The Houthis have attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea and also attacked a US warship, the USS Carney. According to the Houthis, they fired missiles and launched kamikaze drones.

The Houthis, the rebel group holding substantial territory bordering the Red Sea near the straits of Bab al-Mandab, are fully supported by Iran, which supplies them with weapons. The missiles and drones aimed at commercial and military targets are, therefore, Iranian, and it is Iran that is using the Houthis as its proxy (and always has been).

What has the US done about these attacks?

The answer is: Very little.

It is true that ships like the Carney, which have sophisticated Aegis air defenses and rapid-fire Phalanx deck guns, have fired on and destroyed Houthi-launched missiles and drones. But that has not deterred Houthi-land or Iran. In fact, now they are firing more missiles and drones, some of them allegedly aimed at Israeli-owned ships in the Red Sea.

The Red Sea is a very important international waterway. Much of its traffic is fed by the Suez Canal, at the northern end of the sea. There is no legal justification of any kind to attack civilian ships in the Red Sea, nor is there any casus belli that allows any state or entity (the Houthis are an entity) to attack US military vessels who carry out “freedom of navigation” operations (FONOPs) on the Red Sea, in the Mediterranean, and in the Persian Gulf.

Nor do the Houthis have any writ to attack Israel, a country that has never been engaged in any action impacting them. Justifying these attacks as some sort of defense of radical Islam or the Palestinians simply doesn’t cut it.

By not acting in any way to make these attacks costly to the Houthis, or Iran, the US is inviting trouble.

The US has different options.

Option 1 is to leave things the way they are and just counterpunch against the Houthi-launched weapons. This is the policy of US President Joe Biden’s administration. It is a bad one.

Option 2 is not to carry out FONOPs, which would have the effect of endangering commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. 

Because Houthi attacks directly impact Israeli interests, at some point Israel – using its F-35s or killer drones such as the IAI Harop, a stealthy loitering munition – will attack the Houthis. Or Israel could launch any number of cruise missiles in its arsenal, as it has, from time to time, done in Syria to destroy Iranian and Hezbollah forces threatening it.

Option 3 is to punish the Houthis. One B-1 bomber run could wipe out Houthi launch sites. A few drones armed with Hellfire missiles could knock off some of the Houthi terrorist leaders, sending them a strong message warning them about future behavior.

Biden is coddling Iran and is not behaving in the national interest, letting them get away with murder in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and, now, on the high seas. US troops in Iraq and Syria have been plastered by rockets and drones fired by Iranian proxies equipped with arms supplied by Iran.

Biden has also coddled the Houthis, removed them from the terrorist list, and demanded that Saudi Arabia and the UAE “tolerate” their attacks but not respond. Instead Biden and his minions have encouraged peace talks, which (naturally enough) have gone nowhere.

None of this has deterred Biden and his State Department from pursuing an absurd policy in the region where America’s enemies increasingly think the US is both weak and feckless.

Enough is enough. 

One of those Houthi drones or missiles could kill a lot of US Navy seamen or blow up oil tankers causing the loss of life and creating an environmental disaster. There is no guarantee that one or more of them will not get through. We Americans are playing with fire hoping one of our ships won’t be hit.

Biden is risking all this to keep the mullahs content (along with shoveling billions of dollars to them for no purpose other than to encourage more reckless behavior).

The time has passed for bad policies to be perpetuated to no good end. Congress should demand retaliation and Biden should be forced to order it done. There isn’t any doubt the US Navy, Air Force and Marines would happily do the job.

Stephen Bryen, who served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the
US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense
for policy, currently is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute.

This article was originally published on his Weapons and Security Substack. It is republished with kind permission.