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.
Ansarallah’s maritime operations against Israeli-linked shipping just expanded into the Mediterranean Sea, the Eurasian waterway NATO has long considered its own domain, home to Israel’s oil and gas platforms, and the site of Washington’s new ‘aid pier’ ploy.
In support of Gaza, Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned armed forces executed their first direct operation against Israel on 18 October 2023. That operation involved cruise missiles and drones targeting the port of Eilat in southern occupied Palestine and came less than two weeks after the Palestinian resistance’s Operation Al-Aqsa Flood flipped the script in West Asia.
Similar attacks ensued in rapid fire, with further warnings from the Yemeni military that it would “continue to carry out qualitative strikes with missiles and drones until the Israeli aggression stops.” One month later, amidst Tel Aviv’s worsening carnage in Gaza, Sanaa commenced its targeting of Israeli-linked and destined shipping vessels in the Red Sea, effectively blocking their passage through the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
‘Phased’ maritime operations
This marked Yemen’s first phase of a meticulously planned series of naval operations. The second phase saw a broader prohibition, blocking ships from any country from approaching Israeli ports – a waterway siege, just as Yemen has endured for eight long years. Sanaa’s scope of operations then broadened in the third phase to include the Indian Ocean, targeting Israeli vessels navigating the much longer Cape of Good Hope route – around the African continent – to deliver goods to the occupation state.
Israel’s shipping route before and after Yemen’s blockade
As tensions escalated, and to protect Israel, US and British naval forces cobbled together a ramshackle coalition of non-Arab states, Operation Prosperity Guardian, to strike Yemen – a country already ravaged by almost a decade of US-backed Saudi–UAE bombardment and siege.
This provoked a forceful and immediate response from Yemeni forces, who extended their target range to include US and British naval assets and, later, to expand their operational theater to the vast Indian Ocean.
But as Israel’s threats to invade and bombard Rafah intensified in recent days, Sanaa announced the start of a fourth phase of escalation, a significant ramp-up in their military response.
This phase will target Israeli ships or those heading to Israeli ports in the Mediterranean Sea and impose comprehensive sanctions on all vessels linked to companies that frequent the occupied state’s ports. Furthermore, the measures will be applied to all shipping vessels and companies that deliver goods to Israel, regardless of their final destinations. This effectively bars them from all Yemeni operational waterways.
The declaration of this fourth phase is a clear signal of widening the conflict zone to include the Mediterranean and tightening the siege on Israel, which economically depends on sea trade. It poses a renewed challenge to Tel Aviv and its allies, increasing pressure, particularly on Washington and its European partners.
Yemen’s scope of operations against Israeli shipping
Advancement of military capabilities
Sanaa’s strategic move is timed with ongoing ceasefire negotiations involving Hamas, which faces intense pressure to accept terms favorable to Israel, and is part of a broader strategy to influence political outcomes far beyond Yemen’s borders.
The Yemeni “circle of fire” – its maritime reach – now encompasses the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Indian Ocean, and the Mediterranean Sea. On land, Sanaa’s focus is on impacting Israel’s geographic depth, particularly its southern regions which abut the Red Sea.
In multiple speeches, Ansarallah leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi has emphasized Yemen’s staggering advances in military capabilities, both quantitatively and qualitatively. These advancements are made possible by various factors, most notably the real-world testing of their arsenal.
Recent broadcasts showcased a distant suicide drone targeting a ship in the Red Sea, equipped with a camera on its nose. Additionally, there has been significant Yemeni progress in the use of winged and ballistic missiles: according to military analysts, for the first time in history, anti-ship ballistic missiles were deployed against seaborne vessels, a qualitative advancement in Ansarallah’s military bag of tricks.
Sanaa’s strategic rise
Speaking to The Cradle, Brigadier General Mujib Shamsan, Chairman of the Yemeni Military Spokesmen’s Committee for the Media, says that Sanaa benefited from its operations and confrontation with American and British forces to fast-track its capabilities.
This is clearly evident through the comparison between the operations it carried out at the beginning of its decisions up to the end. Operations in the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, where it was able to accumulate and develop its capabilities continuously, whether at the level of missile force, unmanned air force, or other naval weapons, thus bypassing various American defense systems, learning many tactics regarding confronting them, and even bringing it to a state of failure.
The failings of the two western coalitions dedicated to thwarting Yemen’s siege of Israel have become apparent to all.
Since early April, various European naval commanders have thrown their hands up in full public view.
Jerome Henry, commander of France’s Aquitaine-class FREMM frigate Alsace – deployed in the Red Sea for 71 straight days – said on 11 April that his ship had depleted its entire combat arsenal, and while it would head to port to replenish those munitions, would return to face an impossible mission:
We didn’t necessarily expect this level of threat. There was an uninhibited violence that was quite surprising and very significant. [The Yemenis] do not hesitate to use drones that fly at water level, to explode them on commercial ships, and to fire ballistic missiles.
“We had to carry out at least half a dozen assistances following [Yemeni] strikes,” Henry told French publication Le Figaro.
Also in early April, Rear Admiral Vasileios Gryparis, the Greek commander of the EU’s Operation Aspides, warned that his mission would not succeed with only three warships available to protect shipments through the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Since “the launch of the Operation Aspides on 19 February 2024 until now, the threat level remains the same,” lamented Gryparis.
Yemeni Brigadier-General Shamsan points out that the US defense system failures, and growing risks faced by the anti-Yemen naval coalitions, have “forced it and its allies to withdraw more than 18 ships from the theater of operations, as the number of American ships that left reached 10, while eight ships belonging to European tools left.”
Shamsan says the rapid development of Sanaa’s military capabilities during the ongoing war has positioned Yemen as a pivotal player not only regionally but globally, owing to its strategic position overseeing one of the world’s most crucial maritime passages.
As Ansarallah’s phase four operations commence in the Mediterranean Sea, Shamsan declares that Yemen has now effectively implemented a maritime blockade and economic stranglehold on Israel, which heavily relies on sea routes for the vast majority of its imports.
This blockade, in turn, represents a significant leverage point against both Tel Aviv and its western allies, which have failed to protect their interests in the Red Sea or counteract Sanaa’s embargo on ships entering the ports of the occupation state.
Far from being a mere political and military backwater, Yemen has demonstrated far-reaching military capabilities and impressive strategic planning that has confounded the world’s greatest naval powers. Sanaa’s formidable maneuvers in West Asian maritime zones have catapulted it to the forefront of the region’s Axis of Resistance as the member most capable of influencing global maritime security and regional stability.
As the US and its allies rally around their newly constructed “aid pier” on Gaza’s Mediterranean coastline to, as many suspect, consolidate the area as a future site for US military operations and protect Israel’s oil and gas platforms, Yemen is emerging as a frontline adversary in that far-flung theater.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
The ‘Ammar Affash cell’ or ‘Force 400,’ a spy group led by Ammar Affash, recruited spies to gather intelligence and carry out sabotage operations against Yemen’s Armed Forces in service of the US and ‘Israel’.
Image shared by the Yemeni media showing five members of ‘Force 400’ linked to Ammar Affash ahead of releasing the video of their confessions on May 6, 2024. (Saba News Agency)
Members of the “Ammar Affash cell” (sometimes referred to as Ammar Saleh), were arrested by the Yemeni security services, with the support of those concerned from the Ministry of Defense, for spying in service of the West.
The cell, more commonly known as the spy group “Force 400”, led by Ammar Affash, a spy who has long been on the Yemeni forces’ wanted list, had recruited these members to commit crimes in favor of the US and “Israel”, according to Yemen’s Saba News Agency.
According to Saba News Agency, a security official explained that the members caught over the past few days were recruited to work on collecting information and monitoring sites belonging to the Yemeni Armed Forces on the western coast of the Republic of Yemen.
Furthermore, the official highlighted that following Yemen’s declaration of the launch of its operations in support of the people of Palestine and the start of operations against Israeli targets, including in the Red and Arabian seas amid a joint US-UK aggression on Yemen, security services detected increased intelligence efforts by Yemen’s enemies.
What were their missions?
US and Israeli occupation forces, along with local collaborators that Affash recruited, notably through the so-called “Force 400”, intensified activities, recruiting individuals to monitor missile and drone launch sites aimed at “Israel”. Not only that, the collaborators’ mission included gathering information on the locations of Yemeni Armed Forces boats and submitting their coordinates to their operators.
Those apprehended admitted to performing intelligence tasks, including gathering coordinates of military targets, thus enabling attacks by US and UK warplanes. As such, the collaborators, and their operators, are directly responsible for the blood spilled and the material losses caused by the joint aggression conducted in favor of Tel Aviv.
“Among what the spies were entrusted with, according to their confessions, was to carry out criminal and sabotage operations, which included carrying out operations to damage and burn vehicles belonging to the armed, security forces, and then preparing to carry out assassination operations using silencers and explosive materials for the purpose of distracting the armed forces from confronting the American, British, Israeli evil trio, and supporting… the besieged Palestinian people, and striking the homefront… in the service of the American and Israeli enemy through these sabotage and criminal operations,” a Yemeni official revealed to Saba News Agency.
The Yemeni security services emphasized the severe consequences awaiting these spies, including capital punishment, for collaborating with enemy intelligence services.
Ammar Affash: what we know
In 2022, a Central Military Court in Yemen convicted Ammar Mohammed Abdullah Saleh al-Ahmar, a former National Security Agency agent, along with 12 officers from the United States, for their crimes of attempting to destroy Yemen’s missile capabilities and air defense batteries.
During a court session in Sanaa, Ammar Saleh was sentenced to death in absentia, while the other officers were given 10-year prison terms.
Saleh, according to some leading Yemeni journalists, is known to also have ties to the United Arab Emirates, especially during the war on Yemen, and to maintain a connection with sleeper cells across Yemen. This is what “Force 400” is made of.
Western intelligence operations in a Yemeni context
This comes after Yemen has successfully implemented a maritime siege against “Israel”, despite the multiple attempts by the US, UK, and a joint naval operation to end Yemen’s siege.
Yemen launched its operation against the Israeli occupation in defense of the people of Yemen and expanded the width of operations to include the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and most recently the Mediterranean Sea. Yemen also expanded the scope of the operations to target not only ships headed to Israeli occupation ports, and Israeli ships but also US and British ships aimed at hindering Yemen’s operation in service of “Israel”.
Senior military officials in Sana’a have informed MintPress News of ongoing military preparations by the US, UK, and Saudi-led Coalition over the past two weeks. According to these sources, there are plans to initiate a significant aerial assault on the Yemeni mainland, focusing particularly on coastal regions in the west, as well as areas in the south near the Saudi border. This assault is expected to be accompanied by ground offensives carried out by factions aligned with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
MintPress News sources indicate a probable escalation, coinciding with significant military reinforcements. Notably, squadrons of US F-16 aircraft have been arriving at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, located less than 200 kilometers from the Yemeni border. Additionally, extensive air transport activities involving weapons and equipment have been observed over the past two weeks, with US cargo planes shuttling to and from military bases in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti.
On April 29, the Aviano Air Base in Italy declared the deployment of F-16 Fighting Falcon jets from its 510th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron to the Middle East. As stated on the Aviano Air Base website, these F-16s are set to undertake a range of missions, including safeguarding civilian vessels in the Red Sea and Arabian Gulf as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, alongside other crucial force protection and deterrence duties
Sources near the Saudi-led coalition-backed government in Aden revealed to MintPress News that the United States and Britain have ramped up their dialogue with the Ministry of Defense in the Aden administration. This surge comes in response to recent Yemeni activities in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean.
Military and political insiders in Sanaa informed MintPress News about the military exercise held on April 24. The event, dubbed “Desert Flag 9,” saw the participation of Saudi Arabia, Israel, and other Arab nations at the Al Dhafra base in the Emirates. This maneuver is believed to be part of preparations for the announcement of a new military coalition, ostensibly aimed at safeguarding international freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden, and Indian Ocean. At the outset of the exercise, General Charles Keough, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, lauded the collaboration among allies in countering perceived Iranian threats.
Numerous officials in Sanaa and among Ansar Allah have issued public warnings about alleged plans orchestrated by the United States and Britain, with support from certain Arab nations. The Supreme Political Council, the highest governing body in the northern region, has cautioned against any hostile escalation by the United States in Yemen. It asserts that ongoing suspicious preparations aimed at dissuading Yemen from supporting Gaza will prove futile. Emphasizing that any consequences of such escalation will extend beyond Yemen’s borders, the Council has urged Saudi Arabia to prioritize its national interests over those of the United States.
It seems evident that Saudi and Emirati endeavors extend beyond merely challenging the naval blockade imposed by Ansar Allah on Israel, currently engaged in what many legal experts have termed a genocide in Gaza. Rather, indications suggest that these oil-rich nations may be poised to actively participate in an anticipated U.S. and U.K. military intervention. Their aim? To dismantle the blockade on Israel imposed by Yemeni forces and quell Ansar Allah’s assaults on Israeli vessels—actions purportedly intended to halt the ongoing genocide and alleviate the siege on civilians within the embattled enclave.
In addressing the Yemen-Saudi border situation, Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi, a member of the Supreme Political Council, raised poignant questions: “Why does Saudi Arabia deliberately target civilians on the Yemeni border with French Caesar’s cannons? Wouldn’t it be wiser for the Saudi army to position these cannons near the borders of the northern kingdom to aid the people of Gaza?” He cautioned against reckless actions, stating, “Do not play with fire. We possess a strategic arsenal far beyond what you anticipate.”
Hussein Al-Ezzi, serving as the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Sana’a government, issued a stark warning:
“We are well aware of Washington’s hostile intentions. Henceforth, we hold Washington accountable for any dire consequences resulting from its reckless actions against Yemen. It may soon find itself devoid of safe havens in the region, as its interests become a common target for all those who value freedom.“
Seeking to entangle itself anew in the Yemen conflict and forge closer ties with Israel, the United States has pledged support to Saudi Arabia. This includes assistance for a Saudi nuclear program and designating Saudi Arabia as a major non-NATO ally. Talks are ongoing to solidify a joint defense pact and enhance security cooperation, as reported by Saudi media.
IMPENDING ASSAULTS ON CRITICAL ASSETS
The peril isn’t just about the conflict’s escalation, but also the neighboring nations getting entangled in operations beyond their control. This risks sparking another tragic conflict, impacting not only war-torn Yemen but also neighboring countries like Saudi Arabia.
MintPress sources have confirmed that, in the case of a U.S.-led ground invasion of Yemen, planned assaults by Ansar Allah will target not only U.S. interests and bases within the involved nations but also critical facilities and assets belonging to those participating countries, such as oil installations.
Ansar Allah has issued a grave threat of launching a large-scale and aggressive assault aimed at crucial installations, including oil facilities, in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This ominous warning mirrors previous attacks, such as the devastating strikes on the Abqaiq oil facilities in September 2019, which resulted in a significant disruption to half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production.
Ali al-Quhom, a Member of the Political Council of Ansar Allah, wrote on X, “The stage has changed, and with it, the rules of engagement have changed. Saudi Arabia and the UAE must realize this, and seven years are enough to learn the lesson. Yemen has become stronger with the increase in military capabilities at all levels. Escalation will be met with escalation, and this is a fixed and inseparable rule that will never change, ever. As you lost before, you will lose now, but this time your loss will be greater than before.” He added:
“There should be no submission or surrender on the part of neighboring countries to American, British and Israeli pressure and will, indicating that any American move from the territories of neighboring countries will lead to strong Yemeni responses, these countries will be the target of Yemeni operations, We have a target bank that includes strategic and vital targets in depth and in areas of economic importance.”
IMMINENT RETALIATION
Mounting tensions in Yemen and the broader region coincide with the withdrawal of an American aircraft carrier from the Red Sea. Yemeni analysts suggest that this move signifies not only the persistence of Yemeni operations targeting maritime navigation linked to the Israeli regime but also hints at a shift towards ground-based operations for a more extensive assault on Yemeni territory. Yemeni sources indicate that the departure of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely from the Red Sea is part of the preparations for the coming assault.
General Shamsan, the head of the Military Spokesmen Committee in the Yemeni Army, informed MintPress that concurrent with the withdrawal of the American aircraft carrier, a squadron of aircraft has arrived at Saudi bases. This development aligns with diplomatic and political maneuvers. The Americans seem compelled to pivot towards attacks from land bases to mitigate potential heavy losses from retaliatory strikes against U.S. aircraft carriers and destroyers at sea.
While certain Yemenis perceive the withdrawal of the American aircraft carrier from the Red Sea as a triumph, numerous political, military officials, and analysts interviewed by MintPress regard Washington’s move with deep suspicion, framing it within the context of ongoing operational preparations, as emphasized by Brigadier General Shamsan.
Last Friday, the U.S. Navy declared that USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and USS Gravely departed from the Red Sea after an almost four-month presence. Despite their deployment, the U.S. battle group was unable to impede Yemeni operations targeting maritime navigation associated with the Israeli regime, as these operations persisted.
Additionally, there’s a possibility, as indicated by a Yemeni source linked to the coordination between Yemeni and Iraqi resistance forces, that certain groups within the Resistance Axis, notably the Iraqi resistance, may engage in retaliatory strikes against key American and Saudi targets in the region. This prospect hints at potential conflict not only in the Red Sea but also in the Strait of Hormuz and the Arabian Gulf, posing a genuine threat to American interests. However, such escalation could potentially be averted or delayed, especially considering the Russian front and the upcoming U.S. presidential elections.
On the ground, clear signs of an impending conflict are emerging, particularly in the conflict zones of Taiz and Lahj, alongside other fronts. This coincides with significant military reinforcements being deployed by factions aligned with the Saudi-Emirati coalition from Aden to the strategic Tur al-Baha and Haifan fronts. These areas serve as vital contact points between Sanaa-aligned forces and coalition-backed militias. Tragically, in the Maqbanah area southwest of Taiz, an attack allegedly conducted by a drone affiliated with these factions resulted in the loss of two children and three women.
According to Yemeni military media, an American MQ9 drone was brought down above Saada Governorate while conducting a military operation. Footage released last Friday depicted Yemeni Armed Forces successfully shooting down the US MQ-9 aircraft using a missile.
