The US and Israel face a powerful new enemy in the Middle East conflict. Washington’s attempt to put together a coalition against the pro-Palestine Houthis is attracting almost none of the regional powers. In yet another case of blowback, reflecting the failure of Western military interventionism in West Asia, Yemen’s Houthi movement inserts itself as a major king-making player in Israel’s onslaught to remove Gaza and its Palestinian people from the face of the earth.

First launching batches of loitering munitions, ballistic and cruise missiles towards Israel, the vengeful Houthis then moved on to prevent the passage of Israeli-owned or operated ships through the Red Sea, before announcing a complete closure of the vital shipping route for any vessels destined to dock at the port of Eilat.

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After the Houthis seized several ships while attacking others with drone strikes, lucrative port activity at the Israeli port of Eilat has dropped some 85%. International and Israeli shipping companies opt to take the long route, which takes extra weeks to reach Israel with their cargo, a costly diversion to say the least.

Bright idea! US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to the region to announce the formation of a multinational naval task force to be deployed in the Red Sea. Despite talk of the coalition including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and even the United Arab Emirates, the only Arab nation that joined was Bahrain.

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So, without a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution to back them up, required to make the militarization of a territory legal under international law, the US has launched yet another foreign intervention. This one is significant because it failed to convince any major regional players to join, demonstrating the decline in American influence, but has also elevated the status of Yemen’s Houthis.

Houthis hate the U.S. and they have 377,000 very good reasons to seek revenge on ‘The Great Satan.’ Under former US President Barack Obama, the Washington-backed coalition’s intervention in Yemen back in 2015. Since then, some 377,000 people have died, largely as a result of the deadly blockade imposed on the majority of the country’s population, while some 15,000 civilians have died due to direct conflict.

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The objective of the Saudi-led intervention, which received the backing of the US and UK, was to remove the Houthis from power in the nation’s capital, Sanaa. It rules over more than 80% of the population, has the support of two-thirds of the nation’s armed forces, and operates a government out of Sanaa.

Following two separate drone and missile attacks on Abu Dhabi and Dubai in January of 2022, it became apparent that the West’s current level of support could not provide sufficient security for the UAE. Up until a nationwide ceasefire was brokered in April 2022, the Houthis demonstrated their developed missile and drone capabilities, striking valuable economic targets inside Saudi Arabia too.

The US attempted to help topple the current government in Sanaa but ended up creating a battle-hardened group that has domestically developed capabilities well beyond those it possessed at the start of the conflict in 2015.

In his first foreign policy address after taking office in 2021, lame-duck US President Joe Biden pledged to end the war in Yemen. However, instead of pursuing a Yemen-Saudi deal, the White House abandoned its pledge and sought to broker a Saudi-Israeli deal instead. That fatal decision is coming back to bite policymakers in Washington.

Backing the Israelis to the hilt the US has allowed a Palestine-Israel war to expand into a broader regional Arab-Israeli conflict. The threat of escalation between the Israeli army and Lebanese Hezbollah is growing by the day, while Houthis leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has stated that his forces ’will not stand idly by if the Americans have a tendency to escalate and commit foolishness by targeting our country.’

Washington’s influence and prestige have plummeted internationally as a result of its handling of Israel’s war on Gaza. It has failed to convince any major regional actors in West Asia to back its agenda, all of which are standing on the same side as Russia and China in calling for a ceasefire. The world sees the breathtaking hypocrisy of Washington. For the sake of comparison, the death toll in Gaza today is said to have exceeded 23,000, the majority being women and children.

The level of human suffering being inflicted in Gaza is without precedent, breaking records in modern history for the tonnage of explosives dropped on such a small territory, in addition to the highest number of journalists, medical workers, and children killed in a single conflict.

In reaction, the US government has bizarrely blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UN Security Council, gives Israel unlimited support unconditionally, and now threatens to drag a coalition of Western nations into a war on Yemen.

The solution here is very simple: the Houthis say the blockade on ships to Israel will end when the war on Gaza ends. Washington can stop the war but refuses to do so, while its threats against Yemen will not work to achieve any result beyond further escalation. BEAT PRESS CENSORSHIP BY POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA