2024-01-15 23:47:00
(CNN) — U.S.-led airstrikes last week against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen destroyed less than a third of the Iran-backed group’s global offensive capabilities, a U.S. official told CNN, and the group maintains most of its capabilities. to attack ships in the Red Sea.
Despite a major deployment of strikes last week, including 150 precision-guided munitions fired at nearly 30 sites, the Houthis still have about three-quarters of their ability to attack commercial vessels on international shipping lanes in the southern sea. Red and the Gulf of Aden, the official added.
This became evident on Monday, when a missile launched by the Houthis hit a US-owned cargo ship in the Red Sea, in what appears to be the first time the fighters have managed to attack a ship owned or controlled by the United States.
Last week’s airstrike was a success as planned: The United States destroyed or damaged 93% of the targets it had selected, but some US officials privately acknowledged that it did little to curb the Houthis’ ability to continue attacking the international maritime transport.
“We received a message and there was some degradation, but we are waiting for a response and we do not believe that we have substantially set back their military efforts,” a US official stated in relation to the attacks.
The limited scope of last week’s operation illustrates the tightrope the Biden administration is walking in the Middle East, where the violent tug-of-war between groups backed by Iran and the United States and Israel is about to lead to an open war.
Washington has scrupulously tried to avoid a situation in which attacks by the Houthis and other Iranian-backed groups become a second front in the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.
Global trade disruption
Since November, Houthi fighters, who receive significant weapons and other support from Iran, have carried out dozens of attacks on international shipping that the group says are retaliation for Israel’s war in Gaza. Those attacks are disrupting global trade, forcing some of the world’s largest shipping companies to avoid the waterway, instead adding thousands of kilometers (and potentially millions of dollars) to international shipping routes by sailing around the African continent in instead of crossing the Suez Canal.
Senior Biden administration officials insist that Friday’s operation against the Houthis succeeded in its goal: degrading the group’s military capabilities.
“This was not a signaling exercise,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a briefing with reporters Friday. “This was designed to disrupt and degrade Houthi military capabilities.”
The dozens of targets the United States attacked on Friday, including command and control nodes, munitions, launch systems, production facilities and air defense radar systems, were chosen specifically to try to make it more difficult for the Houthis to attack ships at sea Red, as Pentagon officials have noted. By design, there were few Houthi casualties.
Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a briefing last week: “It wasn’t necessarily about casualties, it was about degrading capability.” “The sole objective was to eliminate the capacity that impedes … freedom of navigation in international waters, and we are convinced that we have done a good job.”
And the United Kingdom, which took part in Friday’s attacks, insisted they were an act of “self-defense” aimed at “de-escalating tensions and restoring stability to the region.”
The assessment of the damage caused by the airstrikes was first reported by The New York Times.
Iran’s careful calibrations
Declassified US intelligence shows that Iran has been deeply involved in coordinating Houthi attacks on commercial and merchant ships, including providing information on cargo ships passing through the waterway.
US intelligence services believe that Iran is carefully calibrating its response to Israel’s war in Gaza, allowing and even encouraging its subsidiary groups to impose costs on Israeli and US interests in the region, while refraining from activities that could trigger a direct confrontation with Iran.
U.S. officials fear that one side will make a miscalculation, even though none of the major parties — Iran, Israel and the United States — want a broader war. This concern is particularly acute when it comes to the Houthis, who are both deeply ideological in their hatred of Israel and one of the most operationally independent Iranian subsidiary groups.
Closure of a crucial trade route
Analysts believe a prolonged closure of the waterway, which connects to the Suez Canal, could paralyze global supply chains and drive up prices for manufactured goods at a crucial time in the battle to defeat inflation. The Suez Canal accounts for 10% to 15% of global trade, including oil exports, and 30% of global container shipping volumes.
“The United States should try to eliminate as many targets as it can identify on the Yemeni coast of the Aden Sea, as it did on the Red Sea coast,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the Trump administration and now an > analyst. “There should be no radar, launch or storage sites left.”
President Joe Biden said Friday that he “will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
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