Last night the U.S. launched another strike against Yemen:
The US Central Command (Centcom) has announced that American forces have launched a fresh strike, targeting an alleged radar site used by the Ansarullah movement in Yemen.
The strike, carried out by the USS Carney (DDG 64) using Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles, follows previous one on January 12.
Reports from multiple sources indicate that the airstrikes targeted the vicinity of Sanaa airport and its surrounding areas, north of the Yemeni capital. According to CNN, a US official revealed that this strike was conducted unilaterally by the United States and was of a smaller scale compared to previous actions.
Other reports confirm that this second strike in as many days targeted a radar site:
The US launched a fresh airstrike on a Houthi rebel radar installation Friday, in what was described as a follow-up attack to an earlier barrage across Yemen intended to degrade the group’s ability to target commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The destroyer USS Carney fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at the radar facility, US Central Command said in a statement.
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Central Command called the strike “a follow-on action on a specific military target associated with strikes taken on Jan. 12.”
The only known radar site near Sana'a is at the airport which the Saudis had bombed several times. It was reopened only in 2022, six years after it had been closed, following a UN brokered truce agreement.
Sana'a is some 100 km (60 miles) from the coastline. Why an air traffic control radar in Sana'a should be relevant for marine traffic in the Red Sea is beyond my understanding.
I also do not understand why the U.S. is hitting Yemen at all. The Houthi, part of the ruling Ansar Allah government coalition, want to fight the U.S. As long as the war on Gaza goes on they can not and will not be deterred from attacking ships related to Israel.
Many experts agree with this opinion:
Analysts who study the Houthis said that the American-led airstrikes could play into the group’s agenda and might be unlikely to stop the group’s attacks.
“This was not a miscalculation by the Houthis,” said Hannah Porter, a senior research officer at ARK Group, a British company that works in international development. “This was the goal. They hope to see an expanded regional war, and they are eager to be on the front lines of that war.”
Within hours of the first wave of strikes, a senior Houthi official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, said that the United States and Britain would soon realize that they had engaged in “the biggest folly in their history.”
(ARK is one of several companies which clandestine 'regime change' work for the UK's Foreign Office.)
The Houthi have fought the Saudis for eight years and have arguably won that war. Now the Saudis have a truce with the Houthi and continue to negotiate a peace agreement with them. They found that there is simply no other way to handle them.
Many other experts agree:
Laurent Bonnefoy, a researcher who studies Yemen at Sciences Po in Paris, said the strikes were what the Houthis were “looking for.”
“They are gaining what they want, which is to appear as the boldest regional player when it comes to confronting the international coalition, which is largely in favor of Israel and does not care for people in Gaza,” he said. “This generates some form of support for them, internationally as well as internally.”
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Ibrahim Jalal, an analyst with the Middle East Institute, described the Houthis as a nimble militant group hardened by years of guerrilla warfare in Yemen and weathering years of Saudi-led airstrikes.They have “little in the way of large-scale, permanent military sites,” he said, “and instead use mobile launchpads for rockets and drones in addition to networks of tunnels and caves that makes their targeting highly complicated.”
The strikes Friday, Jalal said, were “surgical, largely tactical and symbolic.” He doubted they work as a deterrent.
“The Houthis have too little to lose,” he said, and much to gain. The war in Gaza has enabled the group to position itself as the defender of the Palestinian cause in the region, winning public support at home and abroad and distracting from domestic discontent.
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As violence in Yemen’s civil conflict declined, opposition to the Houthis has emerged over complaints that include the group’s inability to pay public sector salaries, according to Maysaa Shuja al-Deen, a senior researcher at the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies. But the Houthi attacks on Red Sea commerce have struck a chord in a country where support for Palestinians is universal.“Now everyone is saying, ‘We support the Houthis in this issue,’” she said.
The attacks on shipping bolstered the group’s recruitment efforts, she said, and over the last few weeks — a period including a rare firefight between Houthi fighters and U.S. Navy helicopters — the number of recruits has soared, particularly in Yemen’s northern tribal areas.
Since the Houthis’ beginnings as a youth movement in northern Yemen decades ago, she said, the group had envisioned themselves as more than just a local actor — “they had ambitions of being a regional power.”
Now, as they confront the United States and its allies directly, she said, their wish has come true. They’ve proved their capacity to strike targets far beyond their borders.
“The Houthis will retaliate,” Shuja al-Deen said. “And they can.”
Video shows that after the first strike about a million people took part in a huge pro-Houthi anti-U.S. rally in Sana'a.
All this was obvious to anyone who has followed Yemen a bit. The country can only be controlled from the ground and Yemenis are excellent fighters. The British learned this in the 1960s when they were kicked out of the country even as they ferociously bombed the hell out of it. The Saudis learned this over several wars the fought (and lost) against Yemen.
That is why I do not understand why the White House is doing these strike. Neither do others:
[A] campaign of aerial bombing and cruise missile strikes seems unlikely to deter the Houthis from continuing to try, with whatever resources they retain, to threaten Red Sea shipping. They have other means at their disposal, as well, including uncrewed explosive boats and naval mines.
Fundamentally, any U.S. attempt to intimidate the Houthis seems to suffer from a mismatch between their respective levels of commitment.
The Houthi want to fight while the Biden administration wants to avoid another war during an election year.
When this 'deterrence' action in Yemen fails to achieve any result, as is likely, will it send in ground troops? What is the plan when those fail?