Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Houthis Say US Warship ‘Firing Hysterically’ Nearly Hit Tanker in Red Sea

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 24.12.2023

A Houthi spokesman has sought to set the record straight regarding the US’s claim that the Yemeni militia had targeted a Gabonese oil tanker.

“An American warship fired hysterically during a reconnaissance mission by Yemeni forces in the Red Sea,” Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam said in a statement Sunday. One of the missiles nearly hit a Gabon-flagged oil tanker traveling from Russia, the spokesman added.

“The Red Sea will be a burning arena if the US and its allies continue their bullying. Countries bordering the Red Sea must realize the reality of the dangers that threaten their national security,” Abdul-Salam warned. “The threat to international maritime navigation” is the result of “the militarization of the Red Sea by America and its partners, who have come to the region without any legitimate reason other than providing security services for enemy Israeli ships,” the spokesman said.

The Houthi statement contradicts an after action report put out by United States Central Command early Sunday morning alleging that the Houthis had launched two anti-ship missiles into the Red Sea’s shipping lanes on December 23.

“Between 3 and 8 pm (Sanaa time), the USS Laboon (DDG 58) was patrolling in the Southern Red Sea as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian and shot down four unmanned aerial drones originating from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen that were inbound to the USS Laboon. There were no injuries or damage in this incident. At approximately 8 pm (Sanaa time) US Naval Forces Central Command received reports from two ships in the Southern Red Sea that they were under attack. The M/V Blaamanen, a Norwegian-flagged, owned and operated chemical/oil tanker, reported a near miss of a Houthi one-way drone attack drone with no injuries or damage reported. A second vessel, the M/V Saibaba, a Gabon-owned, Indian-flagged crude oil tanker, reported that it was hit by a one-way attack drone with no injuries reported. The USS Laboon responded to the distress calls from these attacks,” CENTCOM said.

According to MarineTraffic, the Saibaba sails under the flag of Gabon, not India.

The Houthis have said that they will intentionally target only commercial cargoes that are Israeli-owned or linked, or traveling to or from Israel.

The Yemeni militia began their month-long campaign of hijackings, missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea on November 19 with the seizure of the Galaxy Leader, an Israeli billionaire-owned ro-ro car carrier.

On December 18, the United States announced the formation of a maritime coalition to clamp down on Houthi attacks. Amid reports that US operations may include strikes inside Yemen, the Houthis have threatened to turn the Red Sea into the coalition’s “graveyard.”

The nascent US-led coalition has reportedly run into some difficulties, with major American allies France, Italy and Spain apparently declining to join a Red Sea mission under US command. Other allies, including Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark, have limited their participation to a handful of seamen.

December 24, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

The US and Israel face a powerful new enemy in the Middle East conflict

By Robert Inlakesh | RT | December 23, 2023

In yet another case of blowback, reflecting the failure of Western military interventionism in West Asia, Yemen’s Ansarallah (Houthi) movement has inserted itself as an active participant in the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. First launching batches of loitering munitions, ballistic and cruise missiles towards Israel, Ansarallah then moved on to prevent the passage of Israeli-owned or operated ships through the Red Sea, before announcing a complete closure of the shipping route for any vessels destined to dock at the port of Eilat.

After the Houthis seized a number of ships, while attacking others with drone strikes, activity at Eilat has dropped some 85%. International and Israeli shipping companies have opted to take the long route, which in some cases takes an additional 12 days, to reach Israel with their cargo, a costly diversion to say the least. In opposition to this, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to the region and announced 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.

So, without a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution to back them up, usually required to make the militarisation 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 Ansarallah.

Under former US President Barack Obama, Washington backed the Saudi-led 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. The objective of the Saudi-led intervention, which received the backing of the US and UK, was to remove Ansarallah from power in the nation’s capital, Sanaa. Although the group does not enjoy international recognition as Yemen’s governing force, 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.

Ansarallah came to power following a popular revolution against then-Yemeni President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi in 2014. Months later, Hadi resigned and fled the country after Ansarallah militants had decided to take over by force. In the midst of a seven-year war, the political, social and armed movement that is often referred to as “the Houthi rebels” operates as the de facto government of Yemen, but is yet to receive recognition at the UN, which instead recognises the ‘Presidential Leadership Council’ that was created in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2022.

