ansarallah has not yet tried a drone swarm attack, which would force US ships to counter dozens of incoming threats at one time.
“A swarm could tax the capabilities of a single warship but more importantly, it could mean weapons get past them to hit commercial ships,” Salvatore Mercogliano, a naval expert and professor at Campbell University in North Carolina observed.
Moreover, US warships would also face the question of how to replenish their missile inventory.
USS John Finn and USS Porter missiles capacity
“The only site to reload weapons is at Djibouti (a US base on the Horn of Africa) and that is close to the action,” he said.
Other experts suggest that the ships would either sail to the Mediterranean Sea to reload from US bases in Italy and Greece, or to the Gulf island of Bahrain which holds the Naval Support Activity and is home to US Naval Forces Central Command and United States Fifth Fleet.
The ‘great equalizer’
As a result, Abdulghani al-Iryani, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, described the situation in Yemen as a case where technology acts as a “great equalizer.”
“Your F-15 that costs millions of dollars means nothing because I have my drone that cost a few thousand dollars that will do just as much damage,” he told the New York Times.
While the US military is successful at producing expensive, technologically complex weapons systems that provide excellent profits for the arms industry, such as the F-15 warplanes, it is not capable of producing enough of the weapons needed to actually fight and win real wars on the other side of the world, where supply chains become even more critical.
In Yemen, the US is heavily challenged by the same problem it faced while fighting a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia, which after almost two years, US officials acknowledge is all but lost.
Moscow has the industrial base and the supply chains in place to produce hundreds of thousands of the low-cost, rudimentary 152mm artillery shells – two million annually – needed for success in a multi-year war of attrition fought largely in trenches. The US, quite simply, does not. Washington’s war industrial complex is currently, at best, manufacturing 288,000 shells annually and seeks to manufacture one million shells by the year 2028, still only half of the Russian manufacturing ability.
Additionally, one Russian 152mm artillery round costs $600 dollars according to western experts, whereas it costs a western country $5,000 to $6,000 to produce a comparable 155mm artillery shell.
Enter Iran
The security situation will only get worse for the US should Iran enter the conflict in support of Ansarallah, the signs of which are emerging already.
On 23 December, the US openly accused Iran of targeting commercial vessels for the first time since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, claiming a Japanese-owned chemical tanker off the coast of India was targeted by a drone “fired from Iran.”
The same day, Tehran denied the allegations but threatened the forced closure of other crucial maritime shipping lanes unless Israel halts its war crimes in Gaza.
“With the continuation of these crimes, America and its allies should expect the emergence of new resistance forces and the closure of other waterways,” Mohammad Reza Naqdi, an official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), warned.
As a reminder, Iran possesses the largest and most diverse missile arsenal in West Asia, with thousands of ballistic and cruise missiles, some capable of striking Israel.
On 24 December, Iran announced its navy had added “fully smart” cruise missiles, including one with a 1,000km range that can change targets during travel, and another with a range of 100km which can be installed on warships.
With US and Israeli forces already under pressure from the Axis of Resistance forces in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Palestine, and now Yemen, the possible entry of Iran in the conflict is even more ominous for Washington, especially in an election year.
Genocide as a foreign policy
So, how far are President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan willing to go to facilitate Israel’s ongoing carnage in the Gaza Strip?
The trio’s commitment to military aid packages for Israel and Ukraine, despite looming debt concerns, raises questions about their priorities.
The potential risk to the security of the US Navy in the Pacific Ocean may force a re-evaluation of the situation soon. This leaves the US with the option of direct military intervention in Yemen, a course of action with its own ethical and geopolitical consequences.
Recognizing the difficulty of countering Ansarallah from a defensive posture, at least some in the US national security establishment are demanding US forces go on the offensive and strike Yemen directly.
On 28 December, former vice admirals Mark I. Fox and John W. Miller argued that “deterring and degrading” Iran and Ansarallah’s ability to launch these attacks requires striking the forces in Yemen responsible for conducting them, “something no one has yet been willing to do.”
Yemen itself has just emerged from an eight-year, US-backed Saudi and UAE war that led to the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. Both Persian Gulf nations used US bombs to kill tens of thousands of Yemenis, while imposing a blockade and siege that led to hundreds of thousands of additional deaths from hunger and disease.
According to Jeffrey Bachman of the American University, Saudi Arabia and the UAE carried out a “campaign of genocide by a synchronized attack on all aspects of life in Yemen,” which was “only possible with the complicity of the United States and United Kingdom.” And yet Ansarallah emerged stronger militarily from that conflict.
