The Third Barbary War seems to be upon us. I don’t this is going to end any better for the pirates than the first two. Those shipping lanes are vital, and there is only so much disruption the international order will accept before putting a decisive end to the interference.
International order (includingg most US parnters) would rather eat single digit % increase in diverted shipping costs and MENA fuel costs AND have Houthis embargo Israel access to resources in red sea than deal with alternative of Houthis hitting Saudi energy infra and have energy prices spike double digits. There's a reason only USN + UK (who imports excess energy demands from US) are committing most of the hardware and doing all the interceptions and attacks, no one else - especially the international order - wants the stir the pot more for Israel. Of course US still has unilateral power to strike as please, but don't be surprised if Yemen missiles hit Saudi refineries if things escalate.
The US and UK are pretty much the only countries which have the hardware to carry out interceptions and attacks. France is probably the only other country that has significant capability to project power in that region.
They have a very large base in Djibouti, directly across from Yemen and across town from the US/multi-national base at the airport.
It's going to be interesting to see how "China, who wants to the authority of a world power" starts to run up against "China, who has the responsibilities of a world power."
China is still not in the same class. The ships that they can deploy to the region are weak in strike and area air defense capability. And they don't have much in the way of intelligence gathering that would be needed to employ those ships effectively. The most that the PLAN could manage would be to escort small convoys as a defensive measure.
And the PLAN has 25+ Type 052D destroyers w/ 64 VLS cells apiece [0]. And HQ-9 (reverse engineered Patriot SAMs) and ground attack capable YJ-18 cruise missiles in them.
They absolutely have the capability, if they weren't busy bullying their regional neighbors in the South China Sea, who have vastly less capable warships (if any blue water).
It's easy to copy and paste numbers from Wikipedia, but that tells us nothing about actual combat effectiveness. Most of the PLAN experience lately consists of harassing Philippine fishermen. It's questionable whether their missiles even work.
More than a few west aligned navies have SM2s or equivalents to engage basic drones. And more modern ships than type45/23 UK sent or Replenishment/projection isn't an issue since they would be leeching off US anyway if they choose to get kinetically involved in multinational framework.
I don’t think the saudis would be passive if that happened, they would take it as provocation from both Houthi’s and their Iranian backers. The KSA has their own squadrons of F-15s for reasons. The only reason the KSA doesn’t act against the houthis now is that it would drag them into a war with Iran, but f the houthis attack Saudi Arabia first, that war is inevitable. Pretty sure Iran has already told them not to do it.
I concur with the flagged reply. The Houthis provided a solution on day 1: a ceasefire to end the genocide in Gaza.
We will look back on the escalation of the conflict in Yemen as a strategic blunder. The Biden administration is digging itself deeper & deeper into a hole of its own making.
One thing that seems to be confirmed over and over is how people who come up with "just negotiate with them" seem to have a thinking process that does not span over a couple of days
Funny how those people never seem to have any reservations to what hamas did, or any of the history of the past 20 yrs
>Funny how those people never seem to have any reservations to what hamas did, or any of the history of the past 20 yrs
Funny how people like you never seem to have any reservations to what Israel did, like the perpetual ethnic-cleansing and apartheid policies, or any of the history of the past 75+ yrs
> Not without reservations, but it's not like Israel's neighbors tolerated its existence
Of course not, why on earth would anyone tolerate a bunch of invaders taking over their land? Zionists are really still making that argument as if it makes a lick of sense. No sane human would react otherwise.
>Funny you ask that, makes me wonder what happened to the jews of the levantine and arab countries
What came first? Exactly, Zionists started ethnic-cleansing Palestinians and IN RESPONSE their neighbors acted in kind, which by the way was exactly what Zionists wanted anyway. They wanted and needed as many jews in occupied Palestine as possible, so it was an emotional response from their neighbors that was a moral and strategic mistake.
For Zionists that isnt just land, its the land they got from god after Moses freed them from Egypt and split the sea to get them out of there and then close the sea on the pursuing Egyptians.
The point of reclaiming Zion is to ultimately reclaim Mount Temple to build the Final Temple and usher in the end of days and an eternity of paradise.
One of the strange things with Israel is a lot of people that are pro Israel dont know anything about the nation. Ignorance usually breeds hate and not love. Or maybe being darker skinned is the key.
> It doesn't justify it, because presenting yourself as a victim and betraying the trust and good heart of the native population just to backstab them is a different case than war between countries.
The violent Islamic expansion was not a war between countries. Is Islam a country? It was a rampage for land, pure and simple [1]
> Any mentally sane human would have rejected that "resolution", which is/was non-binding anyway
Hear, hear, now hardly a day passes without another UN resolution against Israel, sponsored by the same elements, who then accuse Israel of not complying with the resolutions. If the resolutions are non-binding, why do they keep accusing Israel of not heeding them? On the other hand, do we get to pick and choose which resolutions we will heed or not?
> Why are you saying "accused" when Israel has a documented track record of ignoring international law
International law should be followed by all, at all times. The Palestinians and their backers have no moral high ground here, not at all.
> Again, that's a complete lie and I have linked you a detailed documentary[0] which exposes that narrative as a fabrication of the israeli hasbara ministry
Was Egypt not massing troops in preparation for an attack on Israel? Or are we living in separate universes.
> It's truly fascinating how you, as a black man, are so hellbent on defending an apartheid ethno-state with such cold-blooded dishonesty.
You are avoiding my question: In your opinion, is the conflict not be resolvable until Israel is obliterated? And, what does the fact that I'm black have to do with anything?
> Any sensible human wants to see an end to apartheid and occupation first. The call for a ceasefire has nothing to do with that,
Oh, so you don't want a proper solution for now. You just you want a ceasefire that gives Hamas a reprieve to continue to build up their capacity to massacre Israeli civilians again.
> That's Israel you are talking about and this description perfectly describes Israel's genocidal behavior
Again, you don't answer my question: How do you live with, or negotiate, with an adversary who is only seeking your total destruction? What exactly does Hamas want again?
> I've used it precisely 2 times, how is that many times? You guys can't just stick to debating facts without dishonestly accusing others of antisemitism because you know that your arguments are all based on lies and distortions.
It is you who cannot stick to the argument without resorting to name calling and ad-hominem attacks. You have called me a liar, cold-blooded, not mentally sane, and the like.
>The violent Islamic expansion was not a war between countries. Is Islam a country? It was a rampage for land, pure and simple [1]
Amusing how you have to explicitly add "violent" as if this was exclusive to Islam, but not Christianity or Judiasm, thereby living out your islamophobic tendencies. Arguing that Islam or Christianity isn't a country is a matter of semantics and distracts from the more substantial point. While neither is a 'country' in the political sense, both religions have established comprehensive systems of law, culture, and governance, creating communities and territories with armies and defined identities and practices that can be analogous to the functions of a country. The spirit of the comparison lies in their influence and organization, not in the technicality of the term 'country.'
Point is that they had armies and it was very common and expected to clash with other armies.
>Hear, hear, now hardly a day passes without another UN resolution against Israel, sponsored by the same elements, who then accuse Israel of not complying with the resolutions. If the resolutions are non-binding, why do they keep accusing Israel of not heeding them? On the other hand, do we get to pick and choose which resolutions we will heed or not?
You are just arguing for the sake of arguing at this point and it's a waste of time to entertain your dishonesty. Israel does not even follow international law so it's pointless to argue about other cases.
>Was Egypt not massing troops in preparation for an attack on Israel? Or are we living in separate universes.
Nope, busted! According to declassified israeli documents there was NEVER such a threat and this was also explained in the documentary I've linked you which you clearly didn't even bother to study. Israel made up lies after the fact, like they always do, that's why the documentary is also called "The Conflict based on a lie" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy56Q1a0Flc
>You are avoiding my question: In your opinion, is the conflict not be resolvable until Israel is obliterated? And, what does the fact that I'm black have to do with anything?
You really have to ask me about the relevancy of a black man defending apartheid?
Having a conversation with you is completely pointless, but that's pretty much the case with all zionists. To answer your question, yes, the only realistic outcome for peace is for israel to suffer a complete defeat, because israeli society is so drunk on decades of impunity that its racism and bloodthirst have reached unfathomable levels. The "2 state solution" is and was always a lie and netanyahu and his ilk have confirmed repeatedly the last days but they stated this for decades. It was theater all along, that's why they always kept expanding their illegal settlements.
>Oh, so you don't want a proper solution for now. You just you want a ceasefire that gives Hamas a reprieve to continue to build up their capacity to massacre Israeli civilians again.
no, I want to simply stop the ongoing genocide that israel is committing, like any sane human being would want, which zionists like you clearly arent.
>Again, you don't answer my question: How do you live with, or negotiate, with an adversary who is only seeking your total destruction? What exactly does Hamas want again?
I did answer your question, you clearly just lack reading comprehension skills.
Khamas actually, contrary to your insinuation, has indicated that they would be interested in a 2 state solution, which will never manifest anyway, it's a lie that has been perpetuated by settlers to give them time to expand their illegal settlements. And again, every Zionist accusation is a confession, it's Israel that has always sought the total destruction of Palestine which they have repeatedly stated. Palestinians having this desire is not the "gotcha" you think it is, because any sane human being would want their land back in full, so it's hilarious that zionists are thinking that this realization is some deep insight and good talking point of theirs.
> You have called me a liar, cold-blooded, not mentally sane, and the like.
And I fully stand by it, anyone who is a neutral observer can read the full discussion and testify to it.
I would urge you to calm down and stop thinking emotionally about this entire conflict and communicating about it in such a hostile way.
From reading your comments in this thread, you are clearly over-invested in this conflict and this doesn't do anything to help anyone, nor your own mental health.
HN is a place for curious discussion and insults like you have been throwing around don't contribute to that environment in any way.
If someone is repeatedly ignoring evidence that has been provided and engaging in dishonest behavior then calling that out is not an insult.
If someone is justifying genocide and you question their sanity then it's them being hostile and you being reasonable.
>From reading your comments in this thread, you are clearly over-invested in this conflict
I'm not over-invested, no one can ever be over-invested in trying to prevent genocide. I will call a spade a spade, participating in fake civility to entertain someone's bad faith behavior is also not something conducive to a "curious discussion".
> And I fully stand by it, anyone who is a neutral observer can read the full discussion and testify to it.
Well, personally attacking someone goes against the guidelines, no matter how strongly you feel about something. This is something the mods are very concerned about. But I'm not surprised, because reason goes out the window whenever the anti-Israel crowd are in the room. Unable to convince by rational argument, they resort to personal attacks.
At this point, I don't believe you are arguing in any good faith, and you seem not to realize your own biases and contradictions. You have no factual responses to my comments other than personal attacks, so there is no basis for further discussion.
> But I'm not surprised, because reason goes out the window whenever the anti-Israel crowd are in the room.
Ignoring 99% of the rebuttal on which you have been exposed as a crude propagandist just to focus on a point which helps you live out your eternal victimhood.
>Unable to convince by rational argument, they resort to personal attacks.
You are literally skipping and ignoring every argument of mine to regurgitate your washed up hasbara and are then surprised when people call out your behavior in a candid manner.
>At this point, I don't believe you are arguing in any good faith, and you seem not to realize your own biases and contradictions. You have no factual responses to my comments other than personal attacks, so there is no basis for further discussion.
100% projection, you perfectly described yourself here and any neutral observer can testify to it.
Is this a joke? It surely has to be. No one cares what some fantasy book teaches. God is not a registered real estate broker, as they also say:
"Most Zionists don't even believe in God but they do believe that he 'promised' them Palestine"
Regardless, your narrative is false because we know exactly what the founding father of Zionism, Theodor Herzl, wrote about Zionism in great detail in his book "Der Judenstaat" and it was a colonial project from day 1. They even considered colonizing Alaska or Uganda before they decided to colonize Palestine.
There is no hasbara you could tell me that I haven't heard before in my 20 years of dealing with zionists. All of your narratives contradict each other and try to deflect from the reality that "israel" is and was a colonial project from its inception.
And do you know what the Muslim nations believe, based on religious texts, about their right to be supreme in Middle east (and really the whole earth for that matter)? Granted, all these seem to be absurd, but you need to understand that the whole of the Middle East is based on myth-making. Israel is absolutely not exceptional in that.
Israelis/Jews ARE indigenous to Palestine. If they didn't want to live scattered amongst other peoples who regularly subjected them to pogroms, that is prerogative; It is not for me or you to judge. A substantial part of the Israelis are Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews, not the Ashkenazi who are being derided as "colonialists" (although that is also quite a suspect argument).
>This is not a factual, falsifiable argument, so I can't even respond to it. But it demonstrates that your arguments are based on emotional opinion, with no basis in actual facts.
Wrong, it is in fact a factual & falsifiable argument since there are many documented and contradictory ways zionists tried to justify their colonial project throughout history especially by regurgitating from a script which even the jidf[0] followed to convince people on social media of their false narratives.
>So you're saying the Jews that lived there since BCE times are all mostly gone? I wonder why. Might it have something to do with the violent Islamic conquest of the Middle East? it is like saying the Copts in Egypt can be ignored as indigenous because they are small part of the Egyptian population now.
And there we have it, when confronted with facts that are overwhelming you zionists always resort to reductionist and false islamophobic narratives. Too bad that your little hasbara story contradicts research of David Wasserstein - a Professor of Jewish studies who says "Islam saved Jewry. This is an unpopular, discomforting claim in the modern world. But it is a historical truth."[1]
Wow, so because your other comment was down-voted, you created this comment which is an exact copy of that comment to get around the down-votes? That's shameless
Its not a joke, just to clarify this isnt my belief. I am telling you why Zion is worth so much to some people. In Judaism there will never be an end of days unless the final temple is built on Mount Temple, even for millions of years. But the issue is that if we try and speak logically to both this nation and its backers we will never win.
Noticed how little sympathy the people in Palestine get compared to people in Ukraine? Why do you think that is? If I was to say the Palestinians are Arab savages I would be reprimanded for being prejudice but making excuses for their continuing genocide isnt prejudice?
These commenters are just articulating the same venom that their parents and grandparents did, in a different way but its the same bile fundamentally. Preaching logic to hateful people that think they are superior makes as much sense in 2024 as it did in Malcolm X’s day. Dont bother trying to talk logic to people like that, they dont listen to your kind.
>Its not a joke, just to clarify this isnt my belief. I am telling you why Zion is worth so much to some people. In Judaism there will never be an end of days unless the final temple is built on Mount Temple, even for millions of years. But the issue is that if we try and speak logically to both this nation and its backers we will never win.
Thanks for clarifying. Most European Zionists, including Theodor Herzl, were and still are secular. These false post hoc narratives about religious motivations are a deflection from the real reason why Zionists wanted to colonize Palestine and it had nothing to do with religious folklore. It only became a talking point later when colonialism became a "bad word" and they were trying to legitimize their colonial project via other means.
>Noticed how little sympathy the people in Palestine get compared to people in Ukraine? Why do you think that is? If I was to say the Palestinians are Arab savages I would be reprimanded for being prejudice but making excuses for their continuing genocide isnt prejudice?
You could say that arabs or muslims are savages without facing any serious repercussions in most cases assuming that you live in Europe or America. In theory Islamophobia, like any other form of bigotry like antisemitism or homophobia, is supposedly not acceptable but in reality it is and there is an overwhelming amount of evidence for it one of which you already stated.
In reality there is an hierarchy of victimhood, where the validity and impact of different groups' experiences are often weighed and measured differently by those in positions of power or with societal influence.
The biggest irony is that the same people who are quick to shut down any form of criticism of israel, by intentionally conflating a political entity with jewish people itself, by screaming antisemitism, also engage in the most viscous Islamophobic tropes to defend their apartheid ethno-state while seeing absolutely no irony in their own bigotry. So it's obvious that it's not really about being tolerant or civilized, but rather about cleverly weaponizing narratives to reshape politics in one's own best interest.
>These commenters are just articulating the same venom that their parents and grandparents did, in a different way but its the same bile fundamentally. Preaching logic to hateful people that think they are superior makes as much sense in 2024 as it did in Malcolm X’s day. Dont bother trying to talk logic to people like that, they dont listen to your kind.
You're correct, but they are also assisted by the fact that geopolitical dynamics provide them with impunity such that their psychotic behavior compounds over time because it never gets checked and thus mutates into worse behavior over time.
Fwiw, I both sides are so bloodstained that neither is the right choice.
The absolute bare minimum of a position is "I'm taking the less bad side" but I think both are so awful neither honestly viable to support on a social level (political is different)
No, they are - whether we like it or not - a legitimate player in Yemen. The US has interacted with the Houthis before, at the very least via its regional allies.
We don’t negotiate with terrorists so therefore we will continue supporting a country actively being investigated for genocide and that has killed over 1% of the population of an area they occupy.
Anyway, hope the football game or something went well.
Geopolitical Chesterton’s Fence: if you can’t explain why the Houthis existed before 2023; then you shouldn’t give opinions on what motivates them now.
Oh, I have been aware of the Houthis and their agenda since their rise as part of the Yemeni revolution and subsequent civil war. Whether we like it or not, the Houthis are now a major player in Yemen.
As for the current situation, my point was to clarify that the Houthis didn’t just randomly wake up in the morning one day and start attacking commercial ships for no reason. They communicated their reasoning and demands from the very start, and made it clear that this was their response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
The US response was to simply ignore their demands and just bomb Yemen. This is a mistake. The Houthis (and Iran by proxy) are no strangers to conflict. Bombing Yemen will do nothing to stop attacks on commercial shipping - in fact, it probably will escalate them. Worse yet, starting a new conflict doesn’t help the negative reputation the US has built up over the past few months in the eyes of the so-called global south. Instead, this gives China an excellent opportunity to step in as a (actually) neutral power.
you’d might want to google the amount of civilian casualties in the yemen civil war, its proportion to deaths in the Gaza war and houthis involvement in said civilian deaths.
You might be surprised how preoccupied they are with ‘preventing’ civilian death
Following the same logic, we also have plenty of examples of how US is (not) worried about democracy, free trade and attacks against civil targets. And therefore, we can dismiss its statements about these issues. No problem, it's a tie. Therefore, what remains to discuss is just how legitimate is the stated purpose of Houthi's attacks that is claimed to uphold article 1 from Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from UN. According with that convention, which is signed by Yemen, their members must act to prevent genocide whenever it is happening, either during war or peace. A blockade is indeed a way to act against this crime.
They were for other reasons. Likewise, US were also bombing people and launching missiles before for other reasons and also make economical sieges against other targets in other contexts. I'm confused why this should mean that any future attack and reasoning made by US or Houthis should be dismissed because of this.
THESE particular bombings were because the blockade and sanctions that they did in the region and they justify with the genocide happening in Palestine.
They can justify what they're doing however they'd like, but I don't think anybody serious believes anything they say. There's a backstory with these people.
Well, I do not consider "serious" countries that are not opposing a genocide because they have neocolonialist interests in the region. Fortunately, we have several serious countries that are acting and also supporting the case in the International Court of Justice.
