The Iran war was supposed to be quick and easy: a few bombs here, a few targeted assassinations there, and victory would be all but guaranteed. Yet, as the American saying goes, if only wishes were horses. One month into the war, Iran has not been knocked out and dreams of regime change are dying on the vine. Instead, the conflict has gone regional, with Iraq and Lebanon turning into active battlefields as well. Now, by firing multiple missiles straight at Israel military sites on Saturday, the Houthis of Yemen have announced to the world that they, too, want a piece of the action.

For Israel itself, the Houthis entering the conflict isn’t likely to be the end of the world. In fact, they do not necessarily alter the political or military calculation all that much. Though the opening up of yet another front is hardly ideal, Yemen cannot bring anything to the table that Iran doesn’t. It can launch long-range drone attacks — which, given the depletion of Israeli air defences, are set to be more effective than they were in the past — and it can fire medium-range ballistic missiles. With the Israeli air force tied up elsewhere, retaliations against Yemen are likely to be perfunctory. That being said, Yemen’s capabilities are naturally more primitive and limited compared to those of Iran.

For the rest of the world, however, Yemen entering the fray could spell disaster. As we barrel toward the worst energy crisis in living memory, the Saudi pipeline through the desert and toward the Red Sea is one of the few remaining lifelines for crude oil export in the region. The Houthis could effortlessly disable this pipeline, strike the port terminal itself, or simply prevent the vulnerable oil tankers from getting close or passing through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.

America tried twice — once under Joe Biden with Operation Poseidon Archer, once under Donald Trump with Operation Rough Rider — to bomb the Houthis into compliance. On each occasion, it had to give up. This time, there are no spare bombers or aircraft carriers to even make an attempt. The Houthis are completely free to impose whatever costs they want on the global economy, at a time when it needs every single drop of crude oil it can get its hands on.

At the time of Operation Rough Rider, I wrote in UnHerd that the Houthis, by resisting all outside efforts to open up the Bab el-Mandeb strait, had humiliated the US and shown that there are very real limits to its power. Now, the group is poised to take another bite at the same apple. This time, however, there’s not even a pretence that America — whose navy and air force is already stretched beyond limits — can stop them. There should have been lessons learned from this experience, about how hard it is to stop a determined enemy from controlling naval chokepoints, and how Lord Nelson’s famous dictum — that a ship’s a fool to fight a fort — is even more true today than when he first uttered it.

But the Americans did not learn; the late Empire, full of complacency, just went on assuming that every defeat and setback somehow “didn’t count”, and that the next time would prove all the naysayers wrong. Now, with Iran having caused serious damage to the world economy using the same tactics as the Yemeni group, the Houthis are in prime position to finish off whatever’s left.

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Malcom Kyeyune is a freelance writer living in Uppsala, Sweden

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