US launches full-scale offensive against Houthis
- 20 hours ago
American President Donald Trump, who had criticised Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for dragging the country into outside wars, seems to have changed his mind and launched a full-scale airstrike against Houthi rebels who are in occupation of parts of Yemen. According to the Pentagon, the strikes are expected to last for days. A Pentagon statement had said that the Houthis had attacked US warships 174 times, and commercial ships 145 times.
According to Houthi health ministry sources, 31 people have been killed in the strikes, and a majority of them were civilians, women and children. The attacks were launched from the aircraft carrier Harry S Truman. The United Kingdom had provided refueling facilities.
Both President Trump and Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth have made statements on their social media platforms about the strikes. It has to be noted that President Joe Biden had launched the attacks against the Houthis, but they were limited in nature, meant to degrade the offensive abilities of the Houthis. Trump has stepped up the attacks, and it is now a full-scale offensive.
In his social platform statement, Trump had warned Iran not to support the Houthis and said that the US would have to take action if Iran does not refrain from supporting Houthis, and it would not be nice. Iran had reacted strongly saying that the US cannot dictate Iran’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile, the Houthis had responded to the attacks saying that they would respond to escalation by the American side with escalation. The main argument of Houthis has been that they are attacking shipping passing through the Red Sea which was connected with Israel in the wake of Israeli attacks on Gaza since October 2023.
Surprisingly, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had condemned the US attack on the Houthis, even as the US and Russian sides were preparing for strengthening ties between the two countries, and also for a telephonic conversation between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The question is whether Trump will be able to stamp out the Houthi military capability. If the strikes fail to achieve this goal, and it is not certain that it will be able to, then Trump would have opened another battlefront in the Middle East.
It will be argued that Trump and the US had no other option but to fight the Houthis because the international shipping lanes in the Red Sea were crippled by Houthi attacks, and were posing a threat to global trade in more ways than one. This would mean that the US would be engaged in a full-scale war against the Houthis. Americans would be caught in a war abroad, which is something that Trump does not want.
This makes the complicated situation in the Middle East with the fragile situation in Gaza where Israeli attacks continue despite a ceasefire, and the Americans trying to negotiate directly with Hamas for release of American passport-holders among the hostages, those alive and those who are dead.
Hamas is linking the freeing of the Americans to Israel’s commitment to the ceasefire. Without intending it, Trump is being drawn into the Middle Eastern maelstrom. This makes it evident that Trump’s shooting-from-the-hip-style of diplomacy does not work, that the US needs allies and it has to work along with them.
One of the ways of making things easier in the Middle East is to compel Israel to hold back and negotiate with Hamas through Qatar and Egypt. The US cannot be seen as supporting Israel wholly. It has to appear to be evenhanded. The situation of civilians in Gaza, and that of Palestinians facing attacks from West Bank occupiers, has to be on the agenda.