If US support for two genocides in the Arab world are not enough, maybe the third will be the charm.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Whether invented in northern India, eastern China or Central Asia – from Persia to Turkestan – chess is an Asian game. In chess, there always comes a time when a simple pawn is able to upset the whole chessboard, usually via a move in the back rank whose effect simply cannot be calculated.
Yes, a pawn can impose a seismic checkmate. That’s where we are, geopolitically, right now.
The cascading effects of a single move on the chessboard – Yemen’s Ansarallah stunning and carefully targeted blockade of the Red Sea – reach way beyond global shipping, supply chains, and The War of Economic Corridors. Not to mention the reduction of the much lauded US Navy force projection to irrelevancy.
Yemen’s resistance movement, Ansarallah, has made it very clear that any Israel-affiliated or Israel-destined vessel will be intercepted. While the west bristles at this, and imagines itself a target, the rest of the world fully understands that all other shipping is free to pass. Russian tankers – as well as Chinese, Iranian, and Global South ships – continue to move undisturbed across the Bab al-Mandeb (narrowest point: 33 km) and the Red Sea.
Only the Hegemon is disturbed by this challenge to its ‘rules-based order.’ It is outraged that western vessels delivering energy or goods to law-breaking Israel can be impeded, and that the supply chain has been severed and plunged into deep crisis. The pinpointed target is the Israeli economy, which is already bleeding heavily. A single Yemeni move proves to be more efficient than a torrent of imperial sanctions.
It is the tantalizing possibility of this single move turning into a paradigm shift – with no return – that is adding to the Hegemon’s apoplexy. Especially because imperial humiliation is deeply embedded in the paradigm shift.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, on the record, is now sending an unmistakeable message: Forget the Suez Canal. The way to go is the Northern Sea Route – which the Chinese, in the framework of the Russia-China strategic partnership, call the Arctic Silk Road.
Map of North-East and North-West Passage shipping routes
For the dumbfounded Europeans, the Russians have detailed three options: First, sail 15,000 miles around the Cap of Good Hope. Second, use Russia’s cheaper and faster Northern Sea Route. Third, send the cargo via Russian Railways.
Rosatom, which oversees the Northern Sea Route, has emphasized that non-ice-class ships are now able to sail throughout summer and autumn, and year-round navigation will soon be possible with the help of a fleet of nuclear icebreakers.
All that as direct consequences of the single Yemeni move. What next? Yemen entering BRICS+ at the summit in Kazan in late 2024, under the Russian presidency?
The new architecture will be framed in West Asia
The US-led Armada put together for Operation Genocide Protection, which collapsed even before birth, may have been set up to “warn Iran,” apart from giving Ansarallah a scare. Just as the Houthis, Tehran is hardly intimidated because, as West Asia analyst ace Alastair Crooke succinctly put it: “Sykes-Picot is dead.”
This is a quantum shift on the chessboard. It means West Asian powers will frame the new regional architecture from now on, not US Navy “projection.”
That carries an ineffable corollary: those eleven US aircraft carrier task forces, for all practical purposes, are essentially worthless.
Everyone across West Asia is well aware that Ansarallah’s missiles are capable of hitting Saudi and Emirati oil fields, and knocking them out of commission. So it is little wonder that Riyadh and Abu Dhabi would never accept becoming part of a US-led maritime force to challenge the Yemeni resistance.
Add to it the role of underwater drones now in the possession of Russia and Iran. Think of fifty of these aimed at a US aircraft carrier: it has no defense. While the Americans still have very advanced submarines, they cannot keep the Bab al-Mandeb and Red Sea open to western operators.
On the energy front, Moscow and Tehran don’t even need to think – at least not yet – about using the “nuclear” option or cutting off potentially at least 25 percent, and up, of the world oil supply. As one Persian Gulf analyst succinctly describes it, “that would irretrievably implode the international financial system.”
For those still determined to support the genocide in Gaza there have been warnings. Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani has mentioned it explicitly. Tehran has already called for a total oil and gas embargo against nations that support Israel.
A total naval blockade of Israel, meticulously engineered, remains a distinct possibility. Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander Hossein Salami said Israel may “soon face the closure of the Mediterranean Sea, the Strait of Gibraltar, and other waterways.”
Because if the Straussian neo-cons in the Beltway get really unhinged by the paradigm shift and act in desperation to “teach a lesson” to Iran, a chokepoint Hormuz-Bab al-Mandeb combo blockade might skyrocket the price of oil to at least $500 a barrel, triggering the implosion of the $618 trillion derivatives market and crashing the entire international banking system.
The paper tiger is in a jam
Mao Zedong was right after all: the US may be in fact a paper tiger. Putin, though, is way more careful, cold, and calculating. With this Russian president, it’s all about an asymmetric response, exactly when no one is expecting it.