Different means to the same goal. The Houthis have no access to the ICJ, however they have access to disrupt the maritime trade through the Red Sea, so this is how they act. There is also reasons to believe that even if the ICJ rules in favor of South Africa on Friday, and orders Israel to stop any military activity and let in humanitarian aid, that they will simply not follow it, and there is reasons to believe that USA will excuse this behavior. Disrupting maritime traffic in the Red Sea may proof to be an invaluable action in addition to the ICJ case for stopping the horrors in Gaza.
It is categorically false that the Houthis have the same goal as the ICJ case. One way you know that is that if Ansar Allah succeeded in their chartered goal of liberating Jerusalem and Palestine, they would proceed to bomb all the Muslim Brotherhood's mosques; they seek to liberate Palestine not just from the Jewish people, but from the Sunnis as well. And how you know that is: that's exactly what they're doing, right now, in Yemen.
Of course, another way you know they're full of shit is that they were shooting rockets at cargo ships in the Red Sea years before the Gaza war.
I think a pretty mainstream and reasonable way to look at Ansar Allah is:
What they say: meaningless agitprop about Palestinian liberation.
What they intend: A Zaydi Shi'a imamate with racial and bloodline governance.
What they are: A chaos agent managed by Iran in order to keep Saudi Arabia, which operates a military with one of the world's worst ratios of capacity and funding to competence, perpetually on the wrong foot.
Sorry, stated was implied. These are different means to the same stated goals.
The Houthis are not the only one blocking Maritime trade, there are also activist groups in e.g. Oakland and Tacoma which have blocked freight traffic from respective ports with the aim of disrupting shipment to Israel and the stated goal of stopping the genocide.
What the Houthis and these activist groups in America do after they’ve succeeded in stopping the genocide, that is another question which we can tackle at the time. As of now there is an emergency situation in Gaza, and we must treat it as such. Stopping the genocide is at utmost importance.
That's a horrible thing to say about activists in the US. I may think activists in Oakland and Tacoma are ineffective, performative, and largely wrong in the particulars of their case, but I have never claimed they are morally comparable to Ansar Allah, a racial-supremacist monarchist movement that kills civilians in numbers the IDF has never come close to approaching.
You previously gave me a lecture about my rhetoric and I listened. Can you please not make assumptions about my believes beyond what I said. They only thing I said about activists in Oakland and Tacoma is that they employ a (superficially) similar tactics. The rest was your spin.
"What the Houthis and these activist groups in America do after they’ve succeeded in stopping the genocide" is assertion that these groups are acting in concert. They are not, nor do they share the same goal. If you wanted to say they were tactically superficially similar, I'd shoot that down too (activists in Tacoma aren't blowing things up and trying to kill crew) but I wouldn't find the argument offensive, just deeply wrong.
If you support civilian lives then the very last people in the entire world you want to get behind are Ansar Allah. You have to be careful about campism. It's pernicious.
They cannot uphold article 1 on their own account, without international support and they're not a signatory.
You need to show that the intent of Israel is to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, even partially. What I see is the attempt of Israel to prevent more October 7 attacks, which Hamas declared it is going to repeat. The actual goal here is to protect Israel's own citizens from genocide, which Hamas has shown willingness to commit and ability (albeit in a smaller scale currently).
I think it is perfectly valid for a country to protect its own citizen from being burned alive among many other atrocities that were committed, which is also one of the reasons the genocide convention was created in the first place.
As this is war, it's also causing immense suffering in the Palestinian side. Which is why a war to remove Hamas from power was constantly deferred in the past, knowing they are highly entrenched in the civilian population. However, I don't think they left Israel any other way this time.
Wrong. First Yemen IS signatory since 1987 (or 1989 if you consider North Yemen). Second, the convention gives responsibilities beyond borders for members, and explicitly puts responsibility to act upon signatory States. And third, there are plenty previous cases that opened precedence that a country can act even before any approval from UN (US bombed Yugoslavia arguing this), and there is also precedence of blockades enforced by a single country despite the lack of approval (and despite disavowal) from UN (US blocking Cuba and Venezuela).
> I think it is perfectly valid for a country to protect its own citizen from being burned alive among many other atrocities that were committed, which is also one of the reasons the genocide convention was created in the first place.
Also wrong. The genocide convention was created to prevent genocide. There is nothing in the convention mentioning that you should not act if the victims are from other countries. On the contrary, the convention says that you must act to prevent and has an extraterritorial scope (as was established in a previous judgement in UN).
How exactly killing children, reporters, women and people holding white flags, attacking UN shelters, as well as destroying hospitals and universities prevent more October 7 attacks!? In fact, it will create more attacks because of the anger from an oppressed people. Which was the cause of October 7 attacks, by the way. Sorry, declaring war is not a free pass to commit war crimes. If the war crimes are frequent, and they are not opposed (or if they are encouraged), this is a serious evidence of genocide.
A rebel organization is not the yemen government, that’s exactly the reason they are successful at being a proxy. all the benefits of being a state without any responsibility for your actions.
About the common western trope of “you should never fight terror because it will only bring more terror”
that’s false. There is no way the palestinian population would be more radicalized, they are at the end of the spectrum. It wasn’t like there was any type of atrocity known to man on October 7 that was stopped short due to being too extreme.
Also, israel had shown that when fighting palestinians organizations in the second intifada 2001-2004, it succeeded in greatly reducing the amount of terror and achieve deradicalization
There's a moral difference and an international law difference between attacking valid military targets and killing civilians in the process and when your stated goal is attacking uninvolved civilian targets (international shipping passing by). Also, GP saying 'bullying' seemed to me detached from the facts of what was going on.
About being white, as far as I know I am not considered white both in the 19th century scientific racism sense and even in its modern extension of dividing the American population by the extension of that original theory.
But if I am considered white, do you think it undermines my arguments?
I was just trying to make a joke about racism because of the thinly veiled racist viewpoints in pretty much every post here but I guess I picked on the wrong guys. Okay I'm done, sorry.
I am not sure that's the definition of genocide.
The only clear instance of genocide in this war is the October 7 attacks. I'll remind you it included attacking all population centers in a specific geographic area, going house to house and killing whoever was inside, as well as burning the houses in order to prevent the population from returning.
You could argue Israel evacuating the northern of Gaza strip is ethnic cleansing, but that would only be valid if they are not allowed later on to return.
The difference between Palestinians civilian deaths in Gaza is that these were not systematic, not concentrated in a single space (for example all houses in a location) and were done mostly for a military purpose (attacking a defacto non-uniformed military). Choosing to evacuate the population before attacking was done to minimize casualties, although they are still massive even when removing the Hamas members from the statistics and their inflated nature.
You are laughably hilarious or deliberate. Israel is doing an actual genocide - a terrorist attack on 10/7 is not a genocide.
But killing tens of thousands, marketing it as “mowing the lawn” and cutting off power, food, safety, hospitals, religious facilities… is a f-ing genocide.
Stop pretending israel is just “responding” to 10/7 attacks. No response, even if the real “responses” began in 1916/7 and later in the 40’s… no “response” ever deserves a genocide.
1916/17 - Sykes-Picot agreement and Balfour Declaration was pushed by England/the west to split the middle east up. Even though there were already nations there. Thus creating a “home for Zionists”.
The 40’s was the standard “zionists get israel for real this time” after England got its butt kicked by the very same folks it helped in the teens.
But that’s irrelevant to the point that nothing, ever, makes a genocide ok. Stop pretending it’s not just because the fascist and gaslighting zionists claim it’s “not a genocide we promise.”
England did a genocide on the Irish. Zionists are doing on in the Palestinians. There have been plenty of US backed ones over the years too.
Any nation state who says “they’re not doing a genocide” .. totally is.
Sykes-Picot didn't have much to do with Zionism at all, but it does undermine many of the arguments about the artificiality of Israel as a state, because it establishes that (maybe excepting Egypt) all of Israel's neighbors, none of which have been subjected to decades of campaigning and state-level military incursion, have identically European provenance.
Depending on what you mean by the word "nation", there were not in fact "already nations there". Sykes-Picot partitioned the Ottoman Empire in the Levant. What there was, historically, prior to Sykes-Picot, was the administration of provinces under the Ottoman Sultan.
I am sure the people who had lived there were just fine with europeans dividing up land, huh? Doesn’t help oil was discovered recently …
I mean, look at what happened to France in Vietnam. They were “happily” appreciated while pretending they knew what was best for the people that lived there already.
Y’all will do anything to pretend it’s “ok” for white people to tell folks what to do with their land. Ottoman empire or not.
Bottom line is: Zion != Israel. Zionism is making the call in today’s era and that call is to genocide.
I don't know what any of this is trying to say. You brought up Sykes-Picot as if it was a part of Zionism; it is not, and, moreover, it is the reason there is a Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon today. You implied that Sykes-Picot displaced nation states that previously existed; I don't believe that's true, that's not how the Ottoman Empire functioned.
If you're asking me for a long thread about why British, French, and Russian colonialism in MENA was good, sorry, I don't have that for you. But somehow, it only ever seems to be Israel we're talking about when we discuss this stuff. Israel is no less legitimate than its neighbors, some of which have in the last 5-10 years laid a much stronger claim to the word "genocide" as well.
I would suggest maybe you not lead with Sykes-Picot next time you try to formulate this argument.
You conveniently ignored the “Balfour” part of my comments, too. They were contemporary actions by the British who had no business, at all, to do what they did. “Ends and means” and all of that.
You'll note that I responded to your point about Sykes-Picot, and suggested maybe you stop trying to name-drop Sykes-Picot to make the point you're trying to make, and left it at that.
Right. But you’ll notice they happened contemporary to each other by the same actor.