In the days, military tensions between Yemeni forces and the American and British navies have surged to unprecedented levels. Reports indicate violent explosions along the coasts of Al-Khawkhah and Al-Mokha, spanning from Khor Amira, facing Bab Al-Mandab, to the southern shores of the country
Yemenis harbor a pervasive belief in the imminent likelihood of a ground invasion, a notion taken with utmost seriousness across the nation. Numerous officials, in interviews with MintPress, have openly discussed the potentiality of such an occurrence, grounded not in analysis but in raw data. Consequently, all regions, cities, and institutions have experienced a surge in recruitment efforts, operating under the banner of “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
YEMEN’S RESOLVE AMID ESCALATING TENSIONS
While Yemenis are earnestly grappling with the looming prospect of escalation, their resolve extends beyond merely halting attacks aimed at ending the conflict in Gaza and lifting the blockade. They’ve heralded an unprecedented development targeting Israeli vessels across the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, and Bab al-Mandab. On Tuesday, the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF) launched strikes against two United States warships in the Red Sea and targeted the Cyclades bulk carrier, achieving precise hits. Subsequently, military media footage surfaced, showcasing the moment of the Cyclades ship’s bombing in the Indian Ocean, underscoring the Yemeni army’s capacity to execute operations hundreds of kilometers from the Yemeni coastline.
مشاهد لحظة استهداف سفينة (CYCLADES) بطائرة مسيرة والتي كانت متجهة إلى موانئ فلسطينَ المحتلة في البحر الأحمر pic.twitter.com/BNC4jPj1SM
In a televised address to the nation last Thursday discussing the latest regional developments, Ansar Allah leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi stated that the Yemeni army is enhancing its presence in the Indian Ocean, aiming to block Israeli-affiliated vessels from navigating the Cape of Good Hope route or towards the Red Sea. He further remarked, “The Yemeni front will remain open, and the Yemeni Armed Forces’ (YAF) operations in support of Palestine will continue.”
Since Abdul-Malik al-Houthi’s speech, four Israeli, American, and British vessels have been hit. The Yemeni Navy struck the British ship ANDROMEDA STAR and the Israeli MSC Darwin ship on Saturday, along with an American warship and another commercial vessel named MAERSK YORKTOWN, and the Israeli MSC VERACRUZ on April 24. Preceding these events, the Yemeni army conducted four operations targeting two Israeli ships and two American ships on April 10.
Following Abdulmalik al-Houthi’s speech, four vessels affiliated with Israel, the United States and Britain were targeted by Ansar Allah. The Yemeni navy attacked the British vessel Andromeda Star and the Israeli MSC Darwinship on Saturday, as well as an American warship and a commercial vessel named Maersk Yorktown, and the Israeli MSC Veracruz on April 24. Prior to these incidents, the Yemeni army executed four operations against two Israeli ships and two American ships on April 10.
It’s worth noting that Ansar Allah has turned down several American offers aimed at halting their maritime attacks in support of Gaza. These offers included recognition of their group, revocation of their terrorist designation, payment of government employee salaries, and the signing of a comprehensive agreement with Saudi Arabia to end the war and initiate Yemen’s reconstruction.
Barbara Leaf, Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, said in a press briefing that there are ongoing communications with Ansar Allah, urging the movement to engage in the Yemeni political process. However, she clarified that she wouldn’t characterize the discussions with strong language at this point. Leaf emphasized that “Washington is employing all available means, both diplomatically and militarily, to deter the Houthis from their actions,” which she described as “reckless” in the Red Sea.
Feature photo | Yemenis attend a massive rally against US-led airstrikes on Yemen and the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip in Sanaa, Yemen, March 1, 2024. Osamah Abdulrahman | AP
No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred.
Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.
The money quote:
“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”
Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.
Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.
Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.
That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.
Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.
And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.
Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.
Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.
The sponsors remain the same
Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.
The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.
Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.
That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.
It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.
The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…
… Donald Trump.
Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.
ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”
But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.
It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian
The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s
military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”
Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.
And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”
In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.
The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.
Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.
Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.
It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.
Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.
So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.
Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.
So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.
In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity, now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.
There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.
Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.
As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.
In his traditional Tuhamian clothing, Ali, a Yemeni fisherman from the coastal city of Hodeidah, stands in a gathering of thousands of Yemenis and chants, “With you, with you, O Al-Qassam Brigades… until victory or martyrdom.”
Ali told MintPress News that with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, he feels the suffering of his brothers in Gaza more than ever, so he decided to participate in today’s demonstration for the first time out of sympathy with Gaza and in rejection of what he described as the hideous practices carried out by the invaders in the Red Sea against fishermen.
At the beginning of Ramadan, he quit fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters for fear of his life. “Since the scary ships came, whoever goes out to fish will be killed or arrested, and whoever survives will not return with enough fish.”
Ali, a member of the Al-Hammadi family, who depend on fishing as their only source of income, says that one of his relatives, Qasim, was killed by foreign forces protecting Israeli ships at sea near the shores of Hodeidah. But Ali says he is happy that he now shares the suffering with the residents of Gaza.
FISHERMEN RALLY AGAINST FOREIGN AGGRESSION
Qasim and seven other fishermen, all from the Al-Khawkha District in the coastal governorate of Hodeidah, lost their lives to the Western forces in the Red Sea while fishing in Yemen’s territorial waters. On January 26, 2024, a month after their disappearance, their bodies were found on the Dhu al-Harab Islands overlooking the waterway in the sea. The coalition allies control these islands. At that time, the Ministry of Fisheries, based in Sana’a, accused American coalition forces of the crime.
The murder of the eight fishermen: Qasim Hammadi, Ibrahim Mahnish, Zakaria Mansoub, Hamza Abdel Hafeez, Majed Bahidar, Ibrahim Salem, Ahmed Shaif, and Anwar Hattab is not an isolated case, but rather one of the dozens of incidents in which fishermen either lost their lives were injured or were arrested and disappeared, forcing other fisherman to stay in their homes starving rather than risk death or imprisonment.
The Ministry of Fisheries in Sana’a, which recorded dozens of violations against fishermen, including kidnapping and arrests carried out by the U.S. Navy, said in a previous statement that the U.S. Navy’s activity near the Yemeni coast and territorial waters threatens Yemeni fishermen, puts their lives in danger and causes them to lose their only source of income.
It mentioned that U.S. forces and their allies resort to the use of force and threats to prevent fishermen from exercising their right to fish, pointing to the tragic conditions experienced by thirty thousand Yemeni fishermen, who depend on the fishing profession as the only source of income for their families, due to the presence of American forces in the Red Sea.
It added that foreign forces also deplete and plunder fish stocks, leading to declining stocks and fishermen’s wages. “Sometimes we and our brothers in Gaza share the same suffering, siege, and killing,” Ali says.
Ali supports Ansar Allah’s blockade of Israeli ships from the Red Sea and likens his suffering to that of Palestinians. He does not hide his support for the targeting of American and British ships, describing it as a resistance operation against forces that came from the high seas, not to prevent them from fishing and polluting their waters, but rather to kill the people of Gaza. He says Israel, America and Britain should “drink from the same cup.”
Like the fishermen, residents still suffer from the repercussions of ten years of Saudi-led war and the U.S.-backed blockade, despite the relative cessation of bombing from 2022 until the start of the war on Gaza. Yemen is one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises, with more than 21 million Yemenis in need of assistance and suffering from inadequate food, health care, and infrastructure and 6.1 million facing “emergency” levels of food insecurity, according to a recent report from Human Rights Watch.
The situation has become much worse since the onset of the U.S. bombing campaign on the Yemeni mainland, the continuation of the blockade, and the prevention of any political settlement between warring factions in Yemen. The local population, however, does not appear ready to abandon Gaza and supports Ansar Allah’s operations against Israel, U.S. and British ships, even if it makes their own situation worse.
Residents in Hodeidah Governorate were not the only ones who took to the streets in massive demonstrations on Friday to express this sentiment. A massive demonstration took place in more than 140 governorates, cities, and regions, the most important of which was in the Al-Sabeen area in the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, and the cities of Saada, Dhamar, Al-Bayda, Hajjah, Al-Mahwit, Amran, Al-Dhale’, Taiz, Al-Jawf, and Marib governorates. The theme of the protests was “Our operations continue. Stop your aggression.”
ESCALATING TENSIONS: THE YEMENI RESPONSE
Most Yemenis see the aid airdropped by the U.S. in Gaza and the construction of a floating port as little more than a hoax, and Yemen’s leadership intends to escalate its blockade of the Red Sea further. This week, an Israeli ship, the Pacific 1, was targeted for the first time since November 19, 2023, when Yemen announced military operations in support of Gaza.
Recently, the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdulmalik Al-Houthi, announced that Israeli or Israeli-linked ships would not only be prevented from crossing the Red and Arabian Seas but would also be prevented from crossing the Indian Ocean and Cape of Good Hope until the war against Gaza is stopped and the blockade is lifted.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, the spokesperson of Ansar Allah, confirmed that Yemen has moved towards escalation by targeting Israeli ships in the Indian Ocean and preventing them from sailing towards the Cape of Good Hope. International shipping companies linked to Israel, he said, “must take this escalation very seriously and know that any Israel-linked ship will be exposed to Yemeni missiles.”
ANSAR ALLAH’S PURSUIT OF STRATEGIC SUPERIORITY
In response to U.S. attacks on Yemen, Ansar Allah has not only upgraded their missile and drone capabilities, modifying explosive warheads to double their destructive power but has now manufactured hypersonic missiles with high destructive capability. High-ranking military sources within Ansar Allah told MintPress that Yemen is close to adding hypersonic missiles to its arsenal following testing against sea targets. In early March, Yemeni rocket scientists tested a solid-fuel hypersonic missile that can reach speeds of up to 10,000 kilometers per hour (Mach 8).
In a recent interview with MintPress News, ِMohammed Ali al-Houthi, Ansar Allah’s second-in-command, gave explicit hints about a “surprise” that could change the equation in the Red Sea, even against targets inside of the occupied Palestinian territories.
In a televised speech, which he usually delivers every Thursday to announce the latest developments in Gaza and Yemen, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the leader of Ansar Allah, said, “There is a noticeable development in Yemeni missiles, among these developments is a missile that arrived to Eilat this week without being detected or intercepted by the enemy. Others reached to the Indian Ocean, however, behind these developments is something more advanced, but we leave it for action first.
Last Thursday, al-Houthi announced that Ansar Allah has used new weapons in recent operations in the Red and Arabian Seas, which “surprised the United States and the United Kingdom.” He added, “Our enemies, friends, and our people will see a level of achievement of strategic importance that will place our country in terms of its capabilities among the few countries in this world.”
Brigadier Abdul-Ghani Al-Zubaid, Brigadier in the Yemeni Army and researcher in political and military affairs said that al-Houthi’s allusion to missile development and failure of Israel’s advanced air defense systems, such as the Hatz system, confirmed that hypersonic missiles are already available, perhaps in significant quantities. He continued, “We may witness qualitative operations targeting the enemy’s depth in the coming days, American and British ships in the Indian Ocean and South Africa.”
Israel acknowledged in a statement released on Monday that “a cruise missile” coming from the direction of the Red Sea from Yemen circumvented Israeli anti-air systems and struck territories in southern occupied Palestine near Eilat.
Ballistic missiles fly on a trajectory, allowing anti-missile systems to anticipate and intercept their path. The more irregular a missile’s flight path, the more difficult it becomes to intercept. Hypersonic missiles fly at speeds greater than Mach 5 and can change directions during flight. Undoubtedly, Ansar Allah’s new hypersonic missiles could pose a formidable challenge to air defense systems employed by the U.S. and Israel due to their speed and maneuverability. Another development that was met with less fanfare but was no less significant than Ansar Allah’s hypersonic missiles was the development of its diplomatic relationship with Russia and China.
YEMEN’S GEOPOLITICAL REBALANCING ACT
Growing feelings of hostility towards the United States and the United Kingdom following their attacks on Yemen and support for Israel’s war in Gaza have not only prompted major countries such as Russia to strengthen their relationship with Ansar Allah to mire the U.S. in the Red Sea swamp, they have also prompted the group to enhance relations with Russia and China in a bid to bring about a strategic defeat for the U.S. in the region.
Member of Ansar Allah’s Political Bureau, Ali al-Qahoum, told MintPress that,
“There is already development in relations between Yemen, Russia, China, and the BRICS countries, exchanging experiences and expertise in various fields. This serves a common interest with the goal of letting America, Britain, and the West sink into a quagmire in the Red Sea so that their unilateral polarity sinks, fades, and weakens.“
Al-Qahoum added,
“This is not just my analysis but a clearly visible fact. Yemen is a state that has already succeeded in supporting Palestine and has been able to stabilize the Red Sea with great efficiency, representing a major strategic victory in the military, security and political spheres.
Thanks to God and our brave leader, Yemen was able to achieve this with unparalleled strength and pride,” he added, “To the point that major countries began coordinating and building relations with us on an equal footing, paving the way for the foreseeable future and laying the groundwork for the historic defeat of the United States, Britain and the West, and by extension, the collapse of the colonial project and Western hegemony over the region and the world.
With the West, led by America and Britain, attacking Yemen and continuing to weave colonial conspiracies and preparing to expand their ongoing aggression against Yemen, and their failure to provide protection for Israel in the Red Sea, there is intensive work and movement by Yemen to support Palestine and continue useful and effective strategic military operations.“
STRATEGIC COORDINATION: PALESTINIAN RESISTANCE
The strengthening of diplomatic ties with Russia, China, and the BRICS countries is no exception. Ansar Allah is also strengthening its relations with various Palestinian resistance factions, specifically the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Hamas movement.
Nasr al-Din Amer, a leader in Ansar Allah and deputy head of the Ansar Allah Media Authority, told MintPress that Ansar Allah had given authority over the Israeli ship, the “Galaxy,” detained off of the coast of Yemen as well as its crew, to the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. Amer emphasized Ansar Allah’s cooperation and coordination with Palestinian resistance movements, most notably Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
Washington DC — (Scheerpost) — Piers allow things to come in. They allow things to go out. And Israel, which has no intention of halting its murderous siege of Gaza, including its policy of enforced starvation, appears to have found a solution to its problem of where to expel the 2.3 million Palestinians.
If the Arab world will not take them, as Secretary of State Antony Blinken proposed during his first round of visits after Oct. 7, the Palestinians will be cast adrift on ships. It worked in Beirut in 1982 when some eight and a half thousand Palestine Liberation Organization members were sent by sea to Tunisia, and another two and a half thousand ended up in other Arab states. Israel expects that the same forced deportation by sea will work in Gaza.
Israel, for this reason, supports the “temporary pier” the Biden administration is building to ostensibly deliver food and aid to Gaza – food and aid whose “distribution” will be overseen by the Israeli military.
“You need drivers that don’t exist, trucks that don’t exist feeding into a distribution system that doesn’t exist,” Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior aid official in the Biden administration and now president of the Refugees International aid advocacy group, told The Guardian.
This “maritime corridor” is Israel’s Trojan Horse, a subterfuge to expel Palestinians. The small shipments of seaborne aid, like the food packets that have been air-dropped, will not alleviate the looming famine. They are not meant to.
Five Palestinians were killed and several others injured when a parachute carrying aid failed and crashed onto a crowd of people near Gaza City’s Shati refugee camp.
“Dropping aid in this way is flashy propaganda rather than a humanitarian service,” the media office of the local government in Gaza said. “We previously warned it poses a threat to the lives of citizens in the Gaza Strip, and this is what happened today when the parcels fell on the citizens’ heads.”
If the U.S. or Israel were serious about alleviating the humanitarian crisis, the thousands of trucks with food and aid currently at the southern border of Gaza would be allowed to enter any of its multiple crossings. They are not. The “temporary pier,” like the air drops, is ghoulish theater, a way to mask Washington’s complicity in the genocide.
Israeli media reported the building of the pier was due to pressure from the United Arab Emirates, which threatened Israel with ending a land corridor trade route it administers in collusion with Saudi Arabia and Jordan to bypass Yemen’s naval blockade.
The Jerusalem Post reported it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who proposed the construction of the “temporary pier” to the Biden administration.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has called Palestinians “human animals” and advocated a total siege of Gaza, including cutting off electricity, food, water and fuel, lauded the plan, saying, “it is designed to bring aid directly to the residents and thus continue the collapse of Hamas’s rule in Gaza.”
“Why would Israel, the engineer of the Gaza famine, endorse the idea of establishing a maritime corridor for aid to address a crisis it initiated and is now worsening?” writes Tamara Nassar in an article titled “What’s the Real Purpose of Biden’s Gaza Port?” in The Electronic Intifada. “This might appear paradoxical if one were to assume that the primary aim of the maritime corridor is to deliver aid.”
When Israel offers a gift to the Palestinians, you can be sure it is a poisoned apple. That Israel got the Biden administration to construct the pier is one more example of the inverted relationship between Washington and Jerusalem, where the Israel lobby has bought off elected officials in the two ruling parties.
Oxfam, in a March 15 report, accuses Israel of actively hindering aid operations in Gaza in defiance of the orders by the International Court of Justice. It notes that 1.7 million Palestinians, some 75 percent of the Gaza population, are facing famine, and two-thirds of the hospitals and over 80 percent of all health clinics in Gaza are no longer operable. The majority of people, the report reads, “have no access to clean drinking water” and “sanitation services are not functioning.”
The report reads:
The conditions we have observed in Gaza are beyond catastrophic, and we have not only seen failure by Israeli authorities to meet their responsibility to facilitate and support international aid efforts, but in fact seen active steps being taken to hinder and undermine such aid efforts. Israel’s control of Gaza continues to be characterized by deliberate restrictive actions that have led to a severe and systemic dysfunctionality in the delivery of aid. Humanitarian organizations operational in Gaza are reporting a worsening situation since the International Court of Justice imposed provisional measures in light of the plausible risk of genocide, with intensified Israeli barriers, restrictions and attacks against humanitarian personnel. Israel has maintained a ‘convenient illusion of a response’ in Gaza to serve its claim that it is allowing aid in and conducting the war in line with international laws.
Oxfam says Israel employs “a dysfunctional and undersized inspection system that keeps aid snarled up, subjected to onerous, repetitive and unpredictable bureaucratic procedures that are contributing to trucks being stranded in giant queues for 20 days on average.” Israel, Oxfam explains, rejects “items of aid as having ‘dual (military) use,’ banning vital fuel and generators entirely along with other items essential for a meaningful humanitarian response such as protective gear and communications kit.” Rejected aid, “must go through a complex ‘pre-approval’ system or end up being held in limbo at the Al Arish warehouse in Egypt.” Israel has also “cracked down on humanitarian missions, largely sealing off northern Gaza, and restricting international humanitarian workers’ access not only into Gaza but Israel and the West Bank including East Jerusalem too.”