That brings us to the prime working hypothesis perhaps capable of explaining the shadow play masking the single Ansarallah move on the chessboard.
When Pulitzer-winning investigative journalist Sy (Seymour) Hersh proved how Team Biden blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, there was no Russian response to what was, in effect, an act of terrorism against Gazprom, against Germany, against the EU, and against a bunch of European companies. Yet Yemen, now, with a simple blockade, turns global shipping upside down.
So what is more vulnerable? The physical networks of global energy supply (Pipelineistan) or the Thalassocracy, states that derive their power from naval supremacy?
Russia privileges Pipelineistan: see, for instance, the Nord Streams and Power of Siberia 1 and 2. But the US, the Hegemon, always relied on its thalassocratic power, heir to “Britannia rules the waves.”
Well, not anymore. And, surprisingly, getting there did not even entail the “nuclear” option, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which Washington games and scaremongers like crazy.
Of course we won’t have a smoking gun. But it’s a fascinating proposition that the single Yemeni move may have been coordinated at the highest level between three BRICS members – Russia, China, and Iran, the neocon new “axis of evil” – plus other two BRICS+, energy powerhouses Saudi Arabia and the UAE. As in, “if you do it, we’ve got your back”.
None of that, of course, detracts from Yemeni purity: their defense of Palestine is a sacred duty.
Western imperialism and then turbo-capitalism have always been obsessed with gobbling up Yemen, a process that Isa Blumi, in his splendid book Destroying Yemen, described as “necessarily stripping Yemenis of their historic role as the economic, cultural, spiritual, and political engine for much of the Indian Ocean world.”
Yemen, though, is unconquerable and, true to a local proverb, “deadly” (Yemen Fataakah). As part of the Axis of Resistance, Yemen’s Ansarallah is now a key actor in a complex Eurasia-wide drama that redefines Heartland connectivity; and alongside China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the India-Iran-Russia-led International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), and Russia’s new Northern Sea Route, also includes control over strategic chokepoints around the Mediterranean Seas and the Arabian peninsula.
This is another trade connectivity paradigm entirely, smashing to bits western colonial and neocolonial control of Afro-Eurasia. So yes, BRICS+ supports Yemen, who with a single move has presented Pax Americana with The Mother of All Geopolitical Jams.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
A year ago, US President Donald Trump assassinated the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Commander of the Quds brigade, Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, the coordinator between Iran and all its allies in Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. The apparent motivation behind this act was consistent with US policy since Trump assumed power. He has sought to humiliate, weaken, and damage Iran through maximum economic sanctions because Iran is justifiably considered a regional power, whose leaders reject the US hegemony. The Americans and the Israelis believed Soleimani was irreplaceable and that the “Axis of the Resistance” he was leading would be seriously damaged by his assassination. Many went further, describing the assassination as a body blow to Iran’s strategic goals. After one year, did the US really manage to wallop Iran, damage its objectives or destroy its goals? If these were its objectives, did it succeed?
On the 1st of January 2020, Sardar Soleimani visited Lebanon where he spent several hours meeting the Secretary-General of Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. Lebanon is an essential part of the “Axis of the Resistance”. Soleimani had visited the country and supported Hezbollah since 1998 when he was appointed as the IRGC-Quds Brigade commander. The Lebanese Hezbollah has become the strongest ally of Iran, the best armed and trained group in the Middle East: in fact, the most powerful Middle Eastern army. Brigadier General Soleimani kept a very low-profile for decades but was responsible for the provision of all training, finance and logistic support to Iran’s allies. Hezbollah is considered one of the most successful results of Iranian policy since 1982, when Imam Khomeini first sent Iranians to the Lebanese Beqaa Valley, during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Soleimani travelled later that day to Syria (another member of the “Axis of the Resistance”), where he spent the night. As in every visit to the Levant where hundreds of Iranian military advisors operate against ISIS and al-Qaeda, Soleimani called all the Iranian field-commanders to a meeting early in the morning. The meeting, unusually, lasted until late afternoon, where Soleimani distributed missions, argued military tactics and listened to the resident Iranian officers.
A few hours later, Qassem Soleimani took a flight from Damascus airport heading to Baghdad, Iraq, where he landed a few minutes before midnight. Soleimani, a Brigadier General, and four Iranian officers acting as his aides-de-camp were received at the airport by the Iraqi field-commander of Hashd al-Shaa’bi Abu Mahdi al-Muhandes, who drove him away. Two US MQ-9 Reaper drones then fired 230 mph laser-guided Hellfire missiles, incinerating the bodies of Soleimani, al-Muhandes and all their Iranian and Iraqi companions. Trump bragged that he killed “two for the price of one”. He supposed that Soleimani and Muhandes belonged to history and the page was closed.
