Just Stop The Fucking Genocide And Red Sea Shipping Will Be Safe

I didn't expect to write this piece twice in barely a year, but the U.S. is back to bombing Yemen and threatening Iran, so here we are 

Spencer Ackerman

Edited by Sam Thielman 

Gaza in October 2023. Via Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa), under CC-BY-SA 3.0

CONSPICUOUS IN PRESIDENT Trump’s declaration that the U.S. will resume bombing Yemen was the lack of anything like a strategy to produce the end of Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping. "We will use overwhelming lethal force until we have achieved our objective," is the closest he came, but that's just a description of means and aims, with the hope that enough bombs will compel a Houthi surrender. The Houthis' ability to withstand a decade of Saudi, American and occasionally Israeli bombs and cruise missiles shows they won't. Now not only is Israel back to its U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the regional war in the Middle East spilling out from it is back on. 

There is a surefire way to stop attacks on Red Sea shipping and U.S. Naval vessels. The Trump administration secured it in January, to great regional fanfare and the humiliation of Democrats: Force a ceasefire on Israel. But the administration is actively undermining the ceasefire while attempting to cast Hamas as the intransigent party, a move that clears the decks for as much ethnic cleansing as Israel can get away with.  

If this sounds familiar, that's because in January 2024 I wrote pretty much the same thing when the Biden administration was doing what the Trump administration is doing now. The Houthis, AKA Ansar Allah, who govern northern Yemen, to include areas on the Red Sea coast, held Red Sea shipping at risk as a measure to impose economic pressure on Israel from parties both involved and not involved in Gaza.

Instead, the Biden administration denied linkage between Gaza and the Red Sea attacks and assembled a fig-leaf naval coalition to break the Houthis’ siege of the trade route. It failed. All it produced was what an Associated Press reporter, aboard a U.S. Destroyer in the Red Sea, called the "most intense running sea battle the Navy has faced since World War II." A campaign meant to assert the might of what is unquestionably the most powerful Navy on earth instead showcased its impotence against an overmatched but determined force with the backing of Iran. 

But then something worked—predictably—and it wasn't more Tomahawks. I'm going to quote from the eleventh paragraph of the New York Times' story on Sunday about the renewed bombing campaign: 

The Houthis, who are backed by Iran and act as the de facto government in much of northern Yemen, largely stopped their attacks when Israel and Hamas reached a cease-fire in Gaza in January. 

Got that? Could it be clearer? Ansar Allah did what they said they were going to do. When there was a prospect for a durable peace in Gaza, the Houthis stood down so it could take root. But then what happened, New York Times? 

But Israel instituted a blockade on aid to Gaza this month, and the Houthis have said they will step up attacks in response. 

Israel isn't the only aggressor here. So is Israel's American patron. Once Trump defeated Netanyahu's hated Biden, Israel agreed to a ceasefire it had resisted—but up to a point. That point, as FOREVER WARS forecasted all the way back in June when the ceasefire plan emerged, was the first 40-day phase of ceasefire and hostage exchange. 

Hamas has taken the position that the ceasefire ought to progress to the second phase of the deal, which involves not only additional hostage exchanges but negotiations on Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and a lasting end to the post-October 7 war. Instead, Israel, backed by Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, is trying to extend the timespan of the first phase, the one that gives Israel its hostages back but keeps the sword of the IDF on the Palestinian throat. That is fundamentally a different deal than the one Hamas agreed to. Since Hamas can't accept that, Washington and Tel Aviv have a mechanism to portray Hamas and not themselves as the rejectionist parties. Ansar Allah is calling the bluff, and Trump, who has no problem substituting endless violence for strategy, is responding with yet another futile war.

It's insane to think a protracted war in the Red Sea will make the Red Sea safe for commercial shipping, but this is where the logic of the Combination Genocide And Regional War leads. As has been the case since January 2024, the U.S. (and the rest of the world) can have, right now, the safe Red Sea shipping lanes it wants. All it has to do is make Israel progress to the second phase of the ceasefire. 

Instead, on CNN yesterday, Witkoff said that the U.S. strikes against the Houthis over the weekend "ought to inform Hamas as to where we stand as regard to terrorism and our tolerance level for terrorist actions." That sounded to me like an implied threat: that the U.S. could cut out the Israeli middleman and drop U.S. weapons on Gaza itself. Additionally, the Trump administration is threatening Iran to break with the Houthis. The leader of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in response that "Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they carry out their threats."

Whatever develops, right now, 53 Yemenis are dead, the first of what sounds like many more to come in this new phase of the regional war.