Israel has allowed 15,413 trucks into Gaza during the past 157 days of war. Oxfam estimates that the population of Gaza needs five times that number. Israel allowed 2,874 trucks in February, a 44 percent reduction from the previous month. Before Oct. 7, 500 aid trucks entered Gaza daily.
Israeli soldiers have also killed scores of Palestinians attempting to receive aid from trucks in more than two dozenincidents. These attacks include the killing of at least 21 Palestinians and the wounding of 150 on March 14, when Israeli forces fired on thousands of people in Gaza City. The same area had been targeted by Israeli soldiers hours earlier.
“Israel’s assault has caught Gaza’s own aid workers and international agencies’ partners inside a ‘practically uninhabitable’ environment of mass displacement and deprivation, where 75 percent of solid waste is now being dumped in random sites, 97 percent of groundwater made unfit for human use, and the Israeli state using starvation as a weapon of war,” Oxfam says.
There is no place in Gaza, Oxfam notes, that is safe “amid the forcible and often multiple displacements of almost the entire population, which makes the principled distribution of aid unviable, including agencies’ ability to help repair vital public services at scale.”
Oxfam blasts Israel for its “disproportionate” and “indiscriminate” attacks on “civilian and humanitarian assets” as well as “solar, water, power and sanitation plants, UN premises, hospitals, roads, and aid convoys and warehouses, even when these assets are supposedly ‘deconflicted’ after their coordinates have been shared for protection.”
The health ministry in Gaza said Monday that at least 31,726 people have been killed since the Israeli assault began five months ago. The death toll includes at least 81 deaths in the previous 24 hours, a ministry statement said, adding that 73,792 people have been wounded in Gaza since Oct. 7. Thousands more are missing, many buried under the rubble.
None of these Israeli tactics will be altered with the building of a “temporary pier.” In fact, given the pending ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are crowded in tent cities or camped out in the open air, Israel’s tactics will only get worse.
Israel, by design, is creating a humanitarian crisis of such catastrophic proportions, with thousands of Palestinians killed by bombs, shells, missiles, bullets, starvation and infectious diseases, that the only option will be death or deportation. The pier is where the last act in this gruesome genocidal campaign will be played out as Palestinians are herded by Israeli soldiers onto ships.
How appropriate that the Biden administration, without whom this genocide could not have been carried out, will facilitate it.
Feature photo | Israel’s Trojan Horse | Mr. Fish
Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He previously worked overseas for The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor, and NPR. He is the host of show The Chris Hedges Report.
Stories published in our Daily Digests section are chosen based on the interest of our readers. They are republished from a number of sources, and are not produced by MintPress News. The views expressed in these articles are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect MintPress News editorial policy.
Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
An aerial view of the “Eilat-Ashkelon” oil terminal at “Israel’s” southern Red Sea port city of “Eilat’, occupied Umm Rashrash, occupied Palestine, on February 9, 2021. (AFP)
Dimitri Lascaris’ report on the Israeli occupation’s port settlement of “Eilat” reveals the severe impact of the Yemeni Armed Forces’ operations on the Israeli occupation’s economy.
Dimitri Lascaris, a Canadian lawyer and journalist, visited the Israeli occupation’s port settlement of “Eilat” on March 17 through 18 and reported that the Yemeni operations conducted by the Yemeni Armed Forces have indeed left the port settlement devoid of any cargo ships.
“There are no cargo ships here, no tankers [visible],” said Lascaris.
According to Lascaris, “All indications” point to the fact that “the attacks on Red Sea shipping by the Ansar Allah movement continued to have dramatic impacts on this particular port facility.”
The Canadian lawyer further underscored that the settlement is “far away from the major population centers of Israel,” adding that “it’s also not served by rail, at least not yet.”
This means that the Red Sea blockade against the Israeli occupation and in defense of the Gaza Strip has actually choked the settlement, which had no way around due to the lack of rail routes.
Through “Eilat”, “Israel” imports vehicles from Asia and delivers and temporarily stores oil cargo.
“There is almost no one on those beaches,” Lascaris reported, adding that there is “no indication of any tourism here.” Even kiosks and shops appear to be shut down, at this time of year, on a Sunday.
This is especially significant given that “Eilat” has been dubbed by Israeli media as a touristic destination.
“It certainly does seem quiet here.”
My latest:
I just visited Israel’s Red Sea port to see how attacks on commercial shipping by Yemen’s Ansar Allah (supporters of God) had affected maritime traffic to and from Eilat, Israel.
Discussing the topic of the Israeli occupation’s economy, the journalist said that in the first two months of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the economy has shrunk by 20%, adding that “it may well have shrunk further since then.”
The journalist referred to a statement by the head of the port facility in December 2023, saying, “Maritime traffic in Eilat had plummeted by some 85% due to the attacks.”
Lascaris, who chose to remain in “Eilat” overnight, also reported “no commercial shipping activity whatsoever in Israeli waters or at the Israeli port.”
Concluding his report, Lascaris proclaimed, “If Israel and its backers are seriously interested in bringing an end to the severe damage to the Israeli economy, there’s one simple, straightforward, and morally correct course of action to pursue in that regard, and that is to put a stop to the genocidal assault on Gaza and, frankly, the criminal assaults on the West Bank as well.”
YAF hit US oil tanker, ‘Eilat’
Earlier on Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF), Brigadier General Yahya Saree, announced that the YAF Navy targeted the American oil tanker MADO in the Red Sea using appropriate naval missiles.
“Our forces fired several winged missiles at Israeli targets in the Umm al-Rashrash region in southern occupied Palestine,” he added.
He stressed that these operations come in support of the Palestinian people, who are still facing Israeli aggression and siege, and in response to the US and British aggression on Yemen.
Al-Houthi: Our ops. hit Indian Ocean, to be expanded to Cape Route
Meanwhile, the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed Abdul al-Malik al-Houthi, declared on March 14 that the Yemeni Armed Forces are heading toward expanding the scope of their operations conducted against the Israeli occupation forces’ war on the Gaza Strip.
Sayyed al-Houthi’s announcement will reverberate across global politics, as he underlined that the YAF is heading toward launching attacks on vessels in the Indian Ocean that have been redirected toward the Cape of Good Hope Route, following attacks on merchant and military vessels affiliated with the tripartite Alliance of Evil of the United States, the United Kingdom, and “Israel”.
Avoiding missile and drone attacks from the Yemeni Navy in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, ships heading toward Israeli-occupied ports have opted for the longer route of circling the African continent, paralyzing the Israeli-occupied port in Um al-Rashrash or “Eilat”.
“Our Yemeni Armed Forces will carry on the Battle of the Promised Conquest and Holy Jihad in support of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the leader of the Ansar Allah emphasized on Thursday.
“Operations targeting Israeli-affiliated vessels and ships affiliated with the American and British sides are ongoing with high effectiveness,” he revealed.
For five months, Israel has been chasing ‘tactical wins’ to recover its image of military omnipotence lost on 7 October. But, this fruitless diversion means that Tel Aviv now faces ‘strategic defeat’ in Gaza.
In a fight like this, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you make them fall into the hands of the enemy, you turn tactical victory into strategic defeat.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued this warning to Israel back in December during his address at the Reagan National Defense Forum in California. Drawing on hard-earned lessons from US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Austin stressed that winning battles on the ground does not guarantee a strategic victory and may even lead to a strategic defeat – if Israel refuses to look at the bigger picture.
This is one of the main sources of Washington’s pressure on Tel Aviv, especially in light of the allies’ differing political visions for Gaza in the post-war period and the man-made humanitarian crisis Israel has imposed on the Strip. It’s a philosophy rooted in foresight, echoing Robert Greene’s wisdom from his 33 War Strategies: “Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead.”
Israel’s declared war objectives
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet has outlined two primary objectives for the Gaza war: dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure and securing the release of prisoners detained since 7 October. Netanyahu later expanded on these objectives, adding a crucial third goal: ensuring Gaza’s inability to threaten the occupation state’s security in the future. Consequently, the success of Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza hinges on achieving these pivotal objectives.
Despite their shared goals, disparities have emerged between the American and Israeli approaches. While both advocate for neutralizing Hamas, the Biden administration advocates for a more politically driven strategy, while Netanyahu seeks an almost entirely military-centric approach.
Hamas, on the other hand, announced three main objectives of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood immediately following the events of 7 October. First, success in conducting a prisoner exchange with the enemy entity. Second, retaliation against Israeli aggression in the occupied West Bank and safeguarding Al-Aqsa Mosque from settler extremists. Third, placing the Palestinian issue back on the global stage.
Tactics vs strategy
Chinese General Sun Tzu’s timeless wisdom in his Art of War distinguishes between tactical maneuvers and strategic foresight: “Everyone can see the tactics that are used to defeat the enemy in war, but what no one can see is the strategy from which great victory arises.”
In warfare, tactical objectives focus on short-term gains – specific engagements or territorial advances. In contrast, strategic goals require long-term vision, aligning military actions with political priorities. In essence, tactics look to answer the “how,” while strategy answers the “why” in military engagement, ultimately with a political endgame.
Any state or party to a conflict can achieve tactical objectives by excelling in battlefield maneuvers, using superior technology, or having better trained and equipped forces. But winning battles – that is, achieving tactical goals – does not necessarily mean winning the war.
This discrepancy occurs because the cumulative effect of tactical victories may not align with or contribute adequately to broader strategic objectives. While tactics are essential to winning battles, they must be used as part of a strategy aimed at achieving the ultimate goals of war.
History offers several sobering reminders of the perils of prioritizing tactics over strategy. For example, in the Vietnam War, the US achieved numerous tactical victories yet failed strategically. Despite inflicting heavy losses, the broader goal of fostering a non-communist South Vietnam remained elusive. The US’s longest war, in Afghanistan against the Taliban, ended in another humiliating withdrawal, only for the Taliban to return to unprecedented political power across the country.
Esteemed Israeli historian and critic of Zionism, Ilan Pappe, believes that the failures of the genocidal war on Gaza will ultimately lead to the downfall of the Zionist entity, with the war being the most perilous chapter in the “history of a project fighting for its existence.”
It’s not the darkest moment in Palestine’s history; it would be written as the beginning of the end of the Zionist project.
What has Israel achieved so far?
Today, after a record five months of Israeli military operations in Gaza, killing well over 30,000 civilians, injuring many times that, and demolishing most of Gaza’s critical infrastructure, it becomes evident that Netanyahu’s focus on tactical wins has led to a disconnect with the broader strategic goals of the war.
The ‘progress’ made within the Gaza Strip, while significant on a tactical level, has not effectively advanced the strategic aim of eliminating Hamas, Tel Aviv’s number one stated war objective. On the contrary, US reports claim that 80 percent of the Palestinian resistance’s key military infrastructure remains intact.
This has left Netanyahu facing a critical dilemma: the pursuit of tactical gains has come at a steep cost, jeopardizing the achievement of his strategic objectives. His Gaza assault has resulted in the wholesale massacre of Palestinian civilians – predominantly women and children – widespread global censure, and thousands of dead and injured Israeli soldiers and officers.
This tragic toll has permanently tarnished Israel’s international image, undermining its fairytale narratives of ‘democracy’ and ‘victimhood’ and casting Tel Aviv instead as a leading perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism in the world. Moreover, Israel’s actions have led to accusations of genocide and human rights violations on the international stage, most notably the recent high-profile case at the International Court of Justice.
Netanyahu and his war cabinet have fallen into a classic trap: allowing pyrrhic wins to distract them from an overarching victory.
As Edward Luttwak says in his book The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire, strategy “is not about moving armies across geography, as in the game of chess. It involves the entire struggle of hostile forces, which need not have a spatial dimension at all.”
What is happening in Khan Yunis today is ample proof that the occupation army is still far from achieving its strategic goals. Despite Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galant’s boast that Hamas has been ‘dismantled’ in Khan Yunis, continuing clashes in the area between occupation forces and resistance fighters invalidate these Israeli claims.
Furthermore, Netanyahu’s defiance of the Biden administration’s marginally more moderate approach has strained relations between the two allies. Leaked communications and official statements highlight Washington’s deep concerns over Israel’s conduct.
While Israel remains a key strategic partner for the US, the discord stemming from the 5-month war in Gaza threatens to impact future bilateral relations, especially with continued extremist governance in Tel Aviv.
The Resistance understands strategy
On the flip side of the war, the Palestinian resistance maintains its strategic objective of resisting occupation and thwarting Israeli military objectives. Hamas’ willingness to engage in negotiations on its terms also demonstrates its continued resilience and strength.
Additionally, support from allied factions in the region’s Axis of Resistance has intensified pressure on both Washington and Tel Aviv, including the gradual decolonization of northern Palestine by the Lebanese Hezbollah, the ongoing Red Sea naval blockade imposed by Yemen’s Ansarallah-led forces, and routine drone strikes against US and Israeli targets by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.
With Tel Aviv struggling to reconcile its objectives with its methods, Washington has intervened to prevent its ally’s strategic defeat. The US proposal for resolution emphasizes a long-term political strategy aimed at integrating Israel further into the region via normalization agreements while sidelining Palestinian resistance through diplomatic and soft power channels.
History teaches us that tactical gains, without alignment with strategic objectives, are inadequate for long-term success. The crucial question that looms is whether US intervention will indeed succeed in preserving Israel’s strategic aims.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Ansar Allah fighters stage a rally against the U.S. government designating Ansar Allah as a terror group and against the U.S.-led sustained airstrikes on Yemen, near Sanaa, Yemen, January 25, 2024. (AP)
An opinion piece published in Bloomberg details the significant challenges the Yemenis pose against the Western maritime coalition, giving them the upper hand in battle.
A recent op-ed published by Bloomberg detailed the considerations the West must take into account in its war on Yemen and schooled the West on the challenges it has to face before declaring itself victorious against a movement it cannot catch up to, Yemen’s Ansar Allah.
Throughout the confrontations between Ansar Allah and the foreign infiltrative coalition in the Red Sea, author Marc Champion reflects on the military advancements the Yemenis possess. The Yemenis revolutionized the battlefield by utilizing enhanced weapons such as precision missiles and suicide drones, among others, that had only been available to the richest nations.
The second challenge encompasses the vulnerability of Western nations that have perpetuated a war without calculating all they would lose. For example, Champion discusses the infrastructure of the United States and its offshore projects that could be shrunk in the face of a powerful foe. He proceeds to speculate how much the US per capita gross domestic product, which stands at over $76,000, could be hit, highlighting its fragility.
The economic structure of the globe should be considered, according to Champion, who claims the disruptions in the maritime supply chain caused by Yemen’s Ansar Allah, which add up to 12% of the global shipping, essentially do not affect Yemen as much as they affect European importers.
Moreover, the author depicts the discrepancies between the political ideology of the US and Yemen. If Yemen kills US troops that have been deployed to infiltrate and militarize the Red Sea and protect the interests of “Israel” by bombing the defensive force that is supporting Gaza through a US-funded Israeli genocide, then it would transpire as a political problem that backfires at Biden’s administration. On the other hand, when US troops kill Yemeni civilians in the US’ brutal attacks on residential Yemeni areas, then it only fuels Ansar Allah further, and more so the popular support it garners.
Champion then says the US must not escalate tensions against a clearly overpowered movement that regards it as an absolute evil and continues to recruit freedom fighters in the quest for liberation.
On submarine telecommunication cables, the author classifies them as an extension of Western vulnerabilities in the region, that could be a target for the Yemenis.
It is important to note that Ansar Allah has repeatedly declared its intention to preserve and protect the cables. Earlier in March, the Ministry of Transport and Maritime Affairs in Yemen reiterated that Sanaa “is keen on the security and safety of undersea cables in Yemeni waters, in accordance with international laws, treaties, and agreements.”
It pointed out that “the Republic of Yemen is also keen on the interests of the countries associated with the cables as obligated by laws, agreements, international treaties, and the common interests between Yemen and other states.”
This comes after Israeli newspaper Globes reported earlier that at least four underwater communication cables were damaged in the sea between Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Djibouti in East Africa, accusing the Yemeni Armed Forces of allegedly being behind the operation.
Sanaa rejected claims made by the United States and Britain regarding the cutting of undersea cables in the Red Sea and condemned the act of sabotage, describing it as “criminal”. The Yemeni government in Sanaa affirmed on Saturday that the US-UK aggressions against the country have disrupted the undersea cables, jeopardizing the security and safety of international communications.
The piece pointed out that since the Yemeni Armed Forces began their operations in the Red Sea in November in support of the Palestinian people, Sayyed al-Houthi “has been treated like a latter-day Che Guevara, his portrait and speeches shared on social media across five continents.”
It emphasized that although it remains challenging to assess the consequences of the attacks, the Yemeni operations created a gap in the global economy.
The operations, according to the piece, turned the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement into “heroes for Arab and Muslim youths who embrace the Palestinian cause,” and even influenced Western progressives.
Elsewhere, the piece indicated that the US-British aggression did not deter the Yemeni Armed Forces, adding that “since staking claim to the Palestinian cause,” the Yemeni forces “have come to seem unstoppable.”
The project was initially announced in September 2023 but was later delayed due to the outbreak of the war on Gaza.
Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing Indian diplomat Sunjay Sudhir, that India and the UAE have begun to work on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), an initiative that aims to establish an alternative trade route from India to Europe.
“India and UAE being the first two countries in the corridor, it is very important for us to take the lead,” Indian Ambassador to the UAE, Sunjay Sudhir, told Bloomberg.
A significant portion of India’s trade with Europe passes through the Red Sea, he said, noting that the creation of alternative routes is essential given the present geopolitical context.
During Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the UAE from February 13-15, India and the UAE signed a framework agreement to initiate work on the IMEC, Sudhir said.
He added that India’s government ministries responsible for ports and shipping commenced discussions with the port authorities in Abu Dhabi regarding this initiative.
This comes against the backdrop of heightened tensions between China and India. Observers have argued that the construction of the corridor is explicitly aimed at containing China in global trade.
A report by Politico in December 2023 detailed that the purpose of the project is to create an alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, from which India, as well as the US, will benefit.