The context above is crucial for understanding the capabilities of Yemen’s Ansarallah, which was downplayed as a band of “Iran-backed rebels” in Western corporate media for years. While the governments of the collective West have tried to pretend that the Yemeni group is insignificant, Washington’s recent decision to form a multi-national naval coalition to confront the Houthis is an admission that they are a major regional actor. In fact, Ansarallah is the only Arab movement that controls state assets and a standing army that is participating in the ongoing war with Israel.

The reality that the US is now confronting is something that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE came to realize early last year. 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, Ansarallah had also demonstrated its developed missile and drone capabilities, striking valuable economic targets inside Saudi Arabia too.

Despite receiving a lot less attention than it deserved, Ansarallah forces strategically timed their second attack on the UAE to coincide with the arrival of Israeli President Isaac Herzog in the country. This was a clear message to the Emirati and Saudi leaderships that Western support will not provide sufficient security. It’s likely because of this threat from Yemen that Riyadh sought a security pact with the US, in order to make a normalization agreement with Israel possible. Such a security pact would have stipulated that an attack on one is an attack on all, hence dragging the Americans into a direct war against Yemen in the event that the conflict was to flare up again.

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, 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 in their war on Gaza, spelling out that there are no red lines as to how far the government of Benjamin Netanyahu can go, 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 Ansarallah 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.”

By every metric, US diplomatic stock has dropped 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 escalatory agenda, all of which are standing on the same side as Russia and China in calling for a ceasefire. The world sees the 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. Israel has killed this many people in just over two months, while in the first two years of the ISIS/Daesh insurgency in Iraq, the UN estimated that the terrorist group killed some 18,800 civilians. The total number of civilians killed by ISIS in Syria is set at just over 5,000.

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 repeatedly blocked ceasefire resolutions at the UNSC, 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: Ansarallah has said the blockade on ships to Israel will end when the war on Gaza ends. Washington has the ability to stop the war, but refuses to do so, while its threats against Yemen will not work to achieve any result beyond further escalation.

Robert Inlakesh is a political analyst, journalist and documentary filmmaker currently based in London, UK. He has reported from and lived in the Palestinian territories and currently works with Quds News. Director of ‘Steal of the Century: Trump’s Palestine-Israel Catastrophe’.

December 23, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US’ ‘Hypocritical’ Reversal on Saudi Arms Ban Won’t Knock Riyadh’s Peace Push Off Course

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 22.12.2023

The Biden administration is reportedly preparing to ease restrictions on the sale of offensive weaponry to Saudi Arabia, reversing a decision made in 2021 in a bid to put the Yemeni crisis to bed. The reversal is aimed at pulling Riyadh into Washington’s confrontation with the Houthis, but will surely fail, a Saudi foreign affairs observer says.

Washington is having trouble lining up allies to join its anti-Houthi Red Sea coalition.

The US-led alliance, formed to conduct a military operation dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden against Yemen’s Houthi militia, currently consists of a handful of countries, including the UK, Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway, plus Bahrain and the Seychelles. Some members’ participation seems purely decorative, with Norway reportedly planning to send 10 officers, the Netherlands two, and Denmark just one, to assist in the mission.

Spain has taken by far the most curious position to date, first backing an EU-level mission, but then changing its position and apparently vetoing the decision without explanation.

US AUKUS ally Australia has similarly dismissed requests to join Operation Prosperity Guardian in any major way, limiting its involvement to 11 military personnel.

Washington was pressed into forming its ‘new coalition of the willing’ in the wake of a string of Houthi hijackings and missile attacks on commercial cargo vessels thought [?] to be affiliated with Israel amid Tel Aviv’s ongoing war in Gaza. The attacks have caused multiple major global shipping companies to halt commercial transit through the Red Sea, with over $60 billion in cargoes already diverted to alternative routes, and losses expected to continue mounting.

