by Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas nearly 100 days ago, President Biden and his advisers have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw in US forces.
Now, with the US-led attack on nearly 30 sites in Yemen on Thursday, there is no longer any doubt whether there will be a regional conflict. Has already started. The biggest questions now are the intensity of the conflict and whether it can be contained.
This is exactly the outcome that no one wanted, presumably including Iran.
“We are not interested in a war with Yemen. “We are not interested in any type of conflict,” White House spokesman John F. Kirby said Friday. “In fact, all the president has been doing has been trying to prevent any escalation of the conflict, including last night’s attacks.”
Biden’s decision to unleash airstrikes, after resisting calls to act against Yemen-based Houthi militants, whose repeated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea were beginning to take a toll on global trade, is a clear reversal of strategy. After issuing a series of warnings, officials said, Biden felt his hand was forced after a barrage of missile and drone attacks on Tuesday targeted a U.S. cargo ship and the Navy ships surrounding it. .
“This is already a regional war, which is no longer limited to Gaza, but has already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” said Hugh Lovatt, a Middle East expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Washington, he added, wanted to show that it was willing to deter Iranian provocations, so it visibly put its aircraft carriers and fighters in position to respond quickly. But those same positions leave the United States more exposed.
Over the course of 12 weeks, attacks against Israeli, American and Western interests came from Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, prompting modest and carefully targeted responses from American and Israeli forces. The United States also issued warnings to Iran, which the Americans say is acting as a loose coordinator.
What was notable about the retaliatory strike in Yemen was its breadth: Using fighter jets and sea-launched missiles, US and British forces, backed by a small number of other allies, struck a large number of Houthi missile and drone sites.
Biden is walking a fine line between deterrence and escalation, and his aides admit the calculation has no scientific basis. Tehran and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, have been careful in their support of Hamas, keeping their actions within limits, to avoid a broader US military response that could threaten Tehran’s exercise of power in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
But how much control Iran has over its proxies is in question, and its leaders may also be misinterpreting American and Israeli red lines.
The Houthis, a small tribe in Yemen backed by Iran, have been among the most aggressive in going further, trying to block international trade routes through the Red Sea and ignoring American and Western warnings to desist.
Houthi officials say the only goal of their attacks is to force Israel to stop its military campaign and allow the free flow of aid to Gaza.
Western diplomats said there had been reluctance to counterattack the Houthis, partly to avoid upsetting a truce in the Yemeni civil war and partly because of the difficulty of completely eliminating their threat. But the Houthis’ repeated attacks on ships, their direct fire on American helicopters and their attack Tuesday on an American cargo ship left the United States with what officials said was no real option.
It is unknown how long it will take for the Houthis to recover and return to threatening ships in the Red Sea, as they have promised. So far the response has been muted, with a single anti-ship missile launched harmlessly into the Red Sea, away from any passing ships, a Pentagon official told reporters on Friday.
But greater American military involvement also contributes to the perception in the wider world that the United States is acting even more directly on behalf of Israel, risking further damage to the American and Western position as the death toll rises. in Gaza. Israel is now defending its conduct against charges of genocide before an international court.
Iran is using proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis to distance itself from its actions and maintain its credibility in the region, trying to avoid a direct attack, which could put the Islamic Revolution and its nuclear program at risk.
But Iran is also being dragged along by those same proxies.
“Iran is really pushing,” said François Heisbourg, a French military analyst. “It’s another reason they don’t want a war now: they want their centrifuges to run peacefully.” The Iranians do not have a nuclear weapon, but they could enrich enough uranium to weapons level within a few weeks, from the current 60 percent enrichment to 90 percent, he said. “They’ve done 95 percent of the work.”
Israel is also stepping up its attacks against Iran’s proxies, especially in Lebanon and Syria. After the Hamas attack, Hezbollah in Lebanon began a series of attacks from Lebanon, prompting Israel to evacuate citizens close to the conflict.
After that, Israel’s air campaign killed 19 Hezbollah members in Syria in three months, more than double the rest of 2023 combined, according to a tally by the Reuters news agency. More than 130 Hezbollah fighters have also been killed by Israel in Lebanon in the same period.
Amine Hoteit, a retired Lebanese army general and analyst, listed several objectives of the Israeli strikes in Syria: to keep the focus there and to pressure the Syrian government to “cut off the Iranian supply route.”
U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and Syria to prevent a resurgence of ISIS have been attacked by Iranian-backed militias 130 times since Oct. 17, according to the Pentagon’s tally Thursday, with a total of 53 attacks in Iraq and 77 in Syria. . The United States has retaliated on fewer than 10 occasions, usually after American casualties.
On each occasion, the United States has said its response is aimed at deterring further attacks and is intended to send a message to Iran and its proxies, which operate freely in Iraq and Syria. But no American soldiers have died. The concern, according to U.S. officials, is that sooner or later one of the attacks will kill troops, and then the response would be much more lethal and could spiral out of control.
On January 4, the US military launched a rare retaliatory strike in Baghdad that killed a militia leader blamed for recent attacks on US personnel, a move condemned by the Iraqi government.
While the Iraqi government is now dominated by parties close to Iran, the American presence has largely been tolerated out of fear that, without American help, the Islamic State could quickly regain ground.
But on Friday, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry condemned attacks against the Houthis in Yemen. “We believe that expanding the scope of the objectives does not represent a solution to the problem; rather, it will lead to an expansion of the scope of the war,” the statement said.
While the main attention has been focused on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah, the Houthi threat to trade has the potential to have the greatest global impact, with around 30 percent of the world’s container ships passing through the Red Sea. Volvo, Tesla and other automakers in Europe have already suspended production for a few days or more due to disruptions in receiving parts as ships navigate the Red Sea and Suez Canal.
The United States and more than a dozen other countries have created a coalition to protect shipping, Operation Prosperity Guardian. But the Houthis have continued to try to attack ships, with Israeli connections or not, and Maersk decided to suspend all shipments through the Red Sea after an attack on December 31 on one of its ships. He has warned his clients to expect significant disruptions and analysts expect higher prices to boost global inflation.
In public speeches this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah reiterated that they do not want an expanded war. But Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism expert who is research director at the Soufan Group, said Israel could not afford to be complacent given its serious miscalculation before Oct. 7 that Hamas was also not interested in a war. .
The recent killings that struck at the heart of Iran’s ties with Hezbollah and Hamas have unnerved Iranians, who have described them in chat rooms and social media as “slapped again and again.”
Brig. General Sayyed Razi Mousavi, killed on Christmas in Damascus, had for two decades been in charge of acquiring missiles, rockets and drones for Hezbollah in Lebanon and allied militia groups in Syria and Iraq, according to Iranian media reports. Khamenei performed the ritual of prayer for the dead over his body at his funeral, an honor reserved for the most revered subordinates.
Saleh al-Arouri, deputy Hamas political chief, killed in a drone strike in the heart of Hezbollah’s power base in Beirut’s Dahieh district, was the Hamas member closest to Iran and Hezbollah and the person they trusted most with sensitive messages and providing financing and technical knowledge from Iran.
Alissa Rubin contributed reports from Baghdad and Hwaida Saad from Beirut.