“American interest in exploring and developing Indian supply chains has intensified under Biden,” a senior Indian diplomat based told Politico. “The US is committed to making this a success; it’s a big part of their design,” he said.
The genocide has sparked several resistance movements across the region to initiate operations targeting “Israel” or Israeli-linked elements.
Among them are the Ansar Allah resistance movement in Yemen. Since the start of the Gaza genocide, they have been actively targeting Israeli-linked vessels.
Besides Israeli-linked vessels, transit through the Red Sea is normally safe for all commercial ships and vessels.
However, due to aggressions perpetrated by US-UK naval forces on Yemeni positions, the Red Sea route has become difficult to access.
The construction of the IMEC corridor will thus bypass the Red Sea route by building a trade route stretching from India to Europe and will involve both sea routes and rail routes.
Starting from India, the corridor will first transit through the UAE, followed by Saudi Arabia, the occupied territories, to finally reach Europe.
Despite Beijing’s maritime security priority, Yemen’s Red Sea ban on Israeli-linked shipping has boosted China’s regional standing while miring its US adversary in an unwinnable crisis.
Photo Credit: The Cradle
Giorgio Cafiero
The Gaza war’s expansion into the Red Sea has created an international maritime crisis involving a host of countries. Despite a US-led bombing campaign aimed at deterring Yemen’s Ansarallah-aligned navy from carrying out missile and drone strikes in the Red Sea, the armed forces continue to ramp up attacks and now are using “submarine weapons.”
As these clashes escalate dangerously, one of the world’s busiest bodies of water is rapidly militarizing. This includes the recent arrival to the Gulf of Aden of a Chinese fleet, including the guided-missile destroyer Jiaozuo, the missile frigate Xuchang, a replenishment vessel, and more than 700 troops – including dozens of special forces personnel – as part of a counter-piracy mission.
Beijing has voiced its determination to help restore stability to the Red Sea. “We should jointly uphold the security on the sea lanes of the Red Sea in accordance with the law and also respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the countries along the Red Sea coast, including Yemen,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi emphasized last month.
As the largest trading nation in the world, China depends on the Red Sea as its “maritime lifeline.” Most of the Asian giant’s exports to Europe go through the strategic waterway, and large quantities of oil and minerals that come to Chinese ports transit the body of water.
The Chinese have also invested in industrial parks along Egypt and Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coasts, including the TEDA–Suez Zone in Ain Sokhna and the Chinese Industrial Park in Saudi Arabia’s Jizan City for Primary and Downstream Industries.
Chinese neutrality in West Asia
Prior to the sending of the 46th fleet of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy, Beijing’s response to Ansarallah’s maritime attacks had been relatively muted. China has since condemned the US–UK airstrikes against Ansarallah’s military capabilities in Yemen, and refused to join the western-led naval coalition, Operation Prosperity Guardian (OPG).
China’s response to mounting tension and insecurity in the Red Sea is consistent with Beijing’s grander set of foreign policy strategies, which include respect for the sovereignty of nation-states and a doctrine of “non-interference.”
In the Persian Gulf, China has pursued a balanced and geopolitically neutral agenda resting on a three-pronged approach: enemies of no one, allies of no one, and friends of everyone.
China’s position vis-à-vis all Persian Gulf countries was best exemplified almost a year ago when Beijing brokered a surprise reconciliation agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, in which it played the role of guarantor.
In Yemen, although China aligns with the international community’s non-recognition of the Ansarallah-led government in Sanaa, Beijing has nonetheless initiated dialogues with those officials and maintained a non-hostile stance – unlike many Arab and western states.
Understanding Beijing’s regional role
Overall, China tries to leverage its influence in West Asian countries to mitigate regional tensions and advance stabilizing initiatives. Its main goal is ultimately to ensure the long-term success of President Xi Jinping’s multi-trillion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and keep trade routes free of conflict.
Often labeled by the west as a “free rider,” China is accused of opportunistically benefiting from US- and European-led security efforts in the Persian Gulf and the northwestern Indian Ocean without contributing to them.
Beijing’s motivations for staying out of OPG were easy to understand: first, China has no interest in bolstering US hegemony; second, joining the naval military coalition could upset its multi-vector diplomacy vis-à-vis Ansarallah and Iran; and third, the wider Arab–Islamic world and the rest of the Global South would interpret it as Chinese support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Rejecting the OPG mission has instead bolstered China’s regional image as a defender of the Palestinian cause.
Speaking to The Cradle, Javad Heiran-Nia, director of the Persian Gulf Studies Group at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Iran, said:
[Beijing’s] cooperation with the West in securing the Red Sea will not be good for China’s relations with the Arabs and Iran. Therefore, China has adopted political and military restraint to avoid jeopardizing its economic and diplomatic interests in the region.
Dropping the blame on Washington’s doorstep
Beijing recognizes the Red Sea security crisis to be a direct “spillover” from Gaza, where China has called for an immediate ceasefire.
As Yun Sun, co-director of the China Program at the Washington-based Stimson Center, informed The Cradle:
The Chinese do see the crisis in the Red Sea as a challenge to regional peace and stability but see the Gaza crisis as the fundamental origin of the crisis. Therefore, the solution to the crisis in the Chinese view will have to be based on ceasefire, easing of the tension and returning to the two-state solution.
Jean-Loup Samaan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute, agrees, telling The Cradle:
Chinese diplomats have been carefully commenting on the events, but in Beijing’s narrative, the rise of attacks is a consequence of Israel’s war in Gaza – and perhaps more importantly the US policy in support [of] the Netanyahu government.
But in January, after the US and UK began their bombing campaign of Ansarallah targets in Yemen, China began to weigh in with serious concerns about the Red Sea crisis. Beijing noted that neither Washington nor London had received authorization for the use of force from the UN Security Council, and, therefore, as Sun explained it, the US–UK strikes “lack legitimacy in the Chinese view.”
How the Red Sea Crisis benefits Beijing
China has capitalized on intensifying anger directed against the US from all over the Islamic world and Global South. The Gaza war and its spread into the Red Sea have delivered Beijing some easy soft-power gains and reinforced to Arab audiences the vital importance of multipolarity. This point was drummed home by Victor Gao, vice president of the Center for China and Globalization, when he told the 2023 Doha Forum:
The fact that there is only one single country which [on 8 December, 2023] vetoed the United Nations Security Council Resolution calling for ceasefire in the Israel-Palestine War should convince all of us that we should be very lucky living not in the unipolar World.
Certainly, China has experienced some economic repercussions from the Red Sea crisis, although the extent of this is difficult to calculate. Yet Beijing’s political gains appear to trump any associated financial losses. As Sun explained to The Cradle, “The crisis does affect China, but the loss has been mostly economic and minor, while the gains are primarily political as China stands with the Arab countries on Gaza.”
In some ways, China has actually gained economically from the Red Sea crisis. With Ansarallah making a point of only targeting Israel-linked vessels, there is a widespread view that Chinese ships operating in the area are immune from Yemeni attacks.
After many international container shipping lines decided to reroute around South Africa to avoid Ansarallah’s missiles and drones, two ships operating under the Chinese flag – the Zhong Gu Ji Lin and Zhong Gu Shan Dong – continued transiting the Red Sea. As Bloombergreported early this month:
Chinese-owned merchant ships are getting hefty discounts on their insurance when sailing through the Red Sea, another sign of how Houthi attacks in the area are punishing the commercial interests of vessels with ties to the West.
US officials have since implored Beijing to pressure Iran into ordering the de-facto Yemeni government to halt maritime attacks. Those entreaties have failed, however, largely because Washington incorrectly assumes that Beijing holds influence over Tehran and that Iran can make demands of Ansarallah. Regardless, the fact that the US would turn to China for such help amid escalating tensions in the Red Sea is a boost to Beijing’s status as a go-to power amid global security crises.
China also has much to gain from the White House’s disproportionate focus on Gaza and the Red Sea. Since October–November 2023, the US has had significantly less bandwidth for its South China Sea and Taiwan files. In turn, this frees Beijing to act more confidently in West Asia while the US remains distracted. According to Heiran-Nia:
The developments in the Red Sea will keep America’s focus on the region and not open America’s hand to expand its presence in the Indo–Pacific region, [where] America’s main priority is to contain China. The war in Ukraine has the same advantage for China. While the connectivity of the Euro–Atlantic region with the Indo–Pacific region is expanding to contain China and increase NATO cooperation with the Indo–Pacific, the tensions in [West Asia] and Ukraine will be a boon for China.
Ultimately, the Red Sea crisis and Washington’s failure to deter Ansarallah signal yet another blow to US hegemony. From the Chinese perspective, the growing Red Sea conflict serves to further isolate the US and highlight its limitations as a security guarantor – particularly in light of its unconditional support for Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza.
It is reasonable to call China a winner in the Red Sea crisis.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, speaks to journalists during a joint press conference with his Lebanese counterpart Abdallah Bouhabib in Beirut, Lebanon, Saturday, Feb. 10, 2024 (AP)
In an interview with Al Mayadeen, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian gives insight on regional and international issues, ranging from the Gaza genocide to the nuclear agreement.
The performance of the United Nations is unfortunate, and Iran cannot leave space for recognition of the Israeli entity, because it does not acknowledge its legitimacy and considers it an occupation power over Palestinian lands, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian told Al Mayadeen on the sidelines of the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
Throughout the interview, the Iranian Foreign Minister discussed topics such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, particularly in light of what is happening in Gaza, the events unfolding in the Strip and the Middle East region, and Iran’s current foreign policy and nuclear program.
UN being used by those in power
Upon being asked in what light Iran viewed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva taking all that is going on in Gaza into consideration, Amir-Abdollahian referred to his speech during the 55th UNHRC meeting, wherein he said the UN’s performance and behavior regarding what was happening in Gaza and the West Bank was “unfortunately unacceptable.”
“The Security Council did not fulfill its duty as the United States continuously, unilaterally, and arrogantly exploited its veto power. Every prospect and proposal of a ceasefire resolution in Gaza has been rejected by the American veto, exhibiting a contradictive behavior to the banners of primary human rights. Even at the UNHCR, we still have not seen any adequate mobilization in this regard,” he said.
“During the first month of the war and the start of the genocide in Gaza, I visited Geneva and met with prominent officials at the United Nations, including the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and frankly told them that the commotion made, in the same council, when claims circulated the death of an Iranian woman, would not be forgotten.
“[Does the UNHCR] not want to create a special committee that relays the facts and investigations into war crimes, genocide, and human rights violations being committed in Gaza? So far, we have not witnessed a singular decisive measure taken by any of the organizations that fall under the UN.
“Of course, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Antonio Guterres, has taken some fairly good and appropriate measures, such as visiting the borders of Rafah, loudly demanding the opening of the Rafah Crossing, and the prohibition of the killings of more children, women, and people deprived of food and medicine. However, he could not efficiently and corporeally help the people of Gaza using the UN’s mechanisms. Meanwhile, at the UNHRC, we clearly see that everything succumbs to the will and control of those in power, the lying pretenders of human rights advocacy,” he stressed.
South Africa ICJ lawsuit
“There are two simultaneous lawsuits raised against the Israeli apartheid and criminal occupation. The first one is a South African lawsuit filed against Israel and is currently being adjudicated. We hope the judges announce their charges in the upcoming days for them to be transformed into principles and foundations for all UN organizations, including the UNHRC,” Amir-Abdollahian said when asked about whether South Africa’s lawsuit at the ICJ could have a different outcome from the ICJ deliberations, taking into account that there is no veto power within the ICJ.
The second lawsuit, he clarified, “Was raised by the UN requesting judicial guidance regarding the legal consequences arising from the policies and practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, based on a decision made a few weeks ago. The ICJ’s guidance, in this case, could become a precedent that presents a solution to the Palestinian cause.”
While the foreign minister maintained Iran’s support for South Africa’s case as one of justice and bravery, recalling how Tehran championed it at the political and legal levels while providing extensive media coverage for the case, he said Iran had one caveat regarding the case
“One criticism we have is that, as the Islamic Republic of Iran, we have to work under the paradigms that do not leave space for recognition of the Israeli entity, because we do not acknowledge its legitimacy and consider it an occupation power over Palestinian lands.
“The occupation is not sustainable, and it will dissolve after all, just like its precedent in Algeria, despite its extension for several decades, it was defeated by the resilience of the Algerian people and their Resistance,” he stressed.
Expanding circle of fire?
Commenting on the Israeli attacks on Baalbek, northeastern Lebanon, which is a precedent since the 2006 July War, and whether it would make for an escalation that could ignite an all-out war that extends beyond the Lebanese front in the south, Amir-Abdollahian stressed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “thinks the solution to his extremist government’s and his own salvation is war.”
“The Zionist entity itself is sustained by war and insecurity in the region. However, today, what is the situation we are experiencing? Israel was unable to achieve any of its goals from the war in Gaza,” he said.
The Iranian top diplomat explained that the Israeli occupation “could not defeat Hamas, or demilitarize it. It failed to locate and retrieve its captives, and many of its other goals, including capturing Yahya al-Sinwar, despite the mass bombing and the full-on genocide it perpetrated on the Gaza Strip, and the massive funding the US has supplied it with.”
“Our intel and satellite images we obtained, also show that weaponry and military gear suppliance operations from the US bases and ships to Tel Aviv have been active round-the-clock,” Amir-Abdollahian revealed. “This is what we discussed with several regional leaders, whose countries comprise US military bases, and told them the lands of Islamic nations must not be transformed to grounds that allow the extension of weapons to the Israeli entity, which allows it to kill more Palestinians.”
“What is Netanyahu looking for now, and why did he attack east Lebanon? Notably, not a single Israeli attack passed without a consequential response, and the region and Hezbollah have both responded strongly and appropriately to all Israeli aggression,” he said, leaving it up to the Resistance to escalate how it sees fit.
In a follow-up question regarding his commentary on the presence of foreign powers in the region, the Iranian Foreign Minister was asked about Iran’s opinion on the increased Western presence in the region in light of the growing number of US and other Western naval entities and whether this could signify an escalation that could affect and reach Iran, Amir-Abdollahian simply answered: “No.”
“Our evaluations indicate that Netanyahu wants to expand the war and wants to implicate the United States in conflicts and wars, now more than ever, at a rate that surpasses the holistic support the US and its allies have been supplying the Israeli entity with… But the main point is that the US and other Western nations are seemingly encountered with specific conditions,” he said.
“There are several points to consider regarding the latest updates and lineups toward Palestine. The first is that the US backs “Israel’s” war and genocide. Americans are facing special conditions in light of the upcoming elections which spike the need for the Israeli lobby’s support. We realize that they do not possess the will to end the war, but they have simultaneously expressed, through letters and statements, their aversion to an expanded war.
“They are very well aware of the dangers that could follow if the war is expanded. On the other hand, they are part of the expansion operation through their joint aggression with Britain in Yemen. The Americans discuss the de-escalation of the war, not stopping it. In my opinion, that signifies their malicious behavior embodied by giving Netanyahu the green light. Today, in Europe, everyone is discussing the need to end the war. But Britain, in this case, is jumping a double rope. It seeks to proceed with its regional foreign policies alongside the US.
“Islamic and Arab nations also advocate for the end of the war. But in all cases, we must not forget “Israel’s” forceful displacement policies of Gazans to the Sinai desert, and people of the West Bank to dispersed parts of the Jordanian lands.
“This is certainly what Netanyahu is striving for, and we vivaciously declare that if it weren’t for the Palestinian Resistance and the resilience of the Palestinian masses, the reality of the regions aligned with the occupied Palestinian territories would have been completely different,” he stressed.
Displacement into Sinai
“Around two weeks ago, I visited the region and met with several Resistance leaders and the Resistance leadership. According to the reports they provided, the Resistance is at its best. Regarding its morale, despite all the hardships and the challenges, it remains spirited, be it in Lebanon or Palestine,” Amir-Abdollahian said of the regional tour he made in early February.
“The spirits of the people of Gaza and the West Bank deserve to be commended. They have indeed inter-moved in Gaza, but based on our accurate information, more than 600,000 Palestinians remain in the north, in afflicted and destroyed areas, and refuse to leave, despite all the difficult conditions,” he said.
Asked about whether the displacement of the Palestinian people to Rafah was feasible, he said the Israeli plans “will not be materialized and will not be able to direct people to Egypt and enforce their displacement.”
“We frankly announced that the US cannot proceed with its hypocritical discourse that urges de-escalations on one hand, and then imposes measures that intensify the war and allow Israel to carry out its crimes by providing it with the necessary intelligence and logistics,” he added.
“Indicators show that the West, regional countries, Islamic nations, the Palestinian leadership, and the Resistance, all agree that if the US ceased all military aid to Israel, then Netanyahu would not be able to carry on with the war, not even for an hour. What happened over the past five months in Gaza is depicted in scenes that portray the pride of its Resistance, its women, and its men.”
Red Sea confrontations
The Iranian Foreign Minister revealed that he talked with his British counterparts about the joint US-UK aggression on Yemen, calling it a “strategic mistake” and underlining that Yemen has “proven that they do not trifle with any party regarding the security of their lands. They have been able to sound this message and clearly relayed that ships carrying military cargo to Israel will be stopped,”
“Remarkably, they kept their vows to the fullest. If you take a satellite look at the Red Sea, you will find hundreds of ships on that route. We realize that shipping and insurance costs have soared, but trade ships that do not carry any supplies to the Israeli occupation cross the Red Sea safely,” he clarified, commending the Yemeni leadership for its steadfastness and for adhering to its principles.
“The National Salvation Government has addressed that maritime and the Red Sea security is of its highest interests. In Iran, we also sail this route for international trade, and the entire world would benefit if it were safe, but the root of the issue lies in Gaza, not the Red Sea.
“If the genocide in Gaza ended, then the situation in the Red Sea would return to normal. We appreciate Yemen’s brave support of Palestine, and Yemenis continue taking that road to champion Gaza, without jeopardizing the safety of certain shipments and maritime security.
“In constant reminders, the general maritime security has not been jeopardized, but ships headed toward the occupation are,” he said, once again stressing that Yemen is not targeting any ships that are not affiliated with the Israeli occupation.
Iranian ‘regional proxies’?