US preparations for war against the Houthis mark a major reversal of policy for the current administration, which cut off US weapons support for the Saudi-led coalition’s campaign against the Yemeni militia in 2021, and delisted them as a ‘terrorist’ group. This, together with a series of other factors, pushed Riyadh into a major shakeup in its foreign policy, including peace talks with the Houthis, the normalization of ties with long-time regional rival Iran, and, most recently, joining the BRICS bloc.

Washington has accompanied its Houthi-related policy reversal with plans to lift an offensive weapons sales ban targeting Riyadh, presumably in a bid to get on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s good side and perhaps even rope him into supporting or even joining the US-led Red Sea coalition.

But Riyadh-based political analyst Dr. Ahmed Al Ibrahim doesn’t expect Washington’s sweet talking to have any substantive impact on Saudi Arabia’s stance vis-à-vis escalating regional tensions.

“Saudi Arabia is doing what’s best for Saudi Arabia. It does not matter whether this is for the US administration or for anybody else. As you know, MBS is trying to zero out the whole region from any conflict, and yet we are being challenged periodically with the concerns of the militias in the region like Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis,” Al Ibrahim told Sputnik.

Characterizing the US deployment of warships to the region as “a kind of hypocrisy” in the wake of the Biden administration’s previous attempts to starve Riyadh of military equipment to fight the Houthis, Al Ibrahim stressed that Saudi Arabia is doing its best to “move forward” instead of getting bogged down in another quagmire thanks to the US.

“Controlling the Houthis is now the US mandate. They need to deal with them,” Al Ibrahim emphasized. “I doubt if the United States will basically pull Saudi Arabia into the Houthi conflict. Saudi Arabia is a sovereign country and it will assess the situation. And I don’t think Saudi Arabia is going to contribute to that. Having Saudi Arabia involved in that, it’s one day [until] you get blamed by actually protecting your border and your security by the Americans. And if you don’t, also, you will get blamed. So I think Saudi Arabia is not going to get dragged into any war. Saudi Arabia has an economic vision that they need to be rich, and they will choose any day, anytime peace.”

If the US fails to play its cards right, the Saudi analyst predicts another power vacuum in the region like those left in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even further loss of support among Muslim countries by Washington.

“As you can see, the tone of the Middle East has risen against the United States because of the whole wrongdoing that the United States is doing to the region. But we are fed up with war,” Al Ibrahim stressed.

“America needs to restructure itself. They need to know what their goals are and who their allies are. And they need to understand the region much better because they’re losing a lot of ground to their competitors, unfortunately,” the observer said, citing China and Russia as two examples.

As far as Saudi Arabia’s cooperation with Russia is concerned, Al Ibrahim doesn’t expect any fledging security ties between the two countries to be frayed by Washington’s reversal on weapons sales. Trust with the Biden administration has been broken, and the bad taste left from the bad blood between the US president and MBS hasn’t gone anywhere, in his estimation.

“Maybe we get delayed spare parts for some of the jets, some of the weapons that Saudi Arabia needs. But we’ll see after the election of 2024,” Al Ibrahim summed up, hinting that a change of power may be necessary in Washington before Riyadh will consider restoring close ties.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | 1 Comment

US ‘Builds Trap for Itself’ in Red Sea

By Scott Ritter – Sputnik – 22.12.2023

On December 18, following a tour of the Middle East with stops in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Israel, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the establishment of Operation Prosperity Guardian, under the umbrella of Combined Task Force (CTF) 153, which focuses on security in the Red Sea, to protect maritime shipping.

Back on November 19, Yemen’s Houthi rebels, operating in solidarity with the Palestinians of Gaza, took over an Israeli-linked cargo ship, the Galaxy Leader. The Houthis announced that they would block all shipping transiting the Red Sea toward Israel—in effect establishing a blockade of Israel—until Israel allowed humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The Houthis have subsequently attacked numerous vessels passing through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a narrow passageway leading into the Red Sea and further on to the Suez Canal, threatening global trade as major oil and shipping giants, including BP, MSC, Evergreen, OOCL, and Maersk, suspended operations through the Red Sea. The damage to the Israeli economy done by the Houthi blockage is estimated to run into the billions of dollars, and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has threatened to use military force against the Houthis if the United States does not intervene on its behalf.

