Main Edition
US
FR
January 12, 2024 - 5:40pm
Late last night, the US and Britain launched attacks on Houthi military targets in Yemen, after weeks of warning the Iranian-backed rebels to stop attacking commercial ships. Under the cover of darkness, the US-led strikes hit more than 60 targets in 16 different locations, which resulted in at least five deaths (with a further six wounded).
Western powers have since tried to downplay concerns that the conflict in the Middle East is escalating. Earlier today, Pentagon officials claimed that the strikes were part of an effort to “de-escalate tensions and restore stability in the Red Sea”. But with the Houthis vowing retaliation, is the situation spiralling out of control?
Joining Freddie Sayers for an emergency interview, UnHerd’s political editor Tom McTague shared his thoughts on the conflict. He argued that one country that has been curiously absent from the military response is China, even though the Red Sea shipping lane is its most valuable customer. Is the West cutting an increasingly isolated figure on the world stage? Or does it remain the preeminent power, reasserting its dominance in this permanently restive region?
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
Subscribe10:22 “Obama and Biden are often seen as wiser than Trump on the middle east”
Is he joking?
“Seen as”.
Wiser than Trump on every single issue.
Trump is a moron.
Every single issue? Even repeal of the Corn Laws?
Haha! You think Trump has got the faintest idea that such a thing as the Corn Laws existed?!?!
The man is stupid, period. And you guys worship him – what does that make you?!?!?
I don’t worship Trump, but I’ve also never denied being an idiot.
I honestly don’t get the logic for the support of Iran by Obama and Biden. What’s the end goal?
Stop reading Rebel News, Jimmy – they are lying to you.
Obama was raised in Islamic Indonesia. His middle name is Hussain. This smells like Shia Islam. That would explain much.
Trump’s strong card on foreign affairs was unpredictability. Occasionally it was poss to believe he actually cultivated that cleverly but had a clear strategic route map in the background. Problem is/was it became clear he didn’t have any such route map. His Sec of States and NSA Advisors may have but he’d be much less ‘checked’ second time round.
Been interesting hearing some of how the MAGA exponents might play the Red Sea conflict – ‘what’s it got to do with the US, we don’t rely on that trade route etc etc’, thus playing into exactly the ‘withdrawal’ from middle east the Iranians are hoping happens if they nibble away. Thus strengthening their strategic ring of fire around Israel . And of course Putin would shout for joy too as would weaken Europe. The MAGA and Trump pursuing a strategy and rhetoric that strengthens Iran and Putin quite possible.
That said clear deficiencies in how Biden/Obama strategy has played out. Reluctance to hit back is a provocation to do more.
Iran should be careful about what they ask for, they might get it. America’s withdrawal frees Israel from any need to show any restraint about the use of its nuclear weapons. It is written of Sampson that he killed more people in his suicide than he ever killed in life. Israel may choose such a Masada like death. In the book of Daniel, we see an end time prophesy where the enemy of Israel is to be broken on the mountains of Israel in a manner that sounds like the use of a neutron bomb.
The people who spend the rest of their time bewailing the failure of the British Government to control the English Channel now imagine and insist that it could take charge of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, along with a Biden Administration that the denounce for its inability to control the borders of the United States. For the persons, relatives, friends and donors of politicians, there is no payday like a war. What we saw last night in Yemen were two countries bombing a third country because it was blockading shipping to a fourth country. Blockading shipping. That was it. Only last night did anyone die. Straits are not the high seas, and are not governed by the principle of freedom of navigation, but by that of innocent passage. Although the precise form of words has been avoided, numerous recent utterances of Antony Blinken and David Cameron have rendered it impossible for them to argue that that principle applied to supplies to Israel under the present circumstances. No one else has been targeted even to the limited extent that anyone has. Most of the major shipping companies had already stopped using the Red Sea largely or entirely.
After last night, Britain and the United States cannot any longer claim innocent passage through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, either. That any case, however contemptible, can be made for this action raises the question of the success or otherwise of nuclear deterrence. As we spend between one and two million dollars per shot against whatever scrap of dirt last hosted the launch of a drone, then will the next stage be to nuke it? In effect, we are probably already deploying weapons of mass destruction, since the only things of any note that the Saudis could find to bomb in Yemen were the water treatment plants, thereby unleashing a cholera outbreak that remains the world’s worst man-made health disaster. If we are doing the same, then how are we not engaged in biological warfare? What else is there to bomb in Yemen?
Zaydism parted from the main Shia body a very long time ago, so the Houthis’ relationship with Iran is only marginally, if at all, more strategic, tactical and even opportunistic than that of Hamas. There is little or none of the real fellow-feeling that there is between Iran and Hezbollah, Twelvers both, although like everyone else to whom it applies they do not like that word. They and the Ismaili incorporated all sorts of things from the mass conversions of Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus and others, often as a way of becoming Muslim while still snubbing the oppressive Sunni Caliphs. But the Zaydi stayed in Yemen and in what is now the adjacent part of Saudi Arabia. Their relative similarity to the Sunni is therefore universally observed. Indeed, they are often more rationalistic and more tolerant of internal pluralism, certainly by comparison with the Wahhabi. As even Oman, practically a GCHQ colony and the last princely state of the British Empire, condemns this bombing, then brush up on Ibadism next. “You read it here first, as you often do,” I wrote on 31st December.