That’s kind of important.
Still doesn’t justify Zionists doing a fucking genocide against people who have been overrun by the same zionists given “power” by … that nation doing the sykes-picot and balfour thing.
> only clear instance of genocide in this war is the October 7 attacks.
That's clearly a military operation with some war crimes thrown in, which is about expected. Then went in and out, there's no systematic intent in the mission to destroy israel for the simple reason that Hamas can't. Hamas is physically incapable of committing genocide despite what the preach.
VS Israel's systematic destruction of Gaza with enough dogwhistles from senior leadership that can credibly push Israeli campaign into genocide territory. Whether that matters under international law is another Q, but the difference when it comes to international opinion (well, global south), is Hamas can't genocide Israel because they don't have the capabilities vs IDF can actually genocide Palestine/Gaza and optic wise, is looking well on their way as mass starvation as systemic blockade settles in. Like if west can delude themselves into thinking Uyghurs are being genocided despite very few systemic killings and leaks from leadership that intent is counterterrorism/deradicalization, then case for Israel doing a genocide is much stronger considering the actual destruction, body count and mask off rhetoric from Israeli politicians.
About your regard of the oct 7 as a military operation with some war crimes thrown in, it was a military operation concentrated almost completely on civilian centers, so the war crimes aspect was pretty central. I do not doubt they would continue if not stopped, but maybe you think otherwise.
Is that a universal thing that what politicians say is being taken in such a high regard? Especially the many Israeli ministers of nothing that have no actual ability to affect the situation. Judging by how the war is going on, I don't see any scenario where the Palestinian population disappears from Gaza, and I don't see any Israeli action that is advancing that.
However, you are right that due to the sheer cruelty of Oct 7 there is a major process of radicalization in Israeli society, and if Hamas dreams of recreating this attack 'again and again' materialize, I do think the Israeli side will begin to level its moral base to that of its enemy, which might end in actual genocide. Which is why I believe removing this organization is in the best interest of both people, even though it is causing much suffering currently, it is not impossible it can turn very much worse yet.
For me, power mismatch = hamas will naturally adopt more terror since they're limited to asymmetric warfare. War crime labelling is lawfare instrument to try to rhetorically constrain actions of less capable adversaries but really doesn't change the fact that Hamas at strategic / geopolitical goals for Oct7, no different than strategic bombing, i.e war is politics by other means. They weren't just doing a random terror operation. And Israel isn't just randomly levelling Gaza looking for Hamas.
IMO they're trying to make situation so dire that other parties capituate to resettling Gaza. The intention is expulsion not nessicarily genocide, but that doesn't mean current actions and rhetoric, even if flippant, can't be used against Israel in international court / opinion. I'm not saying what Israel is doing IS genocide, but there's probably enough bits and pieces for interested parties to weave genocide narrative, especially the longer war drags out and more dire Gaza situation becomes.
> removing this organization is in the best interest of both people
I don't disagree, for short term. But without Israel expressing interest or some effort at making 2 state solution work, it's kicking can down the road. The fundmental problem, as seen with Hamas, and Houthis is technology proliferation of not garbage tier weapons is making Israel's lack of strategic depth less and less defendable by the day. General arab acrimony is not going to go away after this, and US+Israel can only maintain their military advantage for so long before rest of region catches up or surpasses due to sheer scale. Each generation is more capable than the last and ultimately there's 400 muslims in MENA vs 10m jews in Israel on sacred lands. And this war is just setting up for blowback down the road, especially as US FP will likely change as new gens are much more sympathetic to palestine.
As for Palestinians, they will not forget this. Hamas/resistance will come back in one way or another. The other reality, which makes this problem intractable is poor Gaza with 90% literacy rate and limited access to modern tech / resources was enough to overwhelm Israel on Oct 7th. Israel can barely live with a semi capable Gaza, and definitely can't live with a capable (free) one. Given how weapons are proliferating, Hamas rockets likely a few iterations from taking out existential Israeli strategic targets like desalination plants. There isn't isn't enough geographic buffer for both people to exist on the same land, not without one permenantly keeping other down. Hence IMO Israel will try to make Palestinians disappear from Gaza, one way or another.
I think it is completely within Israel's ability to dismantle most of Hamas fighting force, and then manage the Gaza Strip similarly to the West Bank. Failing to do so might bring about the scenarios you are talking about, which is the tragedy of those that scream genocide too prematurely. As done in all previous wars with Hamas, the international crowd has called what was happening genocide although it clearly wasn't, thereby pressuring Israel to stop, enabling worse and worse wars in the future and more civilian deaths.
I completely agree though that a lack of a two state solution will lead to catastrophe for either people or both eventually.
However, I do not share your pessimism about US/Israel regional prospects. Remember that this is mainly due to self-inflicted restraints, which is how asymmetric warfare really works. As seen in September 11 in the US and October 7 in Israel this can change rapidly when faced with an external threat
They can manage Gaza like Westbank, but that's settling for two powderkegs. Same with comparison to US post 911 actions. It's buying time, which currently is best of bad options, but IMO blowback will come. Pessimism personally warranted in medium/long term time frames. US been trying to draw down from CENTOM for years, and newer gen who will take over politics are expessing less alignment with Israel. I don't think it's self-inflicted restraints as much as geopolitically inflicted - there's upper limit to what Israel can do before it fucks up things irrevocably for US geopolitical interests with others in the region. Long term, Israel is still a small country without sufficient human capita to maintain high end asymmetric war fighting across domains alone (i.e. aviation). Long term I think US constitutents and politicians will attach more and more strings to Israeli behaviour.
I may have missed it, but the failure of any western leaders to publicly acknowledge the Houthi's stated reasons for their actions (and by extension their demands) is conspicuous.
This is nonsense. While it is true that they recently included the customary references to Satan, Israel and the USA in their communications, that is to be understood as allegiance to the shiites in Iran. It includes references to standard phrases the Mullahs always use in their communication.
The conflict in Yemen is an old one, and one that the US has always indirectly played a part in, given their seemingly unwavering support of the Saudis. Every power player in the region has been a part of this conflict. It's why there still is civil war in Sudan(!). It's a conflict so complex that makes the Palestinian conflict look trivial in comparison.
If you had such neighbors they might just decide to kill you if you are not of their tribe. Not sure why people would whitewash such a group of extremists.
> If you had such neighbors they might just decide to kill you if you are not of their tribe. Not sure why people would whitewash such a group of extremists.
I'd have thought that here of all places people would be able to differentiate between words and actions (though we can go to the founding document of Likud and statements by various politicians next, if you like).
They've been the defacto government in a large part of Yemen for a number of years, yet they haven't attacked shipping till now.
When they started they were operating using cruiser rules, they escalated to using missiles without attempting to board/warn first only after the US Navy turned up. They have largely been selective with their choice of targets, which is why the Chinese are very reluctant to get involved.
There's a good analysis of their current position in the latest episode of the Foreign Policy podcast Ones and Tooze ("The War on Global Shipping").
Because Westerners who support extremists are extremely stupid and self-damaging. Don't take my word for it, just listen to the UAE foreign minister's view on it: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-dV4m43xZmY
The West things they know Islam, specifically radical Islam, better than we do, because they did two semesters worth of courses on Middle Eastern studies at their local university.
My comment implies that people who have been indoctrinated into a culture of hatred towards the West deserve no sympathy from the West. Heck, they receive none from their Arab Sunni neighbours, hence have to go to Iran for aid.
One could argue that the Shia Houthis are fighting for their independence, but there's a clear distinction between an independence war and a war calling for destroying the West. That is also a distinction between the Hamas and Fatah factions in Palestine.
Actually, there's no genocide happening in Gaza. Yes, there are way too many civilian casualties, which is awful. But here's the thing: Hamas often launches attacks from places where people live, putting those civilians in danger. They kind of use this as a tactic, because the more civilian casualties there are, the more pressure is on Israel to stop fighting.
Now, about those tunnels in Gaza – they're everywhere, right? But Hamas doesn't let ordinary folks use them for safety. That's pretty different from Israel, where new apartments have had to include bunkers since the 90s, and you can find bomb shelters all over the place. So, the sad truth is, the high number of civilians dying in Gaza is mainly because of how Hamas operates, using its own people as a shield.
What would you say is the correct response when your country is repeatedly attacked by a neighbor that keeps most of its military assets maximally mingled with civilians so that any counterattack must kill civilians?
I get where you're coming from, But let's put things in perspective.
First off, nobody's saying that the loss of innocent lives, especially children, isn't tragic. It's heartbreaking, and every life lost is a huge deal. But saying that Israel is intentionally targeting children and women oversimplifies and misrepresents the reality.
You mentioned feeling ashamed, like back during the Iraq war, but consider this: have you ever been in the shoes of a country under constant threat from a radical militant group? Imagine if 1,200 of your citizens were attacked, with the clear intent of causing as much harm as possible. What would you expect your country to do? Most people would say: stop the threat, make sure it never happens again.
Hamas (and many of its supporters in the west) claim that the attack is a response for Israel making Gaza "an open-air-prison" – it's inaccurate to say the least. Yes, Israel did enforce a blockade on Gaza, but it's crucial to understand why. It wasn't to make life miserable for Gazans. The main goal was to prevent weapons from getting to Hamas, a group that's openly committed to destroying Israel. And it's not like everything else was blocked – food, medicine, and other essentials were still getting through after security checks.
Hamas makes their goals regarding Israel very clear in their covenant.
It's not just about land or politics; it's about an ideology that doesn't recognize jews right to exist in this tiny piece of land.