CTF 153, which has operated under both US and Egyptian command, is tasked with international maritime security and capacity-building efforts in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb, and Gulf of Aden. Its compliment of four ships—three US destroyers (the USS Carney, USS Mason, and USS Thomas Hudner) and the UK Royal Navy guided-missile destroyer HMS Diamond) have all been involved in intercepting Houthi missiles and drones fired against either Israel or merchant shipping operating in the Red Sea.

Austin also ordered Carrier Strike Group 2, consisting of aircraft carrier the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and three escorts (a cruiser and two destroyers), to join up with CTF 153 as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian. Ohio-class submarine the USS Florida, equipped with 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles, is also operating in the region.

Austin announced that the US and UK would be joined by Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles, and Spain as part of Operation Prosperity Guardian. Notable absentees include Arab nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Australia was asked to provide a warship, but offered [13] personnel only.

French Navy guided-missile frigate the FS Languedoc is already operating in the Red Sea and, like its US and UK counterparts, has been involved in the shooting down of Houthi drones and missiles. However, France has stated that the Languedoc will operate under French command, complicating its relationship with CTF 153.

Italy’s Defense Ministry has announced that it will deploy naval frigate the Virginio Fasanto the Red Sea. Its command relationship with CTF 153 remains unclear as of the present time.

The military problem facing CTF 153 is threefold. First, there is a need to establish a barrier defense against the Houthi missile and drone attacks. This will require that the guided missile destroyers and frigates establish a picket line along the eastern channel of the Bab al-Mandeb Straight which will screen shipping from any Houthi attack. Second, CTF 153 will need to engage in aggressive patrolling designed to deter and repel any Houthi efforts to repeat their hijacking of the Galaxy Leader. Lastly, CTF 153 will need to provide mine clearance capabilities to deal with any sea mines that the Houthis may place in the narrow waters of the Bab al-Mandeb.

These missions alone will be taxing, and difficult to accomplish. As things stand, while the CTF 153 ships have shot down dozens of Houthi drones and missiles, scores have gotten through, striking targets in Israel and hitting shipping in the Red Sea. Simply put, CTF 153 doesn’t have enough ships to adequately screen either Israel or maritime shipping from Houthi attack. And given the lack of mine warfare ships in the CTF 153 organization, any deployment of sea mines by the Houthis will effectively close the region from commercial shipping, and threaten military deployments in the area, until demining capability can be deployed.

The only way that Operation Prosperity Guardian could possibly keep the Bab al-Mandeb Straight open is to launch strikes against the Houthi capability of launching missiles and drones in hopes of interdicting them before they can be used. Here the plot thickens—the Houthis have made it clear that if attacked, they will expand the conflict to include Saudi and UAE oil production, threatening global energy supplies. Moreover, targeting mobile missile and drone launchers is no simple task—Saudi Arabia, using US intelligence support to assist in targeting, was unable to prevent the Houthis from launching missiles and drones against Saudi targets during the entirety of its ongoing conflict with the Houthis. The US would likely run into similar problems.

In short, by initiating Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US appears to have built a trap for itself, where it is damned if it doesn’t attack the Houthi (since the Red Sea would remain blocked to all Israeli traffic), and damned if it does (since it wouldn’t be able to stop the Houthi attacks, and such action would likely expand the scope and scale of the conflict to the detriment of US interests.)

Keep in mind that all of this could have been solved with a single phone call from US President Joe Biden to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu directing Israel to accept a ceasefire and allow humanitarian aid to be sent to the Palestinian residents of Gaza. Instead, the United States is destroying its moral standing in the world by openly facilitating the ongoing slaughter of Palestinian civilians at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces, while simultaneously undermining the credibility of US military deterrence by getting itself mired in a tar baby of its own making.

The deployment of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower into the Sea of Aden comes on the heels of its brief foray into the Persian Gulf, where it was closely monitored by Iran. The US has also deployed a second carrier battlegroup, consisting of the USS Gerald R. Ford and its six escorts, in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Meanwhile, the USS Carl Vinson and its five escorts operate just over the horizon, in the South China Sea.