“We do not have any proxies in the region,” the Iranian Foreign Minister underlined. “Hezbollah and the Resistance in Palestine work as they see fit, based on their own interests. Yemen follows the same framework as well. In Iraq and Syria, groups to fight ISIS were formed and still operate for their countries’ interests and considerations.”
“It would be best if the United States focused on finding a political solution instead of throwing accusations and fabricating false scenarios,” he said of the Western accusations that Iran is using regional Resistance movements, whether in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, or elsewhere, as regional proxies and tools to further its interests. “Five months of war proved that warfare is not the solution, thereby emphasizing the need for political resolutions realistically and from a Palestinian-centric lens.”
“I told David Cameron that following 80 years of occupation, it is about time for Palestinians to determine their own fate and the future of their nation. It is good that countries meet and propose suggestions to resolve the Palestinian issue, but what is better and more appropriate is the focus on Palestinian solutions that stem from the unity of Palestinian groups and factions, regardless of their political direction.
“I realized, through my meetings with all Palestinian Resistance leaders, that they have been holding meetings for weeks to suggest recommendations and ideas related to different topics, and we believe that now is their chance to democratically propose their ideas on negotiation tables. In turn, all related countries should consider purely Palestinian notions to aid the people of Palestine in Gaza and the West Bank.
No difference between Biden, Trump
The Iranian Foreign Minister, asked for a comment on the US election slated for the year-end, underlined that Tehran does not see a significant difference between both US President Joe Biden and candidate Donald Trump.
“Over the past 45 years, the US saw several democratic and republican presidents. What is of significance to us is their behavior. If they treated Iran with mutual respect and forego their errors and hostility, then we would return the respect,” he said.
“If they continue employing this hostility, then our response would be direct and appropriate, whatever the party and political direction they might belong to and have,” Amir-Abdollahian stressed.
Iranian nuclear file
“Under President Ebrahim Raisi’s government, we held serious talks with nuclear negotiators, but unfortunately, at a certain point, the war in Ukraine cast its shadows on them,” he said.
“Letters are still being exchanged between Tehran and Washington regarding several topics. The American side sometimes hints at its desire for all participating parties to revert to their previous obligations as per the nuclear agreement. On our part, we frankly expressed our readiness to welcome recommendations that would allow reversion to previous commitments, but also annul the unilateral sanctions imposed on Iran,” he clarified.
“The Iranian government affirmed from the start that it does not consider the nuclear agreement as an approach to resolving the country’s issues, but Iran has proven that it is one of the countries most committed to its international pledges,” he once again said of Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran has maintained for years is solely peaceful.
Ahmed AbdulKareem is a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a. He covers the war in Yemen for MintPress News as well as local Yemeni media.
When confronted with international appeals for humanitarian aid due to the ongoing crises in Gaza and Yemen, the United States and the United Kingdom have chosen instead to turn Yemen’s Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden into a combat zone, initiating an ariel bombing campaign against the war-torn country already suffering immensely from nine years of deadly conflict spearheaded by Saudi Arabia and backed by the U.S.
For weeks, U.S. and British naval vessels have been perched on the outskirts of Yemen’s territorial waters in the Red Sea, not only to protect ships carrying goods to Israel but to launch a series of airstrikes against Yemen, the poorest country in the world. In recent weeks, at least 320 airstrikes have been launched by warplanes that seem never to leave the skies over Yemen’s major cities. The latest strikes hit Friday morning, targeting Al-Jabana, Al-Taif, and Al-Kathib and followed renewed calls by U.S. officials for regional actors not to escalate conflict in the Middle East.
According to Yemeni citizens who spoke to MintPress, the U.S. bombing campaign, which has struck targets in crowded residential neighborhoods, is the last thing that Yemenis expected. Twenty-seven-year-odl Ibrahim al-Nahari lives with his family near Hodeida International Airport, which was targeted by US airstrikes on Monday afternoon. He said of the bombings: “I never expected we would be attacked because of our solidarity with hungry people in Gaza. Are these America’s morals?”
Last Monday, U.S. airstrikes targeted Yemen’s Al-Katnaib Coast Park, frequented by hundreds of visitors daily, and not only caused damage to nearby homes, hotels and shops but spread panic and fear among civilians. “We need food and medicine, not the ugly American bombs that we have tasted for nine years,” Al-Nahari told MintPress, waving a Palestinian flag at a massive demonstration in support of Gaza on Friday in central Hodeida.
Al-Nahari was among tens of thousands who took to the streets of Hodeida on Friday to condemn U.S.-British attacks on their country and renew their support for the Palestinian people. Massive protests featuring hundreds such as these have become a hallmark in Yemen’s northern provinces and beyond since Israel launched its attack on Gaza following Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7, 2023. In Al-Sabeen Square, south of the capital, Sanaa, officials estimate that an area of 100,000 square meters was packed with demonstrators standing shoulder to shoulder to express their outrage.
“We came here to prove that Palestine is the cause of the Yemeni people, and the world must know this,” Malik Almadani, a prominent writer and human rights activist, told MintPress. “We will not stop the demonstrations, and we will continue weekly. It is our sacred duty, rooted and deep in our souls,” he added. Almadani sees Palestine as a cause dear to Yemen’s people, not something that any authority in the country has the authority to negotiate on their behalf. He warned Western powers that any ground invasion of Yemen due to its support for Gaza would be a war against all of Yemen’s people, not against an institution, state, or party.
RED SEA TENSIONS ESCALATE
U.S. and British leaders have repeatedly stated that their bombing campaign in Yemen is intended to end Ansar Allah’s (known in the West as the Houthis) attacks on international shipping and naval vessels. They claim the strikes are necessary to limit the Houthis’ ability to launch further attacks. Yet, there is little to suggest the attacks are having their intended effect. Ansar Allah has maintained that U.S. and UK strikes have not achieved their military objectives and have done little more than incite terror in the hearts of Yemeni civilians. Indeed, nearly every bombing campaign has been met with renewed attacks by Ansar Allah against Israeli, British and U.S. interests in the region, often more extensive and brazen than the last.
This tit-for-tat is escalating too. This week alone saw at least 86 airstrikes against targets in Yemen, with populated regions of Hodeida hit particularly hard, including Al-Katheib, Ras Issa, Al-Zaidiyah, Al-Hawk, Al-Salif, and Al-Lahiya, which saw 28 separate strikes. Sanaa was targeted with 13 strikes, Taiz with 11, Al-Bayda with 7, Hajjah with seven raids, and Saad with over twenty. Despite the scale of the attacks, Yemeni officials maintain they’ve had little effect on the military capabilities of Ansar Allah.
“There have been casualties from U.S. and UK raids, and there is varying damage to some sites and camps. However, most of the military sites were already evacuated before the airstrikes began. Some of them had already been subjected to bombings in previous years,” Deputy Head of Moral Guidance for the Yemeni Army, Brigadier General Abdullah Bin Amer, told MintPress. “We can deal appropriately with these developments, benefiting from past experiences that began in 2015.”
By all accounts, the U.S.-led aerial campaign in Yemen is a violation of the tenets of just war, which dictates that nations must not only have a just cause for going to war but also resort to military force only after all other options have been exhausted. Despite White House claims to the contrary, the intervention in Yemen is clearly not a case of self-defense. The notion that Yemen, the poorest country in the Middle East, represents a military threat to International trade is absurd, especially as Ansar Allah officials have made it clear through both rhetoric and action that any nations not directly involved in supporting Israel’s genocide in Gaza have been able to pass through the Red Sea unmolested.
The US-owned Genco Picardy after it came under attack from drone launched by Ansar Allah in the Gulf of Aden, Jan.18, 2024. Photo | AP
AN INEFFECTUAL CAMPAIGN
Despite the U.S. feckless bombing campaign and its specious justification, the leader of Ansar Allah, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has confirmed that operations in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait against Israel-linked ships will continue. In a televised speech on Tuesday, he said, “Our actions will escalate as long as the Israeli aggression and siege on the Palestinians continues. The correct solution is to bring food and medicine into Gaza, and continuing airstrikes will not benefit America, Britain, or Israel in any way.”
Al-Houthi blamed the actions of the White House for forcing Ansar Allah to target U.S. and British Naval ships near Yemen, saying, “The U.S. and UK’s involvement in Yemen will not protect Israeli ships, and for the first time since World War II, the Americans are exposing their battleships to being targeted.”
“The continued U.S. and UK aggression constitutes a violation of the sovereignty of an independent state, Muhammed AbdulSalam, the official spokesman for Ansar Allah, added, confirming that attacks will not prevent the Yemeni armed forces from continuing their support mission to Gaza, nor will the aggression be able to provide security for Israeli ships or those heading to the ports of occupied Palestine. “It is this American-British aggression that threatens international navigation in the Red and Arabian Seas and the Gulf of Aden,” he added.
ORIGINS OF A BLOCKADE
In a campaign they maintain is aimed at forcing Israel to allow food and medicine to be allowed into the besieged Gaza Strip, Ansar Allah’s forces have continued to target Israeli-owned, flagged or operated ships in the Red Sea and Arabian Seas, or those destined for Israeli ports. The latest such attack came last Tuesday when the Ansar Allah’s Naval Forces carried out two military operations in the Red Sea, the first against the American ship Star Nasia and another targeting the British ship the Morning Tide, according to the official spokesman for the Yemeni army, Yahya Saree.
Since November 19, when Ansar Allah’s maritime campaign began, the group has conducted at least 20 naval operations. More than 20 ships have been targeted, including three that were Israeli-owned, eight belonging to the U.S., four belonging to Britain, and ten that were en route to Israeli ports. Israel itself was not exempt; at least 200 drones and 50 ballistic and winged missiles have been launched against Israel from Yemen. These include sophisticated long-range ballistic missiles and drones such as the Toofan, a recently unveiled variant of the Zolfaghar mid-range ballistic missile, the Quds cruise missile, and the Samad drone. While relatively inexpensive to manufacture, these projectiles have challenged Western forces, who spend millions on sophisticated missiles to shoot them down, threatening to exhaust their stocks and incur a high financial cost in defense of Israeli interests.
It’s worth noting that Yemeni operations against American and British ships began in earnest only after Western forces started bombing Yemen. In its initial days, Ansar Allah’s campaign strictly targeted Israeli interests in support of Gaza, with Ansar Allah’s arsenal pointed at Israel’s Eliat Port. Washington responded by sending a massive naval flotilla to the Red Sea and with a slew of fiery statements by American officials. In the wake of this failed strategy of intimidation, the U.S. and Britain began launching missiles against Yemeni targets. It was only then that Ansar Allah began actively targeting U.S. and British naval assets.
Ansar Allah officials have reiterated their unwavering stance that the Red Sea is off-limits only to Israeli ships until Israel ensures the unfettered delivery of essential aid to Gaza. It remains open to international maritime shipping for countries not involved in supporting what the International Court of Justice has ruled in genocide in Gaza. Ansar Allah has also stated that operations will stop immediately as soon as medicine and food enter Gaza. Until this humanitarian goal is achieved, Ansar Allah officials maintain, the armed air, sea, and land forces will not only continue to target Israeli, American, and British ships but also escalate, even if it ultimately leads to a ground invasion of Yemen.
“THE CEMETERY OF INVADERS”
Asked about a possible U.S.-led ground invasion of Yemen, Brigadier General Bin Amer, who is also the author of the book “Yemen is the Cemetery of Invaders,” currently the most widely circulated book in Yemen, said, “The decision to invade a country like Yemen is certainly a difficult decision for any power. There are many factors and reasons that make those powers hesitate to make such a decision.”
Yemen’s terrain is the most rugged in the Middle East, posing a significant challenge to foreign invading forces. The country’s topography is characterized by steep mountains, deep valleys, and arid plateaus, creating a complex and challenging environment for foreigners, which complicates military operations and hinders the establishment of military infrastructure.
“Throughout history, Yemen has been the target of the ambitions of invaders, but the Yemeni people fiercely resisted all invasion campaigns and were able to defeat them and triumph over them in the end. The invaders on this land suffered great losses, and thus Yemen was nicknamed the cemetery of invaders.” General Bin Amer added.
According to Bin Amer, the Yemeni people do not accept occupation. They have a deep-rooted culture of independence. In addition, their battle today is a battle of principles and values that have religious, moral, and humanitarian considerations, adding, “There is a popular consensus on this battle, and the Yemeni people, in addition to being natural fighters and an armed people, have an additional factor, which is leadership that expresses this. [This factor] certainly has its importance regarding organization and management under such exceptional circumstances.”
Both in the streets and among the highest echelons of Ansar Allah’s leaders, there is a feeling in Yemen that its military actions in support of Gaza have been validated by the International Court of Justice’s ruling ordering Israel to permit the entry of “humanitarian assistance to address the adverse conditions of life faced by Palestinians in Gaza.”
But the likelihood of a Western-led ground invasion is still being taken seriously. Ansar Allah has undertaken an unprecedented military mobilization on a massive scale, including holding military courses, conducting maneuvers, and bolstering stocks of military equipment.
Volunteer fighters march during a rally of support for Palestinians in Gaza Strip and against the US strikes on Yemen outside Sanaa, Jan. 22, 2024. Photo | AP
A DOCTRINE OF RESISTANCE
Although Yemen has garnered headlines in recent months for its defiant stance towards Israel, its support for Palestinians long predates October 7. MintPress spoke to Yemeni historical researcher Dr. Hammoud Al-Ahnoumi about the nature of Yemeni support for Palestine
In the wake of the second Palestinian intifada and the events of September 11 following the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, an indigenous Yemeni tribal group in the northern country began openly voicing its opposition to what it saw as the unjust colonial ambitions of Israel and the United States in the region. The group traces its roots to the Arab Hamdani tribe residing in northern Yemen and is a subdivision of the larger Banu Hamdan tribe.
Over the years, many northern Yemenis joined the group known now as Ansar Allah. It wasn’t until Ansar Allah’s power began to gain momentum that it was given the moniker “Houthis” by the West and dismissed as an Iranian proxy in a bid to demoralize the movement and alienate it from the local population. Yet Ansar Allah’s on the Palestinian issue cannot be understood without understanding its history and political formation.
The political doctrine of Ansar Allah has its roots in the eighth century, particularly in Imam Zayd (695–740 CE), the son of Ali ibn al-Hussain ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib. Imam Zayd initiated a revolution against the repressive Umayyad Caliphate that became a symbol of resistance to oppression that permeates Yemeni culture to this day.
Over the years, Yemenis internalized and embraced these ideals to such a degree that they became a central tenant in what would become known as the Shia Islamic sect of Zaydis. According to Zaydis, Imam Zayd became the second Imam (leader) after his grandfather, Imam Hussain ibn Ali, who was also killed in a struggle against an oppressive government in Karbala, southern Iraq, on the tenth of Muharram in 680 CE.
Loyalty, resistance to oppression and solidarity with the oppressed have become the main principle of their faith and how they see their duty to God, according to Dr. Al-Ahnoumi. For them, he explained to MintPress, standing in support of Palestine is compliance with their doctrine, which calls for resistance against oppressors and supporting the oppressed.
“Though they may coincide with Iranian Revolutionary ideals of resistance against tyrants and oppressors, and oppose [what they view as] American and Israeli arrogance and tyranny,” Ansar Allah act entirely independently, Dr. Al-Ahnoumi insisted.
A TINDERBOX
The fact that Ansar Allah’s operation in the Red Sea has been reduced by Western power to a binary question of freedom of navigation and framed in an Iran-centric geopolitical context bodes poorly for the chances of a peaceful resolution to the conflict. To avoid another disastrous war in Yemen and a U.S. quagmire in the Middle East, western political leaders and media alike must come to terms with the reality that is the tinderbox in Yemen.
Zaid Al-Gharsi, Head of the Media Department at the Presidency of the Republic of Yemen, blames Western leaders and media for distorting Yemen’s position. He urged media outlets and activists on social media, particularly in Western countries, not to take the White House’s narrative, which frames its bombing campaign as self-defense and protection of global navigation, at face value. The reality, he told MintPress, is “that America is an aggressor and an occupier that came from across the oceans to dominate, plunder, and destroy.”
Sayyed Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi planted the foundations for the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen in 2004. (Al Mayadeen English; Illustrated by Arwa Makki)
The West’s failure to recognize Ansar Allah as a revolutionary movement may escalate the risk of a full-blown war, with the West paying a high price, ultimately leading to its defeat in West Asia.
The Ansar Allah movement has lately attracted international attention by boldly defying major world powers, particularly the United States, through their military actions to support Palestine amid the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.
This decision comes at a time when even larger Arab nations refrain from such interventions, despite Yemen itself enduring a decade of US-backed Saudi-led aggression and grappling with a severe humanitarian crisis due to a yearslong land, sea, and air blockade. In an attempt to thwart Yemen’s efforts and hinder Sanaa from enforcing its solidarity with Gaza, Washington and the UK launched a series of attacks on the country in recent weeks, with a plethora of media outlets shining their spotlights on the Ansar Allah, whom they call “Houthis”, hosting Orientalist pundits attempting to ‘crack their puzzle’.
The US, UK, and “Israel” persistently describe Ansar Allah as an Iranian proxy, disregarding the movement’s autonomy and independence. This misunderstanding of this revolutionary movement may escalate the risk of a full-blown war in the region, with the West paying a high price, ultimately leading to its defeat in West Asia.
So who are the Ansar Allah exactly, and what are they fighting for?
Who are the ‘Houthis’?
The term “Houthis” refers to an indigenous tribal group in Yemen that originates from the Arab Hamdani tribe residing in northern Yemen, and is a subdivision of the larger Banu Hamdan tribe. Their main settlements are concentrated in the regions of ‘Amran and Saada.
Since the early 2000s, and after the group began explicitly voicing its anti-imperialist ideology, Western countries and think tanks, trying to demoralize them and alienate them from their population, labeled them as “Iranian proxies” and “terrorists” who should be eradicated.
However, it is essential to recognize that the “Houthis” trace their roots back to the eighth century to the arrival of Zayd ibn Ali ibn Hussein in Yemen.
Zayd ibn Ali (695–740) was the son of Ali ibn al-Hussain Zain al-Abidin and the grandson of Imam Hussain ibn Ali ibn Abi Talib. He initiated a revolution against the Umayyad caliphate, leading to his martyrdom. Zayd ibn Ali’s revolution was meant to oppose injustice like his grandfather Imam Hussein, who was martyred at Karbala in southern Iraq on 10 Muharram 61 AH (680 CE) by the army of Yazid Ibn Muawiya, the Umayyad ruler at the time.