Sure, Israel isn't perfect. Mistakes happen in war, and they should be acknowledged and dealt with. But calling it genocide? That's a stretch. Genocide involves the deliberate, systematic attempt to wipe out a group of people. In all the conflicts, Israel has actually taken enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties, like warning civilians of upcoming attacks, especially in this ongoing conflict.
I'm curoious to get your perspective - how do you think a country should react to attacks from a group like Hamas? It's a tough question, right? What's the right balance between defending your citizens and ensuring minimal harm to the other side, especially when that side uses civilians as shields?
I enjoy your presupposition that my post is not in perspective. My perspective is not your perspective. Your perspective is certainly not any more objective than my perspective.
How about you tell me the Gazan perspective as if you were a Gazan? Then tell me the the Hamas perspective as if you were Hamas?
You are losing a bit of nuance by saying I think Israel is intentionally targeting women and children. I did not say Israel is intentionally targeting children and women. I think Israeli leadership is expanding south much like Germany expanded east with Lebensraum and America west with manifest destiny. I think they are doing this while promoting a culture of dehumanization of gazans which results in Israeli soldiers not experiencing gazan deaths as much more significant than mowing the lawn. "Regrettable but necessary" I wonder if that's what the Khmer rouge thought when they were smashing babies against trees.
I hear "tragic," but there's an awful lot of telling and not showing.
I would find Israel's sales pitch more convincing if they had journalists on the ground and with soldiers showing why they had to make the decisions they made, but that's not what happens is it? Instead journalists are bombed, imprisoned, or controlled. Israels actions against journalists is clear Mens Rea. All of the liberal leaning journalism in America (NPR for example) have shown that Israel is the bad guy. WCNSF is showing the damage Israel is doing.
> Hamas makes their goals regarding Israel very clear in their covenant. It's not just about land or politics; it's about an ideology that doesn't recognize jews right to exist in this tiny piece of land.
Israel is making a very compelling case that they are right. I am not convinced this stone isn't thrown from a very glass house.
The 8th (persecution) is unarguably clear. You are textbook in denial which is stage 10. I think the case for 9 (extermination) can be made.
Genocide:
Any of the following acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part
You have to at least admit at minimum there is a case to be made. What would you estimate the level of mental harm Gazans are experiencing right now? How do you think Gazans would rate the conditions of their life and their agency over those conditions? Not to mention 1 in 100 members of the group dead.
Intent of destruction follows from dehumanization. I can't say it's clear Israel has intent to exterminate, but if I ask "are Israel's actions consistent with slow extermination" my answer is most definitely yes.
> Sure, Israel isn't perfect.
70% of deaths being women and children is pretty far from "not perfect". Judicial coups and strongmen leaders are far from "not perfect."
> "open air prison"...
Based on what I've seen and read, the case that Gaza is an open air prison has been made. I think Gazans have a right to attack Israel in the same way I think Americans had a right to attack the british. No Taxation without Representation. Israel exercises tyrannical control over gaza. Tyranny breeds terrorism.
> In all the conflicts, Israel has actually taken enormous efforts to minimize civilian casualties, like warning civilians of upcoming attacks, especially in this ongoing conflict.
If you listen to American news, this is just not true. Factually incorrect. Is it more likely American news (NPR) is lying to me, or that Israeli news is lying to Israelis?
> Most people would say: stop the threat, make sure it never happens again.
you're not wrong because that is in fact what happens. "We have a conflict with this group, lets solve it by killing them all" is certainly the easiest solution. Genocides wouldn't happen if they didn't have popular support.
> how do you think a country should react to attacks from a group like Hamas? It's a tough question, right? What's the right balance between defending your citizens and ensuring minimal harm to the other side, especially when that side uses civilians as shields?
It's a hard question. I can say for certain not like Israel or like America after 9/11.
My senators won't even ask if Israel is committing war crimes, they don't want to know the answer. My president is called Genocide Joe. I don't know anyone who disagrees with that name.
Your perspective seems to skim the surface of a deeper issue. Let's be direct: what should a country do when 1,200 of its citizens are brutally killed? This isn't just theoretical; it's a grim reality that demands a firm response. Criticizing from the sidelines is easy when you're not offering solutions.
The claim of Lebensraum is far-fetched. Israel withdrew from Gaza nearly two decades ago. This conflict isn't about land; it's about security. For Hamas, even Tel Aviv is considered a settlement.
Regarding journalists: incidents have occurred, but suggesting systematic targeting oversimplifies the complexities and dangers inherent in conflict zones. Not every unfortunate event is part of a larger scheme.
The genocide accusation often seems politically motivated, used by pro-Palestinian groups. This rhetoric can trivialize historical genocides, which were real and horrific. I'm not denying civilian casualties in the conflict, but to say Palestinians are systematically dehumanized, discriminated against, and persecuted is an overstatement. If Palestinians committed to disarmament and ceased targeting civilians, peace could be achievable very quickly.
Consider what would happen if Israel laid down its arms. We saw a hint of this on October 7th. The situation is complex, and simplistic narratives don't capture the reality on the ground.
> what should a country do when 1,200 of its citizens are brutally killed?
Post people with guns on the borders. Investigate what caused the extremely sluggish response by the IDF, too.
Don't use it as an excuse for war crimes and ethnic cleansing, while talking about the hostages that are paraded around as an objective in public, as "pawns" to be sacrificed behind closed doors.
While IDF soldiers make TikToks literally showing off and bragging about war crimes, in the hundreds by now, given licence by hundreds of people from highest ranks of politicians to generals to "journalist" talking about how there are no innocent people, no civilians in Gaza, just "human animals" and so on. And how everyone who talks back is a Hamas supporter and/or antisemitic.
In a self-righteous fury that gets worse, no less. Which isn't explained by grief over a past event or even a knee-jerk "security" reaction, but rather by the increasing guilt: people painting themselves into a corner by running away from crimes they already committed by doubling down on them, and projecting the guilt as hatred onto those who call it out. That's as old as criminals and mobs, and it leads to war crimes in Gaza just as predictably as it emboldens settlers in the West Bank to up attacks, as it does to attacks on people elsewhere:
That way one can dismiss anything. "brutally killed", "grim reality" on the one hand, "incidents", "oversimplification" and "politically motivated rhetoric that trivializes real and horrific genocides" on the other.
"This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country."
The last number I heard was that 80% of the catastrophically hungry people in the world right now are in Gaza.
Israeli Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal says it's a "textbook case of genocide". Omer Bartov says it might be genocide, but that there are "clear signs of ethnic cleansing" and likely war crimes. To just shrug them and many more off as politically motivated or skimming the surface seems ironic.
> If Palestinians [..] ceased targeting civilians
What does that even mean? As if all Palestinians, instead of starving and freezing, are still holding a rifle pointed at civilians, while IDF soldiers hell bent on keeping innocent people from getting hurt say "drop the weapon"?
Collective punishment is a crime. Nothing you said and nothing anyone could say justifies it.
That won't stop the hostilities. Israel has two stated objectives: free the hostages and eliminate Hamas. The Israeli government is very unlikely to agree to a ceasefire in return for the hostages.
It would undermine a lot of Israel’s international support. At the end of the day, the Houthis aren’t in Gaza. Them raising random asks is orthogonal to the security threat they pose. Piracy is piracy.
Even keeping their weapons but saying they'll try to live in peace with Israel would be a huge change. However it's part of Hamas's founding charter to destroy Israel and they aren't prepared to give it up, which then leads the the jolly situation we have now.
> If Palestine didn't want war they shouldn't have let Hamas initiate acts of war
We should avoid collectivizing the motives and capabilities of heterogeneous individuals, many of them children, and many of them adults who do not support Hamas's atrocities but had no ability to stop them without being killed themselves.
It's one thing to say that the civilian deaths in this war are unfortunate collateral damage, it's another thing to do away with the concept of collateral damage entirely and pretend that every single individual bears moral culpability for Hamas's actions, just for the crime of being born on the wrong side of the fence.
It's tragic, but there was and is wide support of October 7 attacks in Gaza, as well there was wide participation of the civilian (non-organization aligned) population in the massacres, including looting, killing, kidnapping and probably rape.
Furthermore, Hamas was elected by the population under popular vote, and it is a palestinian organization entrenched in every facet of civilian organizations and life, and strongly stems from palestinian cultural norms (e.g. islamism, martyrdom, etc)
You cannot completely act as if Hamas is not the defacto government in Gaza, and in any war in history, especially urban warfare in civilian setting with non-uniformed combatants, you cannot truly hurt only the military apparatus without also hurting civilians. This is simply a fact of life.
It is a Western trope going as far back as the Nazis to act as if governments have no representation of their citzenship, especially authocratic ones. Even to this day for example, the German government of 1933-1945 are called 'the nazis' rather than germans, as if they came from outer space, and returned to their planet on 1945, leaving none of their members in the Western/Eastern Germany governments.
> It's tragic, but there was and is wide support of October 7 attacks in Gaza, as well there was wide participation of the civilian (non-organization aligned) population in the massacres, including looting, killing, kidnapping and probably rape.
I know. But that doesn't change the fact that ~25% (number is probably wrong) don't support what Hamas did. You can't group up those 25% with the 75% as if they're all morally culpable and "Palestine" is one thing and "Palestine" deserves moral guilt. If you support Israel you probably see the other side do it where "Israel" is evil as if Israel is a single entity and there aren't different views inside Israel. Every single person is a "settler" who deserves it because they are all equally culpable by virtue of their existence inside a particular geographic region. This is a dehumanizing approach of looking at the conflict.
It doesn't mean each one is morally culpable, but it does really hurt the narrative of 'hamas kidnapped the population'.