Never in the history of the American Navy have so many carrier battlegroups been moved around the globe with so little impact.

The reality of modern warfare is that small nations and non-state actors such as the Houthis can be armed with modern military weaponry which negates the military impact of multibillion-dollar investments such as the carrier battlegroup. It costs the Houthis tens of thousands of dollars to fire its drones and missiles against Israel and maritime shipping; it costs the US Navy millions of dollars to shoot them down. Moreover, it costs the US navy hundreds of millions of dollars just to keep a carrier battle group deployed and operating, while the Houthis can credibly threaten to sink a carrier using weapons that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The final score card regarding Operation Prosperity Guardian has yet to be written. But the reality is that it will most likely not succeed in its mission of preventing Houthi attacks against either Israel or maritime shipping. This failure goes far beyond the issue of security for the Red Sea. The United States has long maintained that it could guarantee that if Iran ever sought to close the strategic Straight of Hormuz, the US Navy would be able to reopen it in a very short period. Operation Prosperity Guardian puts a lie to that claim. The fact is, the world balance of power has changed dramatically, and legacy systems like the carrier battlegroup are no longer the dominant means of power projection they once were. The US has, in effect, put all its eggs in one basket through its over-reliance upon the carrier battlegroup when it comes to force projection.

The looming failure of Operation Prosperity Guardian exposes the impotence of the US when it comes to being able to accomplish its plans for regional dominance in the Persian Gulf, South Pacific, and Taiwan, and signals a new era where the appearance of an American fleet of the shores of a far way land no longer inspires fear and intimidation. For a nation like the United States, which has premised so much of its foreign and national security on the notion of strength-based deterrence, the revelation that its military power projection capabilities are more bark than bite undermines its credibility as an ally and partner in a world largely defined by conflicts created by, or on behalf of, the United States.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Attacking Yemen Is a Waste of Time, Money and Resources

By Declan Hayes | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 22, 2023

What to do with a problem like Yemen and its 2,000 km (1,200 mile) long Red Sea coastline? And indeed with Eritrea, Djibouti and Somali, all three of which share maritime borders with Yemen.

The issue is that Yemen’s Houthi have decided that all ships using the Red Sea that have any connection, near or far, with Israel, are legitimate targets for its batteries of missiles some of which, as previously discussed, are almost unstoppable ballistic missiles.

The problem is how to sail Israeli and other targeted ships through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and thence onwards to pay the $500,000-$1,000,000 toll to sail through Egypt’s Suez Canal. This problem is compounded by (Russia’s) dark and grey fleets, which transfer embargoed oil, being allowed free passage and the Chinese, which have a major naval base in nearby Djibouti, playing schlump about the whole matter. NATO’s problem is how to deal with the Houthi, whilst also marginalising China, Iran and Russia, all three of which have very big dogs in this very important fight.

Although diplomacy would seem an obvious candidate to help resolve matters NATO, in its wisdom, long ago discarded that card and China is, in any event, playing a totally different and far more incendiary global game.

On top of all that, NATO’s major shipping lines have their own profiteering demands, which further complicate matters. In essence, those major companies want NATO to escort all its ships, and not just those flying NATO flags, in convoy through the Red Sea. Although that would benefit them, NATO is primarily obliged to protect its own fleet and not the 40% of the world’s ships that fly the flags of open registry countries like Panama, Liberia and the Marshall Islands or, heaven forbid, that transport dark or grey cargo on behalf of Russia and its partners. And, if that were not enough, many non-eligible ships carry military ordnance for NATO and, most likely, Israel as well.

Even if NATO were, like Tom Hanks in Greyhound, to convoy some or all of those ships through the Red Sea, there is no guarantee that they would not be hit there or further up the chain, say in the Suez Canal itself. Although convoys are a risk those large shipping companies should probably run, their extreme risk aversion means they instead prefer to detour past the entire African continent and thereby weaken NATO’s already weak supply chains by needlessly extending them. NATO’s shipping companies are divided on how best to respond and, of course, a house divided cannot stand.