Far from it. From one day to the next, consequences of the US unlawful assassination did much more than what Soleimani himself could have achieved when he was alive. The targeted killing of January 3 injected a new spirit into the “Islamic Revolution” of Imam Khomeini. Several Iranian generations had never lived the Revolution and undervalued the doctrine of “Wilayat al-Faqih” (guardianship-based political system), unlike the old guard. The assassination united the Iranian people under the national flag: it was not acceptable for millions of Iranians to see their General assassinated in such a cowardly manner by a drone and not even on the battlefield.
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US rage for dominating other countries by hot and/or cold wars poses an unparalleled threat to humanity.
US drive for hegemony is in stark contrast to the multi-world polarity agendas of China, Russia and Iran — prioritizing peace, stability, and mutual cooperation among all nations.
On Thursday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Zarif said the following:
“To meet the special challenges of our time, we need to solidify our cooperation within the framework of CICA (Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia).”
“We need to secure a pivotal role for the organization, to advance multilateralism, and to ensure inclusive collaboration.”
“It is imperative for us to pool our resources to jointly tackle the enormous challenge(s)” of our time.
Days earlier, Iran’s envoy to Britain Hamid Baeidinejad slammed the US for “behaving like a bully,” its actions “isolat(ing) itself from the international community.”
On Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that the “interdependence and interconnectedness of all states without exception in all spheres of public life is the most important” way to deal with vital issues of our time,” adding with reference to Washington’s hegemonic agenda:
“(O)ur common misfortune has failed to smooth out the differences between some states.”
“On the contrary, it has exacerbated many of them.”
“The very moments of crisis that we observed in international relations earlier have resurfaced.”
“A number of countries are increasingly…look(ing) abroad to find those who are responsible for their problems at home.”
“There are obvious attempts by individual states to use the current situation to promote self-serving and fleeting interests and to settle scores with unwanted governments or geopolitical rivals.”
“(T)he practice of imposing unilateral, illegitimate sanctions persists, (notably by the US) which undermines the authority and prerogatives of the UN Security Council.”
Again with reference to the US, Lavrov called attacks on the UN system “absolutely unjustified.”
Stressing the importance of supporting and maintaining world peace, stability and security, Lavrov’s call for permanent Security Council members to prioritize this agenda fell on deaf ears in Washington, London and Paris, nations run by belligerent regimes.
“(O)vercom(ing) the most pressing problems of humankind” is only possible by mutual cooperation among all nations, especially major ones, said Lavrov.
It’s been unattainable throughout the post-WW II period because of US-dominated NATO’s rage for endless wars by hot or other means.
On Thursday, China’s UN envoy Zhang Jun sharply criticized slanderous Trump regime attacks on his country, saying the following:
What the world needs now is global cooperation against a made-in-the-USA “political virus,” its blaming other nations for its own wrongdoing, its “unilateralism and bullying,” adding:
“(T)he US keeps withdrawing from international treaties and organizations, severely undermining the UN-centered international system and the international order based on international law.”
“The US flexes its (political and military muscles (globally, unlawfully) interfering…in the internal affairs of other countries…”
It “instigat(es) ‘color revolutions,’ jeopardizing (world) peace and stability.”
Its “cold war mentality” and drive for hegemony “push(es) the world into a dangerous situation.”
It’s “erecting protectionist barriers and destabilizing the world supply and industrial chains.”
It’s “wielding the big stick of unilateral sanctions, frantically containing and suppressing foreign (countries and) companies, and attempting to artificially cut off the international flow of capital, technology, product, industry and personnel.”
“(T)hese (actions) pose a serious threat to world peace and development.”
Jun’s call for the US to change its unacceptable ways fell on deaf ears of its one-party state with two right wings.
In February 2019, Trump appointed Kelly Knight Kraft as Washington’s UN envoy.
A dubious figure, wife of billionaire coal-mining tycoon/large GOP donor Joseph Craft, she’s notably unqualified for the high-profile diplomatic post, shown by her remarks — sounding like right-wing extremist/geopolitical know-nothing Nikki Haley.
On Thursday, she used the world stage to bash China and Iran unjustifiably.
Falsely accusing Iran of “funding and arming terrorists around the world” — a US specialty, not how Tehran operates anywhere — she shifted her venom at China, reciting a litany of bald-faced Big Lies, sounding like Chinaphobe Pompeo.
Time and again, GOP and Dem hardliners falsely blame countries they want transformed into pro-Western vassal states for high crimes committed against them.
A “safer and more secure world” is unattainable because of Washington’s geopolitical agenda, its hegemonic aims, its war on humanity, its abhorrence of peace, stability, cooperation among all nations, and the rule of law.
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 