I think Gaza is going through an enormous tragedy, but Israel did undertake efforts to reduce civilian casualties (such as evacuation), although much less so than previous conflicts. Having said that, war is still terrible and having to fight in such a population dense area with an enemy who is embedded into the population has a huge toll.
About the dehumanizing approach, I agree. I think one of the results of the October 7 attacks is that it heightened that sentiment in the Israeli population, especially among most of the population who did not feel that way previously about the Palestinians. This is due to some of their actions which are frankly inhumane: decapitation, genital mutilation, baby kidnapping, child rape, live burning, and focus on civilian areas
The Saudis bombed Yemen for years with US weapons and targeting. A civil war has been been waged on and off for decades too. Dropping cruise missiles on rubble (which seems to be as far as the US/UK will escalate) will not have much effect.
The US hasn't been in the business of economic destruction by air since the 1950s.
Targeting key enabling (e.g. radar) or missile sites will absolutely have an effect.
The Houthis have large but limited stocks of missiles, little ability to domestically manufacture, and difficulty importing more advanced models from Iran at scale.
Moving interdiction left of launch is absolutely the right call, as it leverages weaknesses in Houthi air defense to more economically blunt their launches.
Hell, the US/UK could just close the loop on foreign military aid and buy low-cost Ukrainian UAVs to attack Houthi targets.
No- you need to go further back before you see the big picture. Much as in the ancient world (which the modern world order consists of in large part), this is a Romans vs. Parthians vs. Chinese thing.
These actions are just the Parthians making access to the Silk Road harder, in the hopes that Consul Biden and the Senate and People of Rome (and the provinces they control) will stop supporting the king of Judea and his recent military invasion of the Parthian-allied settlements on his border.
>Those shipping lanes are vital, and there is only so much disruption the international order will accept before putting a decisive end to the interference.
I'll believe that as soon as the Chinese Emperor Xi commands his warships to sail out and fire their first salvos at the Parthian-supplied forces. The "international order" you think exists is literally just Rome and its provinces, and those provinces are currently busy supplying a civil war in the European Borderland (one the Romans were a major factor in creating the conditions for it to occur) and they barely contribute anything to their obligations in the North Adriatic Treaty Organization to begin with. They don't even have any legions to deploy (not that they could raise any in the first place) and won't be anywhere near decisive in a proper fight.
So that just leaves the Romans themselves... who have been engaging in proxy military action (with the king of Arabia) to remove the Parthian proxies for the past 10 years or so with very little success.
To be fair to Parthia, their main goal has always been to pull nearby provinces out of Roman orbit and into Parthia's- while Judea and Arabia might never enter the Parthian orbit unless physically conquered (organization of the Parthian-sympathetic states surrounding Judea has been a long goal of the Parthians; unfortunately for Parthia, their armies keep losing) the vassal states that depend heavily on goods traveling through the Silk Road might start to view the actions of the Judeans with disfavor.
And sure, the Romans could always just attack the Parthian proxies directly- but the entire reason that Parthia can get away with this is because the Senate and People of Rome aren't actually interested in yet another desert war that costs quadrillions of denarii, and by committing to assisting the King of Arabia secure his southern flank they lock themselves out of defending a breakaway Chinese province (whose unique products Rome arguably values even more than the loyalty of its own provinces) should the Chinese attempt to capture it, as they've long been threatening to do.
Just think of them as sanctions. If you try to break any embargo, you will get hit with a missile on the face. That's how embargos usually work. And by international order, you mean "western order" right? Every sanction and embargo has the purpose of disrupting some sort of order. Try running a USN embargo or blockade, I'm not sure they would be more diplomatic about it than the Houthis.
We are currently seeing a higher civilian death rate than we saw back in February 2022, yet it doesn't seem like a lot of people complained about disrupting international order when Russia was sanctioned. And they were well deserved sanctions ,it just turns out that it's not just the US or Europe that can care about civilian deaths.
Especially since those countries don't necessarily seem to care a lot about non white civilian deaths, since absolutely 0 western country condemned Israel even when they put literal war criminals like Russia to shame in terms of sheer destruction and indiscriminate murder.
When "the international community" (aka, the west) drops the ball on that regard and lets it happen for close to 4 months now, well what do they expect?
> We are currently seeing a higher civilian death rate than we saw back in February 2022, yet it doesn't seem like a lot of people complained about disrupting international order when Russia was sanctioned.
This is a false equivalence. Israel was attacked first, brutally. Russia was not attacked; theirs is a war of agression, pure and simple. It is clear that the fundamental cause of the Ukraine war is a desire by Putin and his ilk to restore the old soviet "empire". [1]
Actually, that has been the cause of many wars down through the centuries. A former power, or a country that thinks it needs to play a more powerful role in world affairs, seeking (re)ascendancy. It happened with Germany and Japan in WW2, and it is happening with Russia now. But it seems people will believe anything but what the aggressors themselves clearly want.
Do you know what the Muslim nations say among themselves, what their ultimate objective is? Without understanding that, it is impossible to place the Israeli-Arab conflict in proper perspective.
It doesn't matter. Attacking first or being attacked does not give you the right to level a complete city and does not give you the right to openly call for displacing a population. Israel is also actively pushing for colonization of Palestinian lands well before the war started, just like Russia was slowly trying to encroach on Ukrainian lands at first.
Even beyond the whatboutism in your comment, sure yeah, let's talk about how trying to restore old entities and states is a bad thing. But isn't that the whole premise of Zionism? It's literally the reasoning behind the Israel state backed settlements in the west bank. Somehow I guess Israeli colonialism is just different... because reasons. And somehow, it's not an act of aggression. Sure! And before you say that Gaza didn't have any colonies, well they didn't exactly because they have been aggressive (and it doesn't matter, Palestinians view themselves as a nation so it happening in the west bank is just as important for people living in Gaza).
The west bank stopped "being aggressive" and stopped the armed struggle and they have been rewarded with 2 decades of constant, blatant pushes for ever more settlements by literal lunatics and Israeli supremacists. All endorsed fully by the military and the Israeli state.
I completely got that. A few months ago I'd have said you are being dramatic, but the insane mental gymnastics that people do to justify and even cheering for Israel's actions while at the very same time have the reaction they had to Ukraine getting invaded back in 2022 leaves me with no other possible conclusion. And to be honest I don't even care, I get it and I don't expect westerners to care about us but what annoys me is truly that they actually believe that there is no hypocrisy or biais. So they just go on full on revisionism, colonialist apologia, they suddenly believe everything the military that is currently killing civilians says, and they use literal Russian tier arguments of "well they voted for Hamas 15 years ago!". Just because Israel is on our side, so what they do is justified, and Russia isn't
Like, Israel openly claiming that their goal is to basically relocate and displace the local Gaza population is good actually, it's just self defense. And hey, we can't avoid civilian deaths and Israel has the right to self defense (defense is when you colonize another nation). It's insane, Israeli officials are super open about their objectives but it seems like Israel supporters know better than them.
No, you got it wrong. I would say that the current outcry about Gaza is mostly driven by a false sense of siding with the underdog. But just because some people appear to be the underdog doesn't mean they are right.
And just so you know, I'm not white. Not even probably brown, ethnically. I'm classified as black African, and, and from where I sit, the Middle Eastern nations are not in any position to point fingers at a supposed disregard of brown lives, when one considers how they treat migrants, a lot from Africa. Arab "slavery" of Africans is still a thing
Settler violence is certainly wrong. However Israel also left Gaza years ago and have been rewarded with constant rocket attacks, and more.
> Like, Israel openly claiming that their goal is to basically relocate and displace the local Gaza population is good actually
Fine, tell me what the solution is then. If your response is that Israel ceases to exist, then I guess there is no longer a basis for discussion - good luck - I have no bone in this. But if not, then how is the security of Israel to be ensured? The vast amount of funds that flowed into Gaza has only been used to attack Israel, and Gazans are now much worse off. How is this a wise course of action?
See this is exactly the double standard I was talking about. Why do you just say that "settler violence is wrong But..."? It's not just settler violence that is the problem, it's the fact that the Israeli state completely backs said colonies. Why does Israel gets to exist, no matter what, but Palestinians can be displaced and removed at will if it allows Israel to keep existing?
Also, as I said in my other comment, the west bank did exactly what you suggest. They stopped the armed struggle, they started a more democratic path. In return, Israel has pushed colonies relentlessly. In that situation, why wouldn't the Palestinians fight? Just like Israel would fight anyone who tries to settler their land.
And to say that they left Gaza alone is just an outright lie. They have had control over every port of entry, with merchandise not being able to enter into Gaza with Israeli approval since... the 1980s. Before the Hamas boogeyman. They have also stated that they wanted to push for a return to settlements (a minister in nethanyahou's government said so overtly back in April). Again completely unpunished.
Also, what do Palestinians have to do with African slavery? Do we attribute that to all Arabs? Does that logic works too for blaming say, a Nigerian for something South Africans do? Do you blame Israelis for their treatment of Ethiopian Jews?
> And to say that they left Gaza alone is just an outright lie. They have had control over every port of entry, with merchandise not being able to enter into Gaza with Israeli approval since... the 1980s. Before the Hamas boogeyman.
How can you say that with a straight face. Israel implemented a blockade to prevent _weapons_ from flowing into Gaza, a good thing, I would say. Or are you saying they prevented aid from flowing into Gaza? That would be quite the claim.
> Also, what do Palestinians have to do with African slavery? Do we attribute that to all Arabs? Does that logic works too for blaming say, a Nigerian for something South Africans do? Do you blame Israelis for their treatment of Ethiopian Jews?
I was responding to your claim that brown lives matter less in the west. If you are painting with such a broad brush like the "west", then may I also be permitted to paint with a similar brush "Middle East". Are you saying Palestinians are somehow more moral that Arabs in general?