The second and third options are to plonk NATO armadas off the Yemeni coast, to send marines and French legionaries ashore and to bomb the living shit out of the Yemeni, to poke the Houthi hornet’s nest, in other words and make them bleed, something they are long inured to.

Although these are scenarios NATO’s High Command has yet to fully war game out, retired US Vice Admiral James Stavridris, who now fronts the Carlyle Group, summarises the main issues in this revealing article, where he points to the domino effect on global supply chains, where combatting swarms of cheap Houthi (and, later Iranian?) drones is a very expensive proposition and where alternative options to obliterate the Houthi threat are haram.

These other options include arming merchant shipping with appropriate weaponry, a solution that would be unacceptable to any neutral port the ships might like to dock in. Stavridris’ solution, unsurprisingly for NATO’s former military commander, is to bomb the living shit out of Yemen, “to carry out offensive strikes against targets ashore, perhaps using Tomahawk missiles and attack aircraft from the carrier USS Eisenhower, now patrolling the Gulf of Oman.”

All well and good but the Houthi are mobile and they have a lot of real estate to play about in, not only in Yemen itself but in contiguous countries. And that is before we consider Iran’s plans to have giant flotillas of small but highly armed speedboats causing mayhem in nearby waters, should the need arise. You can swat all the Houthi and Iranian mosquitoes you like but you will still get badly bitten.

Stavridris is undeterred by any of that. He believes that if saturation bombing does not work, “it would be entirely appropriate to strike the sponsor — Iran — especially its maritime infrastructure in the north Indian Ocean and the Gulf. This could include oil and gas platforms, port facilities and patrol vessels of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

All of which makes eminent sense if the problem is a solitary nail and NATO’s navy is, as it always seems to be, a hammer capable of hammering down only one defenceless group of people at a time.

The issue here is that the Houthi, perhaps in cahoots with Iran, have shown that global supply lines are easily interdicted and Stavridis, Hanks and their Hollywood armadas notwithstanding, NATO and its merchant marine fleet can no longer ride roughshod over even marginal players like the Houthi, Hezbollah and Hamas, never mind Russia and, with regards to Asian waters, China, whose Fishing Militia has helped inspire Iran to form its own Maritime Militia of some 55,000 voluntary forces with 33,000 vessels.

And then there is NATO’s very odd toehold of Djibouti, which is home to military bases belonging to Germany, Spain, Italy, France, the United States, Britain, China, and Saudi Arabia, with Russia and India also being eager to set up shop there. Not only does Djibouti depend on the rents from these bases to stay afloat but Djibouti’s growing national debt is such that she can have no independent diplomatic leverage. Djibouti’s increased debt to China, which promised to make it another Dubai, means that it is a “black box” of a looming danger in the region – a danger that arises from the competition over military bases that goes much beyond the Houthi’s pinpricks.

If the Houthi were not already sufficiently riled up, NATO’s plans to build a Ben Gurion Canal from the Gulf of Aqaba via a flattened Gaza to the Mediterranean is sure to really get up their noses. Leaving all other considerations aside, Aqaba is best known in the West from Lawrence of Arabia, where Hollywood heart throb Peter O’Toole led Arab tribesmen to a famous victory over the Turks embedded there, even though that assault put the infamous Sykes-Picot Agreement to carve up Ottoman Arabia in jeopardy.

Though the consequences of the Sykes Picot Agreement and the related Balfour Declaration still have the noses of the Houthi and very many others out of joint, it seems NATO is prepared to play this game through to the end not only in the Gulf of Suez, the Gulf of Aqaba and the other West Asian choke points the Houthi and their allies have a presence in but much further afield to the Strait of Malacca and the Taiwan Strait as well. And, though the hammer happy US Vice Admiral James Stavridris no doubt has a solution for them factored around Tomahawk missiles, US marines and French paratroopers, one can only surmise that NATO’s adventurism in the Red Sea is the latest of several nails it is hammering into its own coffin.