Zayd ibn Ali is recognized as a significant religious figure not only among Shia Muslims but also by many Sunnis. Notably, Sunni jurist Abu Hanifa issued a fatwa supporting Zayd against the Umayyads. Zayd remains a pivotal revolutionary figure, with many Yemenis eventually becoming Zaydis (believing that Zayd is the true imam after Hussein ibn Ali) and is universally regarded as a martyr by both Sunni and Shia traditions, one who planted the seeds of resisting oppression and of solidarity with the oppressed.
Over the years, the “Houthis” developed their own historical narrative and political movement known as Ansar Allah, which would grow to surpass the “Houthi” element. Labeling all members of the tribal confederacy in northern Yemen as “terrorists” or “Houthis” and advocating for their indiscriminate elimination overlooks the complexity of their history and political formation.
Contemporary history
Sayyed Hussein Al-Houthi, the founder of the Ansar Allah
Sayyed Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi laid the foundation for the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen in 2004. During that period, Sayyed al-Houthi described the early members of the Ansar Allah movement, before it adopted this name, as a community of believers guided by the principles of the Holy Quran. He refrained from associating the movement with specific sectarian labels, underscoring its Islamic affiliation and Quranic identity as inclusive principles capable of encompassing all Muslims.
The Ansar Allah movement stood out in its political aspect by advocating opposition to American and Israeli meddling in West Asia, especially in Yemen.
“Sayyed Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, in several lessons given under the title ‘Lessons from the Guidance of the Holy Qur’an,’ emphasized the US’ active posturing against our nation”, Yemeni diplomat Yasser Mohesn Almohallil told Al Mayadeen English.
“Ansar Allah faced persistent harassment from the authorities during the rule of Ali Abdullah Saleh. The regime made multiple attempts to pressure Sayyed Hussein Al-Houthi into changing his well-known slogan.”
“Despite these efforts, when the authorities failed to deter him, they declared war against Sayyed Hussein and his supporters. The initial confrontation occurred in the Maran area in northern Saada after he [Saleh] returned from Washington with a shipment of weapons and U.S. trainers,” he further affirmed.
After Sayyed Hussein’s martyrdom, the leadership was transferred to his father and then to his brother Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, the current leader of Ansar Allah.
How Ansar Allah evolved into a formidable US foe
Ansar Allah, originating from Quranic principles laid down in 2001 by Sayyed Hussein, faced six wars initiated by Ali Abdallah Saleh’s authority, with the sixth involving Saudi Arabia. At that time, Ansar Allah had limited resources, armed only with AK rifles, while the government possessed advanced weaponry, most notably F-16 aircraft, tanks, artillery, and anti-aircraft weapons, Ansar Allah Resistance fighter Hammam Hassan said in an exclusive interview with Al Mayadeen English.
“The war’s cause was attributed to Ansar Allah’s ‘Death to America, Death to Israel’ slogan, and tensions escalated after a visit by Abdul-Malik to Saada, prompting Saleh’s declaration of war,” he further added.
He went on to say that Ansar Allah, initially armed with simple capabilities, progressed from manufacturing primitive bombs in juice boxes to homemade landmines, later developing missiles like Zelzal and al-Sarkha, as per Hassan.
During the war with Saleh, Ansar Allah acquired and developed weapons to serve Yemen and other free Arab nations, he said.
Regular Yemeni fighters
Regarding the weaponry possessed by the regular Yemeni Resistance fighters, Ansar Allah Resistance fighter Hammam Hassan detailed to Al Mayadeen English that the fighters are armed, first and foremost, with their strong faith in God and a commitment to the cause they are fighting for.
“I have deduced a principle from the wars in Yemen, including the war on Gaza, and that is that when two armies meet – one with powerful weapons and another with weaker weapons – the one who will win the battle is the one with a strong cause, even if their equipment is inferior,” he said proudly.
Regular Yemeni fighters have access to widely available weapons, such as the Kalashnikov rifle and machine guns, including anti-aircraft guns.However, these weapons need to be well-maintained as they are old, he explained.
He further stressed that a regular fighter typically carries a simple machine gun, RPG launcher, or Kalashnikov, but because they are guided by principles and a strong belief, God grants them victory.
“You’ve witnessed the Yemeni fighter who, barefoot, climbed an Abrams tank – a U.S. industry icon – fearlessly captured it, and then set it ablaze with firewood back in 2016. You might wonder how such an event could unfold. It’s because the Yemeni fighter is driven by a cause, a principle, strong beliefs, and unwavering conviction, while the enemy lacks any equivalent,” he recalled.
Regarding the Americans’ ability to respond to Yemen’s attacks, he sarcastically remarked, “Let them respond. The fighters of Ansar Allah have over twenty-three years of experience and embody principles, strength, and determination. They excel in camouflaging and concealing weapons in warehouses unknown to anyone; even the fighter storing the weapons is unaware of the precise location or the name of that area. We maintain a high level of secrecy and confidentiality in such matters.”
Ground and air military capabilities
As for the ground and air military capabilities, many advanced weapons have been revealed by the Ansar Allah, particularly on the anniversary of the September 21 Revolution in 2021 and 2023.
Regarding naval weapons, locally manufactured weapons include remotely operated explosive-laden boats (Unmanned Surface Vehicles) and lethal naval mines. These weapons have been also publicly revealed. However, Ansar Allah also owns undisclosed weapons and missiles that could be deployed from vessels or the coast, Hassan divulged to Al Mayadeen English.
“Each party in the war holds cards that should not be revealed until the right moment. We could have closed the Bab al-Mandab Strait in 2017-2018 when we were besieged by countries worldwide, but with God’s grace and the wisdom of our leader, the decision to close the Red Sea passage was not taken. If we had utilized the Red Sea option, we wouldn’t have had the current capability to launch even a single shot to support Gaza,” he noted.
In the same context, Almohallil contended that Western media is trying to portray a balance in capabilities between Ansar Allah and the United States. Despite the US possessing superior capabilities, effectively countering Yemen’s tactics requires a precise military approach, an area where Washington has so far been unsuccessful, as per Almohallil.
“The United States’ becoming deeply involved in the coalition led by Saudi Arabia offered valuable field experience to Ansar Allah. This experience involved dealing with an extensive, aggressive war where coalition forces utilized a range of advanced American weapons. Ansar Allah also gained insight into the strategy behind the aggression devised by Washington, allowing them to adapt their operations accordingly. This adaptation, in turn, led to a refinement in the course of operations based on an understanding of the tactics employed by the aggressors,” he added.
‘The land fights with us’
The Yemeni terrain poses a formidable challenge for any invader, as it is widely known to be one of the most rugged and demanding landscapes on the planet. The topography of Yemen is characterized by steep mountains, deep valleys, and arid plateaus, creating a complex and difficult environment to navigate. The terrain’s rough nature not only complicates military operations but also hinders infrastructure development, making it a significant factor that shapes the strategic considerations of any foreign force operating in the region.
The Yemeni mountains present extreme challenges, making it difficult for US missiles or drones to reach their peaks, rendering such attempts futile, as per Hassan.
During the Saudi-led aggression, Yemen was closely monitored by satellites and spy drones, to the extent that if there were a stone in a certain area, a drone would come, capture an image of the stone, and if the stone moved, the drone would strike the location, he said.
“This illustrates the extent of aerial surveillance in Yemen. However, we successfully concealed weapons, tanks, and aircraft. We developed long-range missiles with a reach of up to 200, 300, 500, 700 kilometers, and even a thousand kilometers. We manufactured, stored, and launched these missiles—all by the grace of God and the skills of Yemeni resistance fighters, who possess high capabilities in concealing and camouflaging. The Americans cannot reach [find] us,” he further emphasized.
The US VS Ansar Allah
In response to Ansar Allah’s operations in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in support of Gaza, the United States pursued a dual strategy. Initially, the US attempted to entice the movement with financial incentives. However, when this approach proved unsuccessful, the United States opted for a more forceful response, resorting to bombing Yemen.
On this issue, a member of the Ansar Allah political bureau, Mohammad Alfareh, described the American-British aggression on Yemen as “a blatant and unjustified act that lacks legitimacy.”
He further told Al Mayadeen English that the aggression is taking place within the framework of the protection provided by the United States and Britain to the Israeli enemy, allowing it to continue its killings, atrocities, and brutal massacres in Gaza.
“In this regard, we urge all media outlets and activists on social media not to align with the American narrative, which portrays this aggression as self-defense and protection of global navigation, falsely claiming that it is a response to the killing of their soldiers. The reality is that America is an aggressor and an occupier that came from across the oceans to dominate, plunder, and destroy. The war has been ongoing since 2001 and did not start with the killing of their three soldiers,” he clarified.
Alfareh reaffirmed that Yemen’s stance towards Gaza remains unwavering, regardless of challenges and threats.
“We consider it a humane and ethical position, seeking to achieve peace in Palestine and security in our Arab region and the world,” he said.
We also assert that our people have every right to confront the American and British aggression that violates our sovereignty and independence. It is a foreign intrusion in our region. The Muslim nations have the right to support Gaza, which is witnessing the greatest massacre committed by the Zionists with American, British, and Western support, he further added.
The official questioned, “Why does the US grant itself the right to commit crimes and aggression, supporting the Israeli enemy, and then deny our right to stand by our oppressed brothers, who are championing a just cause connected to us by religion, blood, language, culture, and nationality, more than what connects the American to the Zionist?”
On the US’ attempt to lure Ansar Allah, Ansar Allah Resistance fighter Hammam Hassan divulged to Al Mayadeen English that the movement had the option to remain silent about what is happening in Gaza, as it was promised that employees would receive salaries that had been confiscated in the years past by the coalition. Salaries have been cut for ten years now, and Yemeni citizens struggle to make ends meet.However, even the simplest Yemeni citizens, including those opposing Ansar Allah, if asked whether they’d prefer to receive ten-years’ worth of salaries in exchange for the movement’s silence on the genocide in Gaza, or participate in a demonstration condemning the genocide, they would say they do not want salaries, he further stressed.
“Let me die of hunger; I would rather not stay silent about injustice. This would be the answer. This is the Yemeni people—a proud, stubborn people,” he affirmed.
“By Allah, even if our bodies are scattered in the air, we would not abandon Palestine and Gaza.”
Hassan went on to say that Yemen has nothing to lose, as essential infrastructure like schools and hospitals has been decimated due to the Saudi-led aggression. He asserts that the only thing Yemenis have in their possession amid all this destruction is their dignity.
In response to US strikes, Hassan reiterated that Ansar Allah is ready to face the United States directly, expressing weariness from engaging with the US’ proxies since 2002, accusing Ali Abdullah Saleh and Saudi Arabia of being American puppets.
Ansar Allah underscores its resistance as a matter of pride and honor, confidently stating that the US will not be able to harm them, he said.
As for the US’ ability to achieve its objective to stop Ansar Allah’s operations, Yemeni Diplomat Yasser Mohesn Almohallil commented by saying, “Drawing from this experience and considering the substantial popular support that has become a significant factor in the struggle, the United States currently seems to be struggling to develop new strategies to handle a resilient and self-directed uprising force.”
This force has proven its ability to stay steadfast, shift the balance of the battle in its favor, and adapt military tactics to achieve its goals, he further added.
“The US has found, among its diverse military options, only futile attempts in imitating the tactics utilized by Ansar Allah. These attempts appear to be aimed at creating a perception of parity to restore its strategic equilibrium,” Almohallil concluded by saying.
In short, the strength and endurance of Ansar Allah as a unified movement from its entrenched ideological principles and strategic goals adheres to an anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist agenda, centering around the Palestinian cause. Presently, the Resistance movement is united in its pursuit of two main objectives: compelling “Israel” to agree to an unconditional ceasefire in Gaza, and ending the blockade on Gaza.
In the pursuit of these goals, Ansar Allah operates based on its own political convictions and strategic interests, rather than adhering to external directives. This autonomy is a key factor in why Yemen is renowned as the graveyard of its invaders.
The Navy destroyer Carney struck a radar site in Yemen on Saturday, officials said. The warship is shown here intercepting Yemeni drones and missiles in the Red Sea in October. (Photo credit: Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Aaron Lau/Navy)
The attacks come after the US bombing of Syria and Iraq, indicating the White House is escalating its war against the Axis of Resistance in defense of Israel’s genocide on Gaza
US and UK warships and fighter jets bombed Yemen on 4 February, in a wave of missile strikes US officials claim hit 36 targets.
The US said in a CENTCOM statement that it hit “36 targets at 13 locations,” striking “underground storage facilities, command and control, missile systems, UAV storage and operations sites, radars, and helicopters.”
According to the statement, the US, UK, Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand took part in the attacks.
The strikes were in response to Yemeni efforts to target Israeli-linked commercial ships passing through the narrow Bab al-Mandab Strait in the Red Sea. The Yemeni attacks are in response to Israel’s genocidal bombing campaign in Gaza.
Rather than press its ally Israel to stop its military campaign, which has killed over 27,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children, the US has joined forces with the UK to bomb Yemen.
"Even if you burn down Sanaa, America… we will remain with Gaza."
Amid violent, renewed airstrikes by the US and UK, a man in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, says the Yemenis will continue to support Gaza no matter what. pic.twitter.com/Uag8M0uBaq
Saturday’s strikes were launched by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft, and the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the UK Defense Ministry.
The Yemen Armed Forces issued a statement detailing where the attacks took place, reporting 13 raids on Sanaa, 9 on Hodeidah, 11 on Taiz, 7 on Al-Bayda, 7 on Hajjah, and one on Saada.
“These attacks will not deter us from our moral, religious, and humanitarian stance in support of the steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip, and will not go unanswered and punished,” read the statement.
The strikes come one day after the US sent B-1 bombers to target 85 locations affiliated with the Islamic Resistance of Iraq in eastern Syria and western Iraq, killing at least 16. This was in response to an operation by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq that targeted US military outpost Tower 22 in Jordan last week, killing three US soldiers.
US officials reportedly told Al-Jazeera that the strikes on Yemen are “considered a next round of retaliation for the killing of the [US] soldiers in Jordan.”
Like Ansarallah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq coalition, formed after 7 October, has also targeted Israel, as well as US bases in Syria and Iraq. The groups say their attacks are in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which the US has supported militarily and diplomatically.
Ansarallah leaders in Yemen say they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the US and UK bombing.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, an Ansarallah official, said, “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote on social media that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”
Following Israel’s war and siege against Gaza, which began in earnest on October 7 of last year and has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, the Yemeni Army led by Ansar Allah declared a military operation against Israel. Its aim: to compel Tel Aviv to cease its destructive war on Gaza.
No stranger to famine, genocide, and the displacement of civilians thanks to a decade-long war waged against its people led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and backed by the United States, Ansar Allah has led arguably the most consequential resistance to Israel’s bloody campaign in the Gaza Strip, taking the bold and unprecedented step of targeting Israeli-owned, flagged, or operated ships in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea.
Ansar Allah, known colloquially in the West as the Houthis, declared the actions a response to the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza and pledged to cease targeting Israeli-connected ships as soon as Israel’s aggression ceases. This mantra has been repeated by Ansar Allah leaders since the onset of its campaign and was confirmed to MintPress by Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Houthi supreme revolutionary committee, a prominent member of the Ansar Allah movement and a key decision-maker in Yemen’s Sana’a based government.
In response to Ansar Allah’s campaign against Israel, Western powers, particularly the United States, deployed a large flotilla of warships under the pretext of protecting international freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Dismissed in much of the Western media as little more than pirates or an Iranian-backed militia. Western audiences rarely have the opportunity to hear the unfiltered perspective of Ansar Allah’s own leaders. For this reason, MintPress News correspondent Ahmed Abdul-Kareem sat down with Ansar Allah’s second-in-command, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, to discuss recent events in Yemen, Gaza and the Middle East.
MintPress News: What is Ansar Allah’s position on the killing of three American soldiers and the wounding of more than thirty soldiers in the attack that targeted Tower 22? And before that, two U.S. Navy Seals that the U.S. claims died while drowning? What is Ansar Allah’s official position about their deaths?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The attacks – which we consider a natural reaction to the hostile actions carried out by the United States- are a clear message about the great extent of discontent in the Arab world towards the Americans due to their wrong policies, including the adoption of genocide in Gaza and the aggression on Yemen that puts their soldiers and interests in danger.
The Americans must understand that whoever attacks others will receive a response. As the Arab proverb says: “Whoever knocks on the door will find an answer.”
Regarding the two soldiers you mentioned in the other half of the question, that version of the incident is an American one. We do not trust what America announces. But if the American account is true, there is perhaps a major crime that the Americans are trying to conceal. They revealed the news of their soldiers in order to hide something worse. It is unreasonable for a fully prepared military force not to know where their colleagues have gone. The event is ambiguous. It must be investigated to expose what America is hiding.
MintPress News: You are suffering in Yemen from the repercussions of a war that has lasted for more than eight years, and despite that, you have taken an advanced military and political position in solidarity with Gaza. Why take this position, and how what is your reaction to U.S. and British government statements claiming that your position has nothing to do with Gaza?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: First, our position is religious and humanitarian, and we see a tremendous injustice. We know the size and severity of these massacres committed against the people of Gaza. We have suffered from American-Saudi-Emirati terrorism in a coalition that has launched a war and imposed a blockade against us that is still ongoing. Therefore, we move from this standpoint and do not want the same crime to be repeated. We respond to the demand of our people, who take to the streets every Friday in millions to demonstrate. We also respond to masses in Arab and Islamic nations and to all free people who ask us to defend their Palestinian brothers.
We cannot see the tragic humanitarian situation in Gaza, which has even been recognized by the International Court of Justice as a genocide, and do nothing. Therefore, our move is in this direction: to confront the arrogant ones who confront the oppressed. The oppressed are in a dire situation and endure horrific human suffering because of Israel and the United States, to such a point that they suspended their support for UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees], when instead they should have increased support for it so that it could continue to provide loaves of bread to Palestinians.