But, you don't even address my main point. What's your solution? For Israel to cease to exist?
They absolutely prevented aid from flowing. There's a single crossing where merchandise is allowed, and it's in Israel. Egypt is not allowed to let merchandise in , and that's since the camp David treaty back in the 70s. Way before Gaza became an insurgent nest. The west bank was the hotspot back then but it didn't prevent Israel from preventing any development there, and occupying the place until 2005.
Also, for a concrete example, you can look at the Gaza flotilla attack where Israel not only prevented aid, but literally murdered those on the ship. Just like the Houthis do, I guess :). Again, how can Israel claim that they have left Gaza alone when it is literally completely cutting it off from the outside world (again, the Gaza residents are at the mercy of whatever goes through Israel before Hamas took control). Hamas is a convenient boogeyman, but before Hamas Israel settlements already existed, Israeli occupation and complete control over external connections was already in place, etc.
Israel does not leave the west bank alone either now, even with no real armed groups left there.
Which one of my friends? And sure, maybe I contradicted myself. You on the other hand completely ignored or handwaved pretty important stuff like Israel colonies in areas that stopped fighting. Have a good day too.
Honestly, people can’t seem to judge an event by only that event.
Let’s be honest here, the west has probably done the worst amount of damage to the most, both in count and diversity, people out there. Yet we do not sit around saying, ah westerners deserve to be killed because of $historical_event_#.
For some reason, that judgment is always valid to brown folk. As a brown person in the west I’ve basically accepted that I’m only considered a human in this country as long as I toe the line and agree with the status quo. If I step out too much I’m worth less than an animal.
>” That suggests a strong, long-term Iranian focus on strengthening Houthi anti-ship capabilities and a potential attempt to export Iran’s model of naval coercion from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz to the geopolitically important Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.”
Can anyone who understands this conflict explain this more? What does Iran get out of helping the Houthi disrupt commercial shipping? For that matter, how do they benefit from naval coercion in the Gulf?
Yemen is adjacent to Saudi Arabia. Iran's conflict with Saudi Arabia is probably the most salient in all of the Middle East and Northern Africa, more so than the "west vs. Arabia" conflict we default to thinking about. The Houthis (Ansar Allah), named for a dude who died just a few years ago, were trained in Iran, and are an effort to replicate the Iranian Revolution in Arabia.
The Houthis are often thought of as an arm of the IRGC (Iran refers to them as part of their "axis of resistance", along with Hezbollah and Hamas), but they are their own thing, although Iran is believed to be actively assisting them with spotter ships in the Red Sea.
This is just a shotgun blast of additional details. Nobody really knows what Iran's game plan is here.
Iran is using the Houthis to apply pressure on a regional rival, Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis used to be a close American ally against Iran, but purist progressives in the Obama and now Biden admin pushed them away, and Iran was able to bring them to terms by wielding the Houthis in their backyard against them.
Iran is also using the Houthis to flare up a conflict that will prevent the Saudis from normalizing relations with Israel; Iran used Hamas to execute the 10/7 attack toward the same goal.
Finally, Iran is using one of its proxy (the Houthis) to preserve another proxy (Hamas). The Houthis are disrupting one of the world's most important shipping routes, which will eventually drive up prices (read: inflation) in an election year. Biden doesn't really want to get into an intense military operation in an election year, and his main alternative is to pressure Israel to let Hamas survive - as the Houthis demand.
> but purist progressives in the Obama and now Biden admin pushed them away
Autocratic rulers like MBS deciding to cut up journalists/opposition political figures into tiny pieces with bone saws inside Saudi consulates didn't help matters. The whole Khashogghi incident really illustrated exactly what the Saudi regime thinks of rule of law and human rights of their own citizens when it's boiled down to the the barest essentials. US senators, congressmen, foreign service career people have taken note.
It's still worth noting that the Saudi military/air force/other armed forces are extremely large customers of US/NATO spec equipment and UK origin equipment.
It would be worth remembering that something like 85% of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia and there were very clear financial/funding connections from wealthy persons within the Kingdom to the pre-9/11 training program. Highly reputable journalists and intelligence sources have also extensively documented the Saudi funding sources that supported (and still support to this day) wahabbist madrassas in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the "V1.0" of the Taliban in the 1990s, and other fundamentalist salafist jihadi groups.
Invading saudi arabia for regime change instead of iraq in 2003 would have been much more logical if anyone in the US and UK had the fortitude to do it. It would have also been vastly more messy.
It's well known in people who study foreign affairs that Iran funds and arms Shia and shia-adjacent armed groups (Houthis, Hezbollah, etc). But this doesn't happen in a vacuum - to some extent this is the IRGC and Iran's reaction to the well documented and widely known Saudi support for salafist jihadism.
It's also well known and documented that the saudis have been investing vast amounts of their oil wealth in the US stock market, real estate and other equities since the mid 1960s, so the financial and interconnected realtionship between the US and Kingdom would be extremely difficult if not impossible to dis-entangle at this point in 2024.
Despite the Khagoggi affair and other problems descrived above, I think it's pretty clear that US decision makers still consider saudi arabia a much more trustworthy regional "partner" compared to Iran. Ongoing US/UK contractor support of all of their armed forces (and US/UK relationship with Saudi Aramco) and ongoing exports of munitions to saudi arabia back up this theory.
Yes, MBS is terrible, and his regime is autocratic.
Also, intelligent mature people make policy based on real-politik and the aggregate sum of its consequences. They don't just respond to whatever moral sentiments they experience in the moment.
The decision to push the Saudis away is destabilizing the whole region and will allow a violent, aggressive, revolutionary Iran to start and escalate extremely bloody conflicts throughout the region.
While it's a shame that one journalist was killed, was alienating the Saudis really worth the many thousands of lives lost as a result?
They keep proxy organizations in every failed or quasi state in the region such as Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
As these are non-state actors using civilian infrastructure, the international legal order cannot handle these, as they are not party to any law.
Therefore when a western aligned country needs to fight these they are in an extreme disadvantage. Any real attack will kill the civilians whose infrastructure said organizations are providing and misusing, eventually pressured to stop retaliating. This was used by Iran in Saudis/UAE vs Houthis, Israel vs Lebanon/Hamas or US vs Iraq.
The approach of having a full fledged state yet declaring it is not a state gave them invisibility, allowing these organizations to grow in strength. Due to their extreme ideology and brinkmanship, ironically this still means someone will need to fight these eventually (see Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis), but in a much greater civilian loss than when was possible previously.
Later on, Iran improved this strategy by creating an alliance of these organizations. They train each other and have planned to fight together in the case of war (partially successful in the last conflict). Currently, they are on the verge of losing two such proxies (Hamas, PIJ) and are in the risk of another one (Hezbollah), and that's why Iran is trying to exert pressure on western countries through attacking civilian shipping.
Iran’s government has a sense of being under siege / surrounded by powerful enemies, the US, Isreal, etc.
Fighting back conventionally is obviously not realistic, but the time honored tradition of funding allies and fighting proxy’s is the next best thing. The idea of the policy is also that this is a deterrent to their enemies to think twice about striking them directly.
How true or effective any of this is another matter entirely.
> Iran’s government has a sense of being under siege / surrounded by powerful enemies, the US, Isreal, etc.
The well-educated government of Iran does not at all consider this. They are an autocratic, theocratic dictatorship. No one has any interest at all in annexing Iran. Like all governments of such a type, there must always be external, powerful, and yet weak enemies at the border or they cannot retain power. Iran has nothing the world wants except hydrocarbons, and their current level of production can easily be replaced by their fellow OPEC members. Anyone actually invading Iran would get nothing but 30 million citizens that live in abject poverty, with the UN expecting another 40% (!) of the country to fall below the poverty line in the next 2 years. Without China (40%) and Turkey (20%) importing from Iran, the country would fail overnight.
Yeah, no one ever wanted to overthrow democratically elected government in Iran, no one ever had interest in wrecking Libya, Syria... It's all just their imagination.
Iran registers very clearly as an authoritarian country, what democratic institutions exist are not powerful enough to dislodge the ultimate rulers of the country.
I think the comment you replied to was pointing out that Iran had a democratically elected government until the 1953 coup instigated by the U.S. and Britain. Their paranoia is not without reason.
Because of sanctions, Iran has adapted to operating without fitting into global supply chains. By disrupting supply chains, they are participating in asymmetrical warfare. It's an announcement: "We can keep doing this." They are playing against the idea that because they are acting by proxy, other nations won't act directly against Iran.
Well you know what they say, foo around and find out.
Carl Sagan comes to mind:
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
Carl Sagan can go breathe vacuum if he really thinks those generals and emperors spilled all that blood for nothing. That fraction of a dot is a very special part of the universe: it is so far the only known planet that is able to support human life. Meaningless on the grand cosmic arena (if such a notion even makes sense), but invaluable for humans.
Maybe its the only known planet because we dont know many other planets though. The universe is a largely unknown quantity and aside from the Asians space isnt interesting to most people anymore.
Their control of the Houthis is not believed to be strong. Their support may just have been to counter the Saudis, but the Houthis are using their capabilities for other purposes.
The Iranian regime is separate to Iran the people/country. The interests of the two can diverge.
Supporting the Houthis achieves a few things. It ties up Saudi Arabia, one of Iran's regional rivals. It gives Iran a level of force projection over the crucial gulf shipping route, which is leverage. It gives Iran the ability to have the US or Israel struck without giving the US or Israel the easy narrative ability to strike Iran directly in retaliation.