And how is the Houthi control of access to the Red Sea an economic problem to two Western countries, but not to any of the others? Still, our lords and masters had been gasping for a way to blame the war in Gaza for Britain’s economic problems, and with them their refusal to countenance any domestic measure that might make life slightly more bearable because “we can’t afford it”. They had tried Brexit, as if every other country in the world were in the EU. They had tried Covid-19, as if that had happened nowhere else. They had tried the war in Ukraine, as if only Britain had been in any way affected by it. They are happy bunnies today, the Government and the Official Opposition alike.
Very worrying that Cameron is back in office just in time for all this to kick off. His record is abysmal. I am very concerned. We are being led off a cliff and a Labour win will only speed up the descent.
“Awaiting for approval,” because don’t be coming on here if you know what Zaydism is, or anything like that.
Can’t we learn from the example of the Israelites and the Egyptians and just split the Red Sea?
Possibly a different “Red Sea.
If the Houthis have been attacking shipping that had nothing to do with Israel, then whose shipping has that been? When have they been attacking it? Why would they? Neither Britain nor the United States claims that any of its own vessels has been attacked, while no other Western country even sees the problem, not even those which had previously signed up to giving the Houthis a jolly good talking to. Likewise, Bahrain, which had also signed up to that, has joined every other Arab country in staying out of this.
That includes several of Britain’s closest allies from the most hardboiled realist point of view. For if this is not a neoconservative war of liberal intervention, then someone needs to tell the neocons and the liberal interventionists, who are thoroughly gung-ho for it, and in the form of the Biden Administration are its principal prosecutors, with the only other participant’s Prime Minister paying court in and to Ukraine hours after the bombing of Yemen.
While American Republicans would of course support the war in Ukraine under a Republican President, and will support it if and when it continued under one, British Conservatives and Labour Rightists are like the Democrats that they would all be in the United States, in that they reflexively support any and every war from the moment that it is first suggested, whether or not that they have ever previously heard of the country in question. You could make one up and then set them tweeting furiously for a war.
What are you talking about? The Houthi’s have attacked plenty of ships with zero links to Israel. Do an internet search.
This is the second time. It is possible to wonder what I am paying for.
The Houthi’s have been frequently repeating that they are NOT blocking shipments to China, Europe, or any other country, except Israel, because they are reacting to Israel’s genocide on the Palestinians. The Houthi’s are allowing all other shipments to go through.
This is not true at all. Do an internet search.
Wrong. They have also committed at least one major gaffe. I’m not going to hold your hand – you seem to be reading a lot – YOU look it up.
That was good.
Regarding US ‘stretch’ – they have deployed 2 Carrier Strike Forces to this region. They have 11 in total. It is certainly unwelcome but not enough yet to leave Taiwan entirely unguarded.
Of course one of the main reasons the UK has two modern Carriers is exactly this sort of scenario. That’s a strategic decision made 20 years ago.
So much else in this that need for brevity means can’t respond to all the vital points, but Freddie expresses pessimism without any articulation of what the alternatives are in the short term. When some world actors are looking for chaos things are not going to be straight-forward and ‘do nothing’ full of traps too. The decision to at least try and stop a terrorist approach to a key shipping lane does not seem that complicated. We have not got enmeshed in any ‘boots on the ground’ adventure (although of course some Special Forces will be) and everyone knows there is no danger of that happening anytime soon. This ability to project air power is sufficient, and of course if the West needs to it can project v significant cyber-power too. As discussion highlighted a closure of this lane does not suit China much either.
As fascinating perhaps in the week before Taiwan elections, where the outcome is clearly going to make a difference to the behaviour of Xi and the CCP, Unherd is silent and virtually nothing on it. That said we have had the de rigeur articles on gender politics.
The Chinese naval force heading that way are probably keeping strict radio silence – not even satcoms – you will learn of their arrival from ‘normal sources.’ The Merchant Ships may not be Chinese (flagged) but many of their cargoes are. The Houtis are interfering with Chinese trade. Bad move, especially as the Chinese want their warships to have some Pre-action Calibration and some real target practice against “incoming”
With all due respect, the primary weapon of Hamas is not “cheap “ unless we consider the financial support contributed by the west intended for economic development, infrastructure and support of the civilian population to be well spent on cowardly hidy holes and luxury lifestyles. Cheap for Hamas of course, so why are the rest of us funding this horror?
When I hear the words de-escalate coming out of the Biden administration, I also hear appeasement of Iran. Biden is being careful to kill no Houthis’. He speaks of measured response. The Houthis do not know the meaning of the term. They are all in. We must crush those fanatics with maximum force. Use an aerial sledgehammer to kill a mouse. Do not, however, put any US forces, ashore. America is useless at nation building outside areas of western culture. Use the Egyptian army. They are also losers in the red sea war. They lost all those juicy Suez Canal tolls. We supply planes and ships, The Saudis Money and the Egyptians ground troops. Above all, do not allow social media or tic toc to show the results of aerial bombing to innocent Americans. These are too squeamish to win a war.