Hamid Khoshayand – Regional Affairs Expert
Eliminating the effective political and military leaders of Ansar Allah and consequently destroying it, establishing a new order in Yemen and the Persian Gulf, and securing the Israeli regime’s shipping route in the Red Sea and the Sea of Oman are among the critical declared goals of the White House for attacking Yemen. The United States, which is bombing Yemen with a heavy volume of airstrikes and sometimes using unique weapons that are effective in major wars, has not only failed to achieve the stated goals but has also failed to protect the depths of the occupied territories from Yemeni missiles and drones.
The continued US crimes against the Yemeni people and the country’s resistance, which has been carried out in violation of international regulations, will entail significant material and non-material costs for the US. These could include logistical, reputational, and diplomatic costs and possibly a decline in the Trump administration’s popularity in domestic, regional, and international public opinion.
The continued unprecedented and heavy US attacks on Yemen are currently facing two significant challenges: first, internal disputes and serious opposition within the US, which are gradually becoming apparent and will undoubtedly have negative consequences for the US’s war-making in Yemen and the region. For example, some US military and political officials are unhappy with the use of special weapons against Ansar Allah, including JASSM cruise missiles, JSOW guided bombs, and Tomahawk missiles, which are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and are used in major wars and will be of strategic importance in any possible war with China.
In addition, some top US commanders and military strategists are concerned that attacks on Yemen could undermine US military preparedness in the Indo-Pacific region. Suppose the current trend of military attacks on Yemen continues without achieving the expected results. In that case, the US military will need additional funding, which Congress seems unwilling to provide.
Second, the prospect of continued military aggression is bleak despite the US’s unprecedented and powerful entry into the war with Ansar Allah. Washington does not have an accurate assessment of Ansar Allah’s situation in Yemen and, despite extensive intelligence, does not yet know how many Ansar Allah positions and weapons depots it has bombed and how many weapons Ansar Allah still has.
In less than three weeks, the United States has spent more than a billion dollars fighting Ansar Allah. Still, apart from destroying several Ansar Allah bases and killing civilians, it has achieved no results of strategic or long-term value that would weaken or disrupt the Yemeni resistance.
As Emily Milliken, deputy director for media and communications at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Program, recently stated, “While airstrikes on Houthi bases may affect their leaders and missile defense systems in the short term, as well as their operational capabilities, the Houthis have proven resilient in the past, and even after successive attacks by the Saudi-led coalition and, more recently, the United States and the United Kingdom, they remain a ‘regional threat.’”
The quantity and quality of the US military deployment against Ansar Allah and the deployment of warships and strategic bombers in the region, even if it was done for other purposes, is to the extent that it is used in a war with great powers. However, from the cost-benefit analysis perspective, the results achieved in these three weeks have been minimal; in other words, they are nothing compared to the costs incurred.
It is noteworthy that the military power and presence in Yemen, which was supposed to provide a deterrent for the US in the region, has practically become a significant target for the missiles and drones of the Yemeni resistance, something that no country in the world has dared to do before.
The firing of missiles and drones at an American ship, and that too by an organization, is enough to realize the depth of vulnerability of the US deterrent tools in the region and the decline of its strategic power in the world, despite the show of power the US has launched by taking advantage of the increased military presence and extensive psychological operations in the region.
Ansar Allah’s resistance to America is commendable, given the reports of the military power of the United States. The existence of such a robust and resilient Islamic group in the region, given its successful performance in confronting the Saudi coalition’s aggression and today’s performance against America, is an important lesson and experience for Arab and Islamic countries.
The inability of the United States and the Zionist regime to confront Ansar Allah and Hamas showed that relying on these two in the long term is a “miscalculation” and a “strategic error” that not only does not ensure and guarantee the national security of Arab and Islamic countries but also poses serious threats to the security and national interests of these countries, examples of which we have seen in the Islamic world in recent years.
The quantity, nature, depth, and scope of the US crimes against the Yemenis, as well as the crimes of the Israeli regime against the people of Gaza, which are unprecedented in human history, leave no justification for the silence, appeasement, and passivity of Western and Islamic countries in supporting Palestine and Ansar Allah and confronting the US and the Zionist regime in the region.
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