Also, destabilizing US-aligned Arab countries is in Iran's benefit because secular US-aligned dictators are quite anti-Iran and compliant with the US. For example if the Houthi activity leads to economic troubles in Egypt, it could lead to a popular revolution. The US friendly regimes gets ousted by populists (most likely Islamists win at the end), who will be more pro-Iran bloc than compliant with the US.
Another thing to note is that Iran, like Russia and China, is a revisionist power. They are not a status quo state. The TLDR of this is that they hold a grudge and a lot of their energy is dedicated to changing the world/regional order.
> For that matter, how do they benefit from naval coercion in the Gulf?
Various members of the GCC (UAE, Saudi) can't ever really pressure Iran, because Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz mean they can massively disrupt oil and gas exports, and the Khaleeji countries are heavily reliant on these, despite valiant efforts to diversify.
> What does Iran get out of helping the Houthi disrupt commercial shipping?
Iran's lesson learned from the above is that that's super useful, and they'd like to be able to do the same thing to the rest of the world.
Iran has access to Persian Gulf. Houthis has access to Red Sea. Together that overseas SLOCs for about 30% of global oil and LNG, both their shipping, and with sufficiently advanced (read not very) missiles, their infra - see Yemen attacks on Saudi refineries. By acquiring theatre range missiles that can actually hit things, they created credible regional power projection capablities, and hence leverage to threaten global energy, which limits what US can do against them since much of it goes to their partners.
In conflict between states, like/dislike does play a role, but it's largely the inability to trust. In the absence of a regional/world power, you have to attack the other guy before he attacks you, because there's an impenetrable information asymmetry meaning you can't truly know their intentions. The problem is, both sides are running the same calculus, and both sides knows that the other side is thinking the same thing. So even if you think the other side doesn't want to attack you, you think they may do so out of precaution because they are concerned that you are thinking like this, which gives you an incentive to attack them first before they come to the logical conclusion that you've just arrived at.
It's one reason why violence can be so high in tribal societies. There is no higher power to resolve disputes so you need to front-run the hypothetical violence of the opponent, which creates a game theory situation where the only solution is to attack.
The way to break this dynamic is to have a hegemon, like the US, who can dictate outcomes (e.g. a border) to both sides and enforce it. This can then de-escalate. France no longer side-eyes Germany and vice versa because the US guarantees that neither will do anything. Some attribute this to democratic institutions, prosperity, a common enemy (Russia), etc, which largely does explain things, but it's not the entire picture. If the rest of the world disappeared, tensions between Germany and France would probably go up again due to there being no external power to enforce the status quo.
That said, the Houthis are a non-state actor, so the same logic may not apply.
This reflects the current evolution of the historical arms race. The missiles are not particularly effective, terminal guidance and warhead design is poor, but they are a threat to any non-military vessel in the region. The underlying dynamic is that technology that was very expensive to produce 50 years ago is now available ubiquitously. It isn’t per se great tech, but it is comparable to tech proper military powers had 50 years ago, which are still quite capable against unsophisticated adversaries, like shipping vessels. Modern military vessels are designed under the assumption that they will be hit by swarms of these missiles.
This has parallels to the issue of there being 400M firearms in the US and an almost infinite capacity to produce new ones in a very decentralized fashion. Almost all of the leverage is on the incentive side; people should be maximally reluctant to inappropriately use what we cannot limit them acquiring. No one can stop people from acquiring or building anti-ship missiles as a practical matter. Building the missiles is too cheap and too easy. The costs to using them inappropriately have to be much higher than they currently are.
I never meant to imply that the Houthis could build it themselves, just that the technical capabilities are sufficiently distributed that most interested parties can find someone who will provide them given enough incentive. The Houthis don’t need to figure it out themselves if the Iranian government is happy to provide the hardware.
The author does not mention at all the extensive bombing campaign conducted by Saudi Arabia, backed by the US and chooses to focus on the Iranian logistical support.
Context free discussion ia useless in geopolitics.
It's not about just getting better / more proliferation, IMO attacks demonstrate current missile defense is not good enough. While USN intercepting vast majority of missiles (at extreme costs), enough are still slipping through to deter shipping. My understanding is these are basically shit-tier AShMs with limited guidance and anecdotes of attacks from sailers suggest they're not launched in any competently coordinated way, i.e. the salvos are spread over time and limited. They're not huge 10s-100s+ attacks that arrive simultaneously that serious actors can deliver. See Iranian missiles making it past patriots in Al Asad.
I don’t know enough to have an opinion on the ongoing conflicts near that region. So I’ll abstain from commenting on that.
But what I will say is that this corridor is extremely important for international trade across many nations. Securing it, for purely monetary reasons, might escalate this much more than for ideological differences.
Meanwhile the captain of the US aircraft carrier in the region is showing off the different flavoured coffees you can get on board and handing out cookies to his sailors[0], so doesn't seem too bothered.
The threat is to merchant shipping, not to Navy ships, which have countermeasures upon countermeasures.
The current SOTA in anti-ship technology are the Chinese hypersonic missiles such as the DF-26, which are believed to pose a credible threat to aircraft carriers. Iran is also developing hypersonic missiles like the Khalij Fars, but the Houthis don't have these and they are substantially less capable than the Chinese ones.
FTA:
> Civilian vessels can adopt security measures to thwart attempted boardings, but they lack defences against anti-ship missiles. While Western military vessels have advanced air and missile-defence capabilities – using them to down Houthi missiles and UAVs – they are constrained by the number of interceptor missiles they can carry and the challenge of restocking depleted inventories.
The Houti's couldn't make glass if they wanted to let alone anti-ship missile systems. They're just pawns in a larger game and they're setting themselves up as a target. Iran is pretty clever at getting others to do its bidding by supplying them with arms like this but there are a lot of global and also local parties that aren't going to let this pass unnoticed.
The biggest problem is that there is no solution that is both effective and also morally satisfying. The moral injury makes it very difficult to talk about effective solutions - which might include steps towards normalizing relations with Iran and other soft power interventions that would make people angry because they are not harsh enough.
Everyone should feel free to disagree, but think about the reaction to military interventions - more recruitment.
They've held out for years against the most notoriously incompetent militaries in the world. After what happened with the Ukraine and Russia, who knows what's going to happen here, but the Houthi track record is a little built up.
The Saudis are indeed incompetent (and mostly hired mercenaries to do the actual ground fighting anyway, surprise surprise they were not too eager to actually risk their lives for MBS). The UAE armed forces, on the other hand, are quite effective.
The Saudi-Led Coalition broke apart over disharmony between Saudi Arabia and the UAE, which was apparently one of the turning points in the Saudi war against Ansar Allah, so that checks out.
Now the Houthis are facing a competent military, that is so infused with progressive moralism that it can't use any of its competencies, and is very careful not to kill any Houthis.
Unless this paradigm breaks very soon, Houthis seem favored to win. Pretty easy to win against a military which bogus morality won't let it harm you, its enemy.
They can win just as so many others have in the past - outlasting the resolve of the U.S. I think that the best that can be hoped for here (from the U.S. perspective) is to diminish the Houthi's capacity to launch missiles and drones until Israel has finished whatever it is they are trying to accomplish in Gaza.
It can, it just hasn't done so yet. But it definitely can. A threat to international shipping is one of those things that just might bring it into play.
We all know the US military can defeat the Houthis. But so far it hasn't used its capabilities. It warned and threatened endlessly, while the Houthis continued their campaign of naval terror.
Yes, it has, but not to a degree that the sleeping giants have decided it's time to wake up and act. The thing the US hopes for is that the Houtis will see reason, if they don't they can expect to be wiped out. Give it some time, these operations aren't planned on the spur of the moment. You can bet your ass that right now somewhere in the pentagon a set of rooms is dedicated to dealing with this. And until it happens it will seem as though nothing is going to happen.
You are right. They are part of a much larger proxy war with many fronts that involves a lot of different parties at this point. It's all a bit murky who is playing who and why but clearly the Iranians are supplying the Houthi's; just like they've been supplying the Palestinians. Then the US is supplying the Saudi's who have been fighting a very ugly conflict in Yemen for a very long time. The US is also supplying the Israeli's who are fighting the Palestinians. and then you have the Russians active in Syria with a clear interest in distracting the US from the war in the Ukraine and reducing the level of support they provide to Ukraine. Russia of course is also being supplied by the Iranians. And then you have the Chinese lurking in the background. It's very complicated.
The real question is who is going to do anything about this, if any. Attacking some Houthi targets is just fighting the symptoms here. A direct attack on Iran seems much less likely and appealing. It would turn the proxy war into a real war. It seems the Iranians are quite successful at discouraging that sort of response.
There are a dozen countries in that area with people sympathetic to their cause. I'd not be surprised if the majority of their logistics is privately sourced.
This is the reason they still exist, it's just easy to blame a single villain and call it a day.
The Iranian backing of the Houtis is not exactly a secret and sufficient to explain what's happening. Anything else is icing on the cake but not enough to supply them, if Iran would drop away as a supporter then the Houtis would fail.
Cruise missiles are for targets many hundreds of kilometers away. These just have to make it from the shores of the Red sea to the middle, a considerably shorter distance than what cruise missiles are really meant for.
These are more like howitzers with self propelled projectiles. These are much simpler than cruise missiles.
I'm sorry but this sounds just like the people who call Ukraine a pawn and that argue that it is only still there because they are supported by external players. I mean sure, but so what? Just like Ukraine they haven't just woken up and decided to start a war. And in this case, they are very vocal and clear about the reasons for why they are doing what they are doing. Maybe they do have a point and Israel should stop its own little genocide? It's just baffling since it's very obvious that the real issue is the russian-tier grozny treatment of Gaza. Who cares who they are pawns of?