December 22, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Houthis are turning the tables on everyone

By Dr Mohammad Makram Balawi | MEMO | December 21, 2023

The escalating attacks on ships in the Arabian Sea and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait by the Houthi movement in Yemen pose a real threat to the Israeli, Western and American economies. The Red Sea is one of the world’s busiest shipping routes for oil and gas. Most of the major shipping companies, such as the world’s largest container company, Italian and Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Denmark-based Maersk, Germany’s Hapag-Lloyd, and France’s CMA CGM have suspended their use of the Red Sea.

Due to the Houthi attacks, ships now have to go around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, adding 4,000 nautical miles to the journey. This will result in the doubling of the shipping costs, to $4,000 per forty-foot container. According to experts, this change is due to the extra fuel cost of $1 million for each vessel going via the Cape instead of the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

The Houthis are apparently applying an ethically justified approach built on the same logic used by the Israeli occupation state. Israel besieges the Gaza Strip and grants itself the right to do so. With this logic, the group grants itself the right to besiege Israel and links the opening of the strait to lifting the Israeli blockade on Gaza.

As the attacks intensify and pose a real danger to maritime routes, causing many companies to fear using the Red Sea and raising the cost of insurance and transportation, the US has announced the formation of an international naval coalition intended to protect cargo vessels. Ironically, though, the US is the largest country to impose blockades on other states and use sanctions as a weapon.

While previous US presidents considered any foreign war as an opportunity to rally the American people behind them and give themselves an electoral boost, the situation under President Joe Biden is different. He is the main advocate of the war against Russia in Ukraine, which he is losing despite throwing billions of dollars into it. Engaging in an armed confrontation with the Houthis would be a resounding failure, since the group has little to lose and does not fear war. Indeed, it would gain more legitimacy as the only force in Yemen to be fighting imperialism. Moreover, its war with the Saudi-led Arab coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, has shown that it is resilient, and able to force the coalition to freeze combat missions after years of fighting.

The outbreak of another war in this region would mean serious long-term disruption and increased transportation costs, as well as rising fuel and energy costs for end users. This would have a major impact on Europe during the winter given the already suspended supplies of oil and gas from Russia. Crude oil prices are already creeping up.

The impact of a war would be challenging for Biden as well. The US president sees himself as the, not a, world leader, but he faces difficult choices. He is accused of corruption and faces domestic issues, as does his rival, former President Donald Trump. In addition, the existing wars and crises are having long-term negative impacts on Washington’s standing and international influence.

Despite this, it seems to be impossible for Americans to consider alternative, more intelligent means to approach problems instead of military “shock and awe”. The US and its protégé Israel have always tried to play the role of gods in international politics, where what they want becomes a reality regardless of international laws and conventions. This may succeed in the short term, but it backfires in the long run, as seen in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Armed interference in all of these countries has drained the US and its people, who are generally controlled by the political, economic and media elites.

These elites combined work systemically to nurture violence among American citizens, implanting a gung-ho mentality with war seen as the most effective way to solve international problems. Hollywood and video games instill the idea of US (and Israeli) exceptionalism and invulnerability in the minds of the public, so that it becomes easy to recruit them to fight and die in the elite’s battles. The US helps to spread racism in the world by creating divisions among people and inciting them against each other. The old principle well-loved by settler-colonial states is divide and rule; people are easier to manipulate, helping to ensure the concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite that fosters racism.

A simple comparison with cinema in Iran — which the US designates as a sponsor of terrorism — reveals a stark difference. Iranian cinema only rarely focuses on humanitarian and social topics, and hardly ever depicts violence, unlike Hollywood, which thrives on screen violence, normalising it and de-sensitising the audience to the extent that people find it easier to harm their fellow human beings in the service and interests of the elite.

While the economy is failing and education is facing great challenges in America, the government is spending trillions of dollars on unjustified and futile wars, including the one which Israel is waging against the Palestinian people. Sinking more and more resources in the quagmire of the Middle East will only lead to more suffering within America and abroad. Likewise, what is happening in Yemen will have an impact worldwide, not just in Gaza.