MintPress News: Western media represents the blockade of the Red Sea as threatening freedom of navigation for all ships traveling through it. Is this accurate? If not, what countries are allowed to use the Bab al-Mandab Strait without problems, and how does Ansar Allah determine which ships can pass and which are stopped?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: There is no blockade of the Red Sea, and what is being promoted in the Western media that we are targeting international navigation in the Red Sea and endangering international trade is not true. Navigation through the Red Sea is safe for all ships except those linked to Israel. Until recently, 4,874 ships have safely crossed since we announced our operations. Approximately 70 ships pass through Bab al-Mandab [Strait] daily without harm.
We have constantly confirmed that the ships being targeted are only ships linked to “Israel,” whether by heading to the occupied ports or those [ships] owned by Israelis or ships entering the port of Umm al-Rashrash [Eilat port]. The Yemeni Armed Forces repeatedly confirms that all ships with no connection to “Israel” will not be harmed. This is what the official spokesman of the Army repeatedly confirms in all issued statements about the naval operations of the Yemeni Armed Forces.
We do not want Bab al-Mandab to be closed, nor for the Red Sea to be closed. This is evidenced by the fact that we have limited ourselves to targeting Israeli ships and ships heading to the occupied Palestinian territories. If we had wanted to close Bab al-Mandab, there would have been other measures, some of which were easier than launching missiles.
In fact, what is being promoted in the Western media is the result of American deception, which is keen to spread false narratives about the events so that they become dominant in the international media. The United States demonizes us through the media by pumping out its incorrect narratives, even though they, and the British, are the devils who refuse to stop the genocide in Gaza and lift the siege on its people. They are militarizing the Red Sea and are continuing the escalation and aggression against Yemen.
As for how ships heading to Israel are identified, this is based on accurate information from the Yemeni Ministry of Defense. If the ship is linked to Israel, it is warned that it must not pass through the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait. If it rejects the warning – after announcing, clarifying and giving signals for it to stop and return – it will be targeted. No ship that was not heading to Israeli ports has been targeted, according to the military data that we trust. And neither the Americans nor the British have been able to prove otherwise.
MintPress News: Are there communication channels that ships can use to avoid danger while passing through Bab al-Mandab, the Red Sea in general, the Arabian Sea, and the Gulf of Aden?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The Navy confirms this and always repeats it in its [public] statements that there is channel Number 16 through which communication can take place. We tell shipping companies (we talked to them directly) that there is a simple solution they can use, where they can write the phrase, “We have no relation to Israel,” and pass safely. We also encourage them to use Digital Selective Calling [Digital Selective Calling is a technology used in marine communication for sending distress signals. It functions like a digital “call button” on maritime radios].
MintPress News: Western countries say that its operations in the Red Sea are to maintain the security and safety of international navigation. What is your reaction to this?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: It is America that is endangering international navigation by establishing what it calls the “Prosperity Alliance” to protect Israeli ships, even though a more appropriate name for it would be the “Alliance of Destruction, Militarization of the Red Sea, and Expansion of Conflict.”
Its warnings, its repeated media terrorism, and its delivery of messages and calls to ships are the actions that harm global navigation and trade, in addition to its military attacks on our country.
The White House tries to mislead the world by spreading the rumor that passing through Bab al-Mandab is unsafe. It puts pressure on international shipping companies that have no link to Israel not to pass through the Red Sea. This is done to fuel discontent against Yemenis and serve the criminal [Benjamin] Netanyahu. We call on them to stop these acts and to turn to the best solution, which is to stop the aggression and lift the siege on the people of Gaza. The Yemeni Armed Forces did not target American and British ships except in response to their aggression and attacks on our country. Prior to that, the leader of the revolution [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] warned them not to get involved in Yemen.
MintPress News: What is the true nature of U.S./UK airstrikes against Ansar Allah? Are they really causing damage, and what are they actually targeting? Have any Yemeni civilians died in these attacks?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Firstly, the American-British aggression against Yemen is not anything new. These two countries have been practicing aggression against the Republic of Yemen since 2015. These are the same actions. We are not afraid of the U.S.’s escalation. If the two countries decide to invade by land, they will face harsh lessons even worse than those they faced in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Yemeni people love freedom, are warriors and are well-armed. The army is well-prepared, and Yemenis have many options to inflict a strategic defeat on Americans in the region.
The American-British raids targeted populated cities, including Sana’a, Saada, Hodeidah, Hajjah, and Dhamar. Before that, they targeted our patrols in the Red Sea, and a number of naval forces were martyred. The strikes had no effect, and what is said about their influence is a baseless illusion and a failure, thanks to Allah Almighty.
Through their aggression at sea and their strikes, the Americans and British are defending criminals in the continuation of genocide in Palestine and the killing of civilians by the Israeli enemy without disturbance.
On the other hand, our position in the Republic of Yemen defends humanity. Our operation is carried out to stop the genocide and to stop the killing. Our choice is humanity’s choice, and it is the right choice for which we make sacrifices. The Americans must take the warnings of the leader [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] seriously.
MintPress News: There is talk in U.S. and UK political circles about escalating the war on Yemen, possibly even talk of a ground invasion of the country. What is Ansar Allah’s reaction to this, and how does Asnar Allah plan to expand military operations if the US and UK escalate?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: A ground war is what the Yemeni people wish for because they will be confronted with those who have caused their suffering for more than nine years. It will be a chance for revenge. As the leader of the revolution [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] said, “To be known to America, if they send their soldiers to Yemen, they will face something harsher than what they faced in Afghanistan and what they had suffered in Vietnam. We have the strength to confront the enemy and remain steadfast; our people have withstood nine years in the face of the massive aggression.”
MintPress News: What is your position on the Biden administration’s decision to classify Ansar Allah as a terrorist organization? Does this decision have repercussions for you?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Designating us as terrorists because we support Gaza is an honor and pride. It is also political, immoral, and has no justification. The U.S. move does not affect us. We do not enter U.S. territory. We also do not have companies or bank balances abroad. They know the designation will not affect our humanitarian or ethical processes or decisions.The solution lies in stopping the aggression against Gaza and allowing food and medicine to enter.
MintPress News: Western countries refer to Ansar Allah as the Houthis. Why do you believe they do this, and what are the fundamental differences between “Houthi” and “Ansar Allah”?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: Ansar Allah, as defined by the leader, is not an organization, political party, or group, as some people promote. They are not framed or structured. Even when the leader of martyrs, Sayyid Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi [the founder of Ansar Allah], began to form the organization, he did not form a unit according to internationally known procedures (such as registration centers or granting membership cards), like most organizations, groups, and parties do. Rather, he presented a project in which the masses of various political orientations, affiliations, and societal segments moved within the framework of the positions included in this project. So you could say we are a widespread popular movement.
Our name, Ansar Allah, comes from a Quranic title that expresses a practical response to the directives of Almighty Allah according to the methodology of the Holy Quran. We always strive to be ِAnsar Allah by bearing the nation’s issues that must be supported for the sake of Allah.
The name “Houthis” is not a name we apply to ourselves. We refuse to be called Houthis. It is not from us. It is a name given to us by our enemies in an attempt to frame the broad masses in Yemeni society that belong to our project. Indeed, these attempts have failed. Our people were not affected by this designation or other negative propaganda. The leader referred to this in one of his last speeches.
MintPress News: Western countries accuse Ansar Allah of being a tool of Iran. Western media reported recently that the U.S. asked China to pressure Iran to stop Ansar Allah from their blockade of the Red Sea. What is the truth behind this matter, and what is Ansar Allah’s relationship with Iran?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: In his speech last Thursday, [Ansar Allah leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi] confirmed that U.S. and British strikes are failures and have no impact [on us] and will not limit our military capabilities. He considered that “America’s attempt to request assistance from China to persuade us to stop our operations in support of Palestine is one of the signs of its failure.”
He also pointed out that “The Chinese will not involve themselves in serving America because they realize that it is in their interest not to follow America. China knows America’s hostile policies against it. It knows very well the extent of the American conspiracy through the Taiwan dilemma.”
Although it is the accusers who are required to prove what they say, we confirm the American allegations as illusions. Our decision is in our own hands, and the Americans and Israelis know that. If they have any accusation against Iran, that is their business. Iran is a sovereign state. We do not like to bother responding to enemies. We do not care about the enemy’s words as long as we take the right position.
MintPress News: There has been a truce between Ansar Allah and the Saudi-led coalition in conjunction with negotiations currently taking place through Omani mediators. Had peace in Yemen been used as a point of pressure to stop your operations in the Red Sea? Who is obstructing the peace process and an agreement between Yemeni parties?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: First, there is no truce but de-escalation. We hope political work will continue to achieve lasting peace for the Republic of Yemen and lift the siege.
Secondly, we have received many indirect messages and threats from the United States, including opening internal combat fronts, moving fronts, obstructing peace, stopping aid, etc., because of the position of the Yemeni people who refuse to allow for the extermination of the people of Gaza.
We are peace lovers. We want to build the Republic of Yemen. We’d like there to be peace. So, our operations in the Red Sea are within the framework of the search for peace for our brothers in Palestine.
But who has prevented peace in Yemen for nine years? Wasn’t it America that threatened to obstruct it? Yes, it was, as previously explained.
We presented a vision for a comprehensive solution [in Yemen], which was published in the media and delivered to the United Nations.
Recently, a paper [was published] whose points were agreed upon [by all parties], and the ones who obstructed it were the Americans. Just as Washington has done in previous rounds [of negotiations], it is obstructing peace right now.
Notice that, although they [the United States] talk about peace in Palestine, they use their veto power to prevent an end to the war. In Yemen, they talk about peace while at the same time launching [military] operations against the people of the Republic of Yemen.
MintPress News: Are there direct negotiation channels between Ansar Allah and the Americans? How can future negotiations be conducted to reduce the escalation in the region?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: We have not yet negotiated with the Americans directly. Although we have been asked to have direct negotiations, we have refused. We do not believe that we can engage in dialogue with the Americans because we see them as terrorist criminals who do everything to continue crimes and massacres. If the Americans hope to communicate [with us], it must be through our brothers in the Sultanate of Oman with our negotiating team there. This is the only way in which dialogue can take place.
MintPress News: Ansar Allah has stated many times that the reason for their blockade is to stand in solidarity and help the people of Gaza. What must Israel do for Ansar Allah to halt any blockade or attacks against Israeli interests?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: You must know that we have never resorted to carrying out operations in the Red Sea before, even though we were subjected to a major war supported mainly by the United States, but we do so now to stop the genocide in Gaza. Our operations will stop immediately as soon as medicine and food enter Gaza and the aggression is stopped. Until this noble humanitarian goal is achieved, the armed air, sea, and land forces will continue to target Israeli, American, and British ships. You see, the equation and solution is simple: let food and medicine reach the people of Gaza, and the aggression will be stopped.
MintPress News: Both the United States and Britain have repeatedly stated that what they are doing in the Red Sea is self-defense and to protect international navigation. What is your reaction to these statements?
Mohammed Ali al-Houthi: The truth is that Washington and London are bombing people thousands of miles away from their lands. They are carrying out aggression against an independent country that is a member of the United Nations without justification, legitimacy, or legal reference for what they are doing. They are carrying out aggression against Yemen only to protect the Israeli enemy. It is certain and clearly visible that they are not in a state of defense. They could have said that if their ships were being attacked off the coast of Florida or London.
In addition, their aggression has no moral or humanitarian justification, as they came to defend criminals so that Israel can continue committing more genocide in Palestine and killing civilians.
The American and British [people] should know that the administrations in the United States and Britain do not care about the safety of international navigation in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Arabian Sea. They only care about [Benjamin] Netanyahu, encouraging him to continue the genocide of the people of Gaza, even if at the expense of their people’s interests and the lives of their soldiers.
So we say to them: You are the ones who came to ignite the region, you are the ones working to threaten navigation, and you are the ones bringing danger and terrorism to the Red Sea, the Arabian Sea, or the Gulf of Aden. You must stop these practices and return to where you came from. The Red Sea belongs to neither the United States nor the British. It is clear to us that America’s policies are hostile. It has ambitions in the China Sea, it has ambitions in the Red Sea, and it also competes with Russia in the Arctic.
Republish our stories! MintPress News is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 International License.
The Gaza war and renewed US–UK strikes on Yemen are shattering what remains of the UAE–Saudi-led coalition. Now Yemenis of all stripes are flocking to embrace the Sanaa government and its resistance stance.
While the Red Sea military operations of Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah have shaken up geopolitical calculations of Israel’s war on Gaza, they have also had far-reaching consequences on the country’s internal political and military dynamics.
By successfully obstructing Israeli vessels from traversing the strategic Bab al-Mandab Strait, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance in defense of the Palestinian people – a cause deeply popular across Yemen’s many demographics. Sanaa’s position stands in stark contrast to that of the Saudi and Emirati-backed government in Aden, which, to the horror of Yemenis, welcomed attacks by US and British forces on 12 January.
The US–UK airstrikes have offended Yemenis fairly universally, prompting some heavyweight internal defections. Quite suddenly, Sanaa has transformed into a destination for a number of Yemeni militias previously aligned with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, now publicly declaring their allegiance to Ansarallah.
One such figure, Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, formerly with the Saudi–UAE coalition forces, announced in a tweet:
I am Colonel Hussein al-Qushaybi, I declare my resignation from my rank and my defection from the Legitimacy Army [army backed by Saudi-led coalition] that did not allow us, as members of the Ministry of Defense, to show solidarity with Palestine. My message to army members: Go back to your homes, for our leaders have begun to protect Zionist ships at sea and support the [Israeli] entity, even if they try to deceive, but their support has become clear and it is still there.
Qushaybi claims he was incarcerated in Saudi prisons for 50 days – along with other Yemeni officers – for his outspoken defense of Gaza, during which he endured torture and interrogation by an Israeli intelligence officer.
Major Hammam al-Maqdishi, responsible for personal protection of Yemen’s former Defense Minister in the coalition-backed government, has also arrived in Sanaa, pledging allegiance to Ansarallah.
Simultaneously, a leaked ‘top-secret’ document from the Saudi-backed, UN-recognized Yemeni Ministry of Defense instructs military leaders to suppress any sympathy or support for Hamas or Ansarallah, as “this might arouse the ire of brotherly and friendly countries” – an implicit reference to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
Defections and dissent
The wave of defections within the ranks of Saudi–Emirati coalition forces is not limited to officers. Many regular troops have openly rebelled against their commanders – abandoning their positions and pledging allegiance to Ansarallah – following the recent airstrikes on Yemen. Dozens of these soldiers have been arrested and detained for displaying solidarity with Gaza.
Yemeni news reports claim the US government, in a missive to the coalition’s Chief of Staff Saghir bin Aziz, expressed “dissatisfaction” with the lack of solidarity among his forces and demanded action.
While this trend of defections in the Saudi–Emirati coalition is not entirely new, it has acceleratedconsiderably since the onset of the war in Gaza and the recent US-UK strikes on Yemen.
Last February, high-ranking coalition officers, including brigade commanders from various fronts, began a series of defections, though none as significant as the current rebellion.
These earlier defections were primarily driven by financial conditions and dissatisfaction with Saudi Arabia and the UAE for their dismissal ofmilitary commanders associated with the Islah Party (Muslim Brotherhood in Yemen), who were replaced by members of the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) militias and those commanded by Tariq Saleh, nephew of pro-Saudi former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Most of these defections were by officer and troops associated with the Islah Party during a time when the foreign coalition began marginalizing the party’s military and political leadership, and dismantling several military sectors under their control – in favor of the UAE-controlled STC.
Now, the Gaza war has the Islah Party leadership fully breaking with its old alliances. As party official Mukhtar al-Rahbi tweeted upon the launch of US-UK strikes:
Any Yemeni who stands with the US, UK, and the countries of the coalition protecting Zionist ships should reconsider their Yemeni identity and Arab affiliation. These countries protect and support the Zionist entity, and when Yemen closed the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea to the ships of this terrorist entity, this dirty alliance struck Yemen and punished it for its noble stance towards Gaza and Palestine.
In stark contrast, the UAE-backed STC and the Tareq Saleh-led National Resistance Forces expressed readiness to protect Israeli interests. On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, STC President Aidarus al-Zoubaidi reaffirmed his support for the British attacks against Yemen, conveying this stance to British Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
Following these statements, an entire battalion under Saleh’s command defected to Ansarallah, while many other fighters now refuse his authority because they reject supporting US–UK strikes against Sanaa and its resistance leaders.
A shift in public sentiment
In response to the latest western aggression against Yemen, media outlets affiliated with the STC and its supporters have launched a campaign against Ansarallah and the Palestinian resistance, casting doubt on the Yemeni resistance movement’s capabilities and motives. But, their efforts have backfired badly, instead leading to widespread public fury in the country’s southern regions controlled by the UAE and Saudi-backed government.
Map of areas controlled by Ansarallah and Saudi-led coalition
Their anger is directed at the Aden-based government‘s perceived alignment with Israel’s regional projects, sparking both protests and symbolic acts, such as burning pictures of UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed and the Israeli flag.
According to Fernando Carvajal, a former member of the UN Security Council’s Yemen expert team, Ansarallah have managed to leverage – to their benefit – the untenable position of Abu Dhabi, which normalized relationswith Israel as part of the 2020 US-brokered Abraham Accords. This, he argues, has helped them gain widespread support both within Yemen and internationally.
In the wake of this unexpected public outrage, the STC has experienced a further wave of defections within its ranks. Several leaders have joined the Southern Revolutionary Movement, and openly expressed their objective of liberating southern Yemen from what they see as “Saudi–Emirati occupation.”
Amidst the wave of military realignments, prominent Al-Mahra tribal Sheikh Ali al-Huraizi – arguably the most influential figure in eastern Yemen – has come out to praise Ansarallah’s military operations against Israel-bound shipping in the Red Sea, hailing its actions as a resolute and national response to the suffering of the Palestinian people.
Huraizi stressed that the US and British aggression against Yemen was launched to protect the Zionist state, because Ansarallah’s targeted strikes were negatively impacting Israel’s economy. Calling for unity among Yemenis, the tribal leader urged steadfast resistance against Israeli influence in the country. He also called on other Yemeni factions to follow the bold leadership of Abdul-Malik al-Houthi as a means to halt the genocide taking place in Gaza.
Countdown to the coalition’s collapse
Yemen’s deteriorating economic conditions,currency collapse in coalition-ruled areas, and ongoing conflicts among southern militias have left many Yemenis disillusioned with Emirati and Saudi proxies, whom they had hoped would bring – at the very least – economic prosperity.
In contrast, the Ansarallah-led Sanaa government has managed to maintain a relatively stable economic situation in the areas under its control, despite the foreign-backed war aimed at toppling it. This disparity has led to a growing sentiment among UAE-aligned soldiers that they are merely pawns fighting for the interests of Persian Gulf Arab rulers, without receiving due recognition from these governments.
The contrasting stances on Palestine between the coalition and Ansarallah have deepened the Yemeni divide since the events of 7 October. Sanaa’s support for the Palestinian cause has significantly boosted its domestic standing, while US–UK strikes on the country have complicated their Persian Gulf allies’ position by prioritizing Israeli interests over all other calculations.
Disillusionment with the coalition will have profound political and military implications for Yemen, reshaping alliances, and casting the UAE and Saudi Arabia as national adversaries. Palestine continues to serve as a revealing litmus test throughout West Asia – and now in Yemen too – exposing those who only-rhetorically claim the mantle of justice and Arab solidarity.
The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of The Cradle.
On Friday, Houthi militants fired an anti-ship ballistic missile from mainland Yemen striking a British oil tanker and setting it ablaze. “US Central Command said the Marlin Luanda had issued a distress call and reported damage” but no casualties were reported. The attack represents a significant escalation in the deepening conflict between the US-led coalition and the Yemen-based Houthis.
Here’s the question that every American should be asking himself: Is Israel’s war in Gaza strengthening or weakening America’s position in the world?
If there is some material benefit for the United States, then there might be a reasonable argument for continuing to support the policy. But if there is no benefit whatsoever, then the policy should changed.
So, the real question is whether the US gains something from flouting international law and being an active participant in acts of barbarity against a civilian population?
How does America benefit from that?
It doesn’t, in fact, the present arrangement only benefits America’s rivals, like China and Russia, who have steadily grown stronger due to Washington’s erratic and violent behavior. The administration’s blanket support for Israel, has merely accelerated the pace at which nations in the global south and around the world are realigning with Moscow and Beijing. This isn’t a choice that foreign leaders want to make, it’s a choice they are compelled to make in order to guarantee their own security. That’s the bottom line. The idea that a population of 2 million people can be impulsively erased because of the offenses of a small group of militants, terrifies people. And what terrifies them even more is the fact that international law provides no enforceable protection for the people that are getting clobbered.
This is particularly extraordinary in the current case because—as we all know—the population that is being bombed to smithereens is all of a particular ethnicity and religion, (Arab, Muslim) which means they are being targeted for things over which they have no control. Of the two million people that are presently being herded to the Egyptian border, none of them are Jews. That is not a coincidence. That’s discrimination on a scale that should horrify everyone. Imagine if Biden got tired of the daily shootings in Chicago’s South Side and decided to gather all the black people in the country and drive them to the Mexican border where they would rot in tent cities without food, water or medicine. Would that be an acceptable solution?
And, yet, that’s what’s taking place right now in Gaza. Netanyahu says he won’t let up until “Hamas is defeated”. but what does that mean?
It means he is going to continue doing what he’s been doing for the last 110 days.
But, on what basis does he justify these actions. Let me explain what I mean by using a hypothetical:
Let’s say a terrorist organization bombs the Capital building in Washington DC. And, immediately following the bombing, the FBI discovers ironclad proof that the group has been operating out of terrorist cells located in downtown New York City. Now, normally, the FBI would follow certain protocols and methods for apprehending as many of the terrorists as possible while trying to minimize the “collateral damage.” But, this time, the FBI decides to invoke the Israeli method of fighting terrorism by carpet-bombing lower Manhattan with Tomahawk missiles and Daisy Cutters forcing millions of terrified New Yorkers to flee across the border into New Jersey.
Is that a reasonable way of dealing with terrorism? More importantly, can the existence of terrorist cells ever be used as a justification for reducing an entire city to smoldering rubble?
Of course, not. It’s ridiculous, and yet, that’s what Israel is doing. They are flattening all of Gaza in the name of “defeating Hamas.” Who could have imagined that the extermination of an entire civilization could rest on such a flimsy pretext?
One last thing:
It’s not enough that the Biden administration is providing lethal weapons and logistical support to Israel. Now, Biden has decided to wage war against on Houthis, as well. The President objects to the fact that the Houthis have imposed a blockade on Israeli-linked commercial ships in the Red Sea (in order to pressure Israel to end its blockade of food and medicine to the Palestinians.) So, the US and UK have been launching multiple missile strikes on cities and infrastructure in Yemen. The US attacks are intended to persuade the Houthis to abandon their blockade but, so far, there are no signs that they are degrading the Houthis offensive capability at all. In contrast, The Houthi blockade is having significant impact on Israel’s economy while their attacks on commercial ships have steadily intensified. In short, the Houthis appear to be winning.
On Wednesday, the Houthis fired three anti-ship ballistic missiles from the mainland at two container ships transiting the Gulf of Aden. According to a report from CENTCOM two of the missiles were intercepted by a US warship while one landed in the water. According to antiwar.com:
“Later in the day, the Houthis said their forces engaged in a two-hour battle with several US warships. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea claimed the confrontation resulted in a Houthi missile “directly hitting an American warship, but so far, the US has not confirmed the account.”
Bottom line: The Houthi attacks forced the two commercial ships (the Maersk Detroit and the Maersk Chesapeake) to turn-around and beat a hasty retreat. In other words, the Houthi blockade held-up despite the presence of a state-of-the-art AEGIS destroyer (the USS Gravely) that was escorting the ships through the waterway. This is a clear victory for the Houthis and further proof that US naval convoys will not be able to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
But will that nudge Biden towards the bargaining table?
Of course, not. Biden’s not going to throw in the towel. He’s going to up-the-ante like US presidents always do. So, things are going to get progressively worse. Bet on it.
Here’s more from Sal Mercogliano, host of You Tube’s “What’s going On With Shipping”. Mercogliano is a former merchant mariner and teaches courses in maritime history. This is a blurb from Thursday’s show:
The Houthis have done something unheard of…. They have interdicted 11% of world trade and they are forcing it to go around Africa. You’ve got to go back to the world wars to find a naval power to emerge that makes trade lanes bend and interdict supplies. That’s what the Houthis have done. And they are doing it with Iranian hand-me-down missiles duct-taped together and being launched and hitting (their targets) The only savings grace, is that the missiles are so crappy, that they don’t blow up like they’re supposed to.
Understand, this won’t last long, because once there is the realization that the Houthis are not damaging the ships enough, then you’ll see a resumption of trade and the Houthi will ramp it up again. and they will try to sink and kill crew members. Understand, I don’t think they are doing this consciously right now, it’s just that the missiles just aren’t that great. If, they see the potential here, then they will do it. Understand, this is a targeted attack against the United States of America. This is what led to our entry into World War 1.
Of course, it’s going to escalate. Because now it’s a matter of national pride. The US cannot allow itself to seen as caving in to a ragtag militia that has essentially seized control of one of the world’s most critical transit corridors. That cannot stand! Which is why the US launched its ninth massive missile attack on Yemen on Friday afternoon. Unfortunately, the Houthis responded tit-for-tat by firing on British oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden. Here’s a recap from CNN:
An oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden is on fire after a missile attack by Yemen’s Houthi militants, in the latest incident linked to the Iran-backed group in the key shipping route.
The operator of the British oil tanker Marlin Luanda said Friday the vessel had been “struck by a missile in the Gulf of Aden after transiting the Red Sea,” and that “firefighting equipment on board is being deployed to suppress and control the fire caused in one cargo tank on the starboard side.”
The Iran-backed militants claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement that they had fired on the tanker in response to the “American–British aggression against our country [Yemen]” and in support of the Palestinian people. Oil tanker on fire in Gulf of Aden after Houthi missile attack, CNN
So, now an oil tanker has been hit which means the stakes keep getting higher all the time. Is this what Biden had in mind when he deployed his flotilla to the Red Sea? Did he really want another war 8 thousand miles away from America’s shores?
And who is winning this war: The United States or the Houthis?
If you are in doubt about that question, just take a look at this clip from the Wall Street Journal:
“Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser of the USA, is on his way to Thailand – where he will meet with Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, in an attempt to pressure him to influence the Houthis to stop the attacks in the Red Sea”
WTF? So, Biden wants China to pressure the Houthis to ease the blockade? Is that what’s going on?
No, not exactly. It’s actually much worse than that. Here’s the story from Reuters:
The United States has asked China to urge Tehran to rein in the Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea but has seen little sign of help from Beijing, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, citing U.S. officials.
The U.S. has repeatedly raised the matter with top Chinese officials in the past three months, the report said. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and his deputy, Jon Finer, discussed the issue in meetings this month in Washington with Liu Jianchao, head of the International Liaison Department of China’s Communist Party, the newspaper said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also raised the issue with his Chinese counterpart, the report said, adding U.S. officials believe there was little evidence that China had put any pressure on Iran to restrain the Houthis beyond a mild statement Beijing issued last week… US asks China to urge Iran to curb Red Sea attacks by Houthis -FT, Reuters
Let me get this straight: The United States wants China to urge Tehran to rein in the Iranian-aligned Houthis?
Really? But didn’t Biden designate China as America’s Enemy Number 1 in his 2022 National Security Strategy? And hasn’t Biden been trying to enlist more and more nations into his anti-China coalition? And hasn’t Biden deployed the Navy multiple times to hector and harass China in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait? But now he’s sent his envoys to beg for a favor?
What gall!
But—despite what you read in the western media—China isn’t ‘falling for it’, mainly because China has had the right policy from the very beginning. So, there’s no reason to change a thing. China opposed Houthi attacks on commercial vessels from the onset. That hasn’t changed. By the same token, they oppose US military intervention and think that the US deliberately misled the Security Council to get a resolution that they used as a pretext for attacking Yemen. China opposes that, too, and they always have.
But, most important is that China’s leaders do not accept that the troubles in the Red Sea are divorced from Israel’s rampage in Gaza. They see them as the unavoidable spillover from the Israel-Palestine crisis which must be addressed directly. Check out this excerpt from an editorial at the Global Times:
Western media recently reported that the US has asked China to urge Tehran to rein in the pro-Iran Houthi militants, which are attacking commercial ships in the Red Sea… Since the outbreak of the Red Sea crisis, China has maintained close communication with all parties involved to ease tensions and has made proactive efforts. China has consistently called for an end to the attacks on civilian vessels and urged relevant parties to avoid exacerbating the tense situation in the Red Sea, in order to jointly safeguard the security of the Red Sea waterway….
Since the recent escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict, US officials have repeatedly asked China to leverage this relationship and exert “influence” on Iran…
The recent US airstrikes against Houthi forces have not yielded the expected results, and attacks on commercial ships have not diminished. Several Western media outlets have commented that military strikes will only backfire. Pentagon officials also admitted that the military campaign against the Houthi forces is not working….
It is not surprising that the US finds itself in such a situation because it either fails or refuses to recognize the root cause of the Red Sea crisis. While Houthi forces are responsible for harassing civilian ships, the crisis stems from the overflow of the Gaza conflict. All parties need to return to the core issue of achieving an immediate ceasefire and implementing the “two-state solution” for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. If the US does not grasp this point and continues to intensify military strikes against the Red Sea stakeholders, the result will only be to perpetuate a cycle of escalating violence. Moreover, concerning the core issue of the Gaza conflict, theUS has yet to demonstrate a sincere stance toward peace and dialogue, contributing to the escalating tensions in the Red Sea region…. If US Needs China in the Red Sea, It Should Talk to China Nicely, The Global Times
China is not “playing sides” or “picking winners”. It is simply stating the obvious; that the fracas in the Red Sea can’t be separated from the Israel-Palestine crisis; they are one-and-the-same. The United States needs to recommit to the remedy that has already been approved many times over, and which the vast majority of countries still support; the “two-state solution”. That has been standard US policy for 75 years, and Biden’s crazed effort to abandon that policy has created the catastrophe we see today.
Leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement Sayyed Abdul-Malik al-Houthi addresses the Yemeni people and the Ummah, on January 25, 2024. (Yemeni Armed Forces/Military media)
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement highlights the US’ direct role in war crimes against Palestinians in his latest address.
The leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed Abul-Malik al-Houthi, lambasted the United States for its role in supplementing and supporting the ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, during his weekly address to the Yemeni people and the Ummah at large on Thursday.
Sayyed al-Houthi underlined the essential role that Washington plays in extending the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, holding the US administration accountable for piled-up humanitarian aid outside the Gaza Strip and the closure of the Rafah border crossing.
Moreover, the leader pointed to the ongoing US-UK-led aggression on Yemen, which the two Western nations claim aims to secure international maritime trade routes. Contrary to US-UK claims, Sayyed al-Houthi said that Washington “does not care about the threat to international navigation and the fact that it has turned the Red Sea into a battlefield, nor about the arrival of food and medicine to the people of Gaza.”
He added, “[The US] has no problem with expanding the conflict [and increasing tensions in the region].”
In fact, the Resistance leader said the US “insists on keeping Gaza under total siege and keeping the Rafah crossing closed most of the time,” adding that Washington “insists that there be no flow of [humanitarian aid] to the Palestinian people in Gaza.”
It is worth noting that Sayyed al-Houthi’s statements coincide with a months-long effective Naval campaign launched by the Yemeni Armed Forces (YAF), aiming at pressuring the Israeli occupation to lift its siege on the Gaza Strip and allow humanitarian aid in. The Biden administration in Washington has opted to support the Israeli occupation’s genocidal war on Palestinians and launched at least eight strikes on Yemen.
In this context, Sayyed al-Houthi said, “While the Americans fight for the supplies to reach the Israelis, they prevent food and medicine from reaching Gaza,” pointing out that “[Washignton] is the one behind the continuation of Zionist crimes and behind [the incompetence of international organizations].”
The US “contributes directly to starving the Palestinian people, causing them to die of hunger, not only with the bombs [it provides the Israeli occupation forces with] to kill them.”
Yemen’s battle is intrinsically tied to Gaza
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement said the Yemeni Armed Forces launched more than 200 attack drones and fifty cruise and ballistic missiles in support of the Palestinian people.
He stressed that Yemen would continue to launch operations in support of the Palestinian people “until food and medicine reach all residents of Gaza and the Zionist crimes” in the Gaza Strip stop.
Sayyed al-Houthi stressed that the US’ military aggression and its insistence to reject a humanitarian deal “will not affect our position,” stressing that the Yemeni people “will never retreat.”
“Our battle is ongoing and is entirely linked to the Gaza battle.”
Yemen’s operations: No threat to international navigation
He also indicated that the US is attempting to “justify its aggression against our country and its protection of Zionist crimes,” under the pretext of protecting international navigation.
In response to these claims, Sayyed al-Houthi said that since the beginning of the Yemeni Naval campaign, “4,874 commercial ships have crossed,” through the Red Sea, untouched, adding that the US-UK-led escalation “is [the real] threat to international navigation” and has violated “the sovereignty of countries” in the region.
He went on to advise Europeans against allowing the US to exploit their govenrments’ funds for such purposes.
He explained that “no matter how much the Americans and the British escalate,” the results of this escalation will “be counterproductive and will not affect our decision and position, but we will continue to develop our military capabilities.”
“Whenever the Israelis and the Americans insist on [committing war crimes in Gaza], we must be more resolved and determined to prevent it.”
The leader of the Ansar Allah movement highlighted that in the history of the Arab struggle against the Israeli occupation, there has never been an aggression similar to that on Gaza today, both in terms of the war’s period and the level of criminality committed.
On that note, Sayyed al-Houthi pointed out that the number of casualties in Gaza is now calculated as a percentage of its population. “This is unparalleled today in all conflicts around the world,” he stressed.
In fact, more than 1 in 100 people in the Gaza Strip have been killed by the Israeli occupation since October 7, while more than 1 in 20 Gazans have either been killed, injured, or gone missing in the same period.
Despite the unprecedented level of Israeli brutality, the situation today has differed, he added. “Thanks to the resilience and steadfastness of the Resistance and the people of Gaza,” the equation has changed. The leader added that suffering is mutual and is not limited to Palestinians as in previous periods in the fight against the occupation.
“Despite the scale of the Zionist aggression, crime, tyranny, and incursion, the enemy has failed to achieve its declared goals,” Sayyed al-Houthi emphasized.
Leader of the Ansar Allah, Sayyed Abdulmalik al-Houthi: "Despite the scale of the Zionist aggression, criminality, tyranny, and incursion, the enemy has failed to achieve its stated objectives." https://t.co/dTcusFcC1A
Elsewhere in his address, Ansar Allah’s leader reiterated that Muslims bear a great responsibility to “support the resilience of the Palestinian people in the face of extremely difficult conditions, severe suffering, and great oppression.”
He underlined that “if Muslims provide the necessary support to the Palestinian people and its Resistance fighters, the equation will change completely,” pointing out that “the criminal path of the Israeli enemy continues every day, expressing an aggressive tendency, hatred, brutality, and moral bankruptcy.”
“Whenever the enemy fails to achieve its declared goals, it resorts to committing horrendous crimes,” he added, asking, “All international institutions are witnessing what is happening in Palestine, in Gaza, but where is the practical stance?”
“The statements issued by international institutions do not match up to the real situation Gaza is facing,” he added.
Leader of the Ansar Allah, Sayyed Abdulmalik al-Houthi: "The statements issued by international institutions can never truly capture the reality of what is happening in #Gaza." https://t.co/pKATrCR9yF
Regarding the international public stance on the Israeli war, he emphasized the need for the demonstrations in Western countries to continue, namely in Europe and the United States.
However, he said that “there must be broader and escalating actions to pressure the heinous and brutal crime against the Palestinian people to stop.”
“Mass popular movement has great importance in demanding an end to the aggression on Gaza and ending the crime against the Palestinian people,” Sayyed al-Houthi said, noting that “people suffering severe oppression from their regimes can boycott American and Israeli goods.”
Reaffirming Yemen’s unwavering position to support Gaza, respond to Israeli crimes, and face the occupation’s supporters no matter the challenges, he stressed that Gaza will not be left to its fate.
“Our people will not leave Gaza alone, and Yemenis will not stay at home ignoring what is happening, but the popular mobilization will continue,” he declared, calling for “massive demonstrations on Friday in the capital Sanaa and across other provinces.”
UPROOTED PALESTINIANS: SALAM ALQUDS ALAYKUM 