The consequences of a war against the Houthis will be much broader, dragging the Zionist colonial project and Western imperialism into a hellish scenario. Regardless of what the Zionists and their supporters in the West believe, they did not create a safe haven for Jews when they created the state of Israel in the heart of the Arab world. The Houthis are turning the tables on everyone in their defence of the Palestinians against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

December 21, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | 1 Comment

DC-Based Think Tank: Red Sea Operation to Cost Biden Regime Highly

By Ekaterina Blinova – Sputnik – 21.12.2023

The military op against the Houthis will be expensive for the US, especially if it escalates into a regional conflict, a DC-based think tank has warned.

The Houthis have made it clear that they are to proceed with attacks in the Red Sea following US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s announcement of a new US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian in the region.

As per the Pentagon, the Yemeni Shiite group has carried out 100 drone and missile attacks since October 7. The Houthis have recently stepped up their assaults in the Red Sea against US warships and Israeli-linked vessels in a bid to force Tel Aviv into halting its ground operation in the Gaza Strip.

The assaults have demonstrated that the Yemen militants possess a sizable and relatively advanced arsenal, according to the US press. What’s more, Houthi drones and missiles are cheaper than US interceptors used to shoot them down.

Therefore, it would cost Washington a “pretty penny” to defend the sea lanes going through the Suez Canal and the Red Sea, according to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft:

  • Each US munition used to intercept the Houthi rockets and drones costs between $1 million and $4.3 million;
  • US missiles reportedly used to shoot down Houthi projectiles and UAVs include the SM-2 ($2.1 million); SM-6 ($4.3 million); ESSM Sea Sparrows ($1.7 million); and Rolling Airframe missile ($905,000);
  • US ships cannot reload in the Red Sea and will have to return to port if the kinetic activity goes on much longer, which also means additional costs.

The conflict in the Red Sea threatens to become protracted given that neither warring side is inclined to back down.

The Biden administration has already gathered a 10-nation coalition and sent additional warships to the region. Top Houthi commander Mohammed al-Bukhaiti tweeted on December 19 that “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our military operations will not stop … no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” Israel is also showing no signs of scaling down its military op in the Gaza Strip where civilian casualties are continuing to stockpile.

Under these circumstances, there is a serious threat of the Red Sea turning into a new war theater, according to the DC-based think tank.

In that case, the costs related to the US-led task force in the Red Sea could become much higher, especially at the time when the US has been depleting its military arsenals supporting proxy war efforts in Ukraine and Israel’s Gaza war.

To complicate matters further, the Red Sea op may expose US troops and sailors to danger. “It is important for the American people to assess if what happens next is truly in the national interest,” the DC-based think tank concluded.

December 21, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , | Leave a comment

Journalist: The US and Israel are in a quagmire, and the end is clear for everybody to see

By Fantine Gardinier – Sputnik – 20.12.2023

If the US decides to launch direct attacks on Yemeni forces imposing a blockade against Israeli shipping in the Red Sea, it will only make Washington’s tenuous situation in the Middle East worse and expand the conflict across the region at a time when the US public is increasingly opposed to such wars, a journalist told Sputnik.

Several major global shipping companies announced that they are to seek alternate routes from the Red Sea after the Yemeni militant group Ansarallah, better known as the Houthi movement, closed it to Israeli cargo traffic, throwing global trade into chaos. In response, the US has mobilized an international task force dubbed Operation Prosperity Guardian to keep the sea lanes open.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is weighing whether its patrols will be purely defensive in nature or will also include offensive strikes against Ansarallah targets in Yemen, which the group mostly controls after eight years of brutal civil war and Saudi-led military intervention.

Ansarallah’s actions, which include capturing several Israel-linked vessels in the area in recent weeks, are in response to Tel Aviv’s invasion of Gaza, which has killed nearly 20,000 people and displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million. The group has also fired ballistic missiles at the southern Israeli port of Eilat on the Gulf of Aqaba in the northern Red Sea.

Beirut-based broadcaster and journalist Laith Marouf told Sputnik that the multinational task force assembled by the US includes several European allies but also Bahrain, a small Persian Gulf state that hosts a massive US Navy base, and the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean with a coast guard composed of nine small patrol boats used to combat piracy and illegal fishing.

“This is the alliance that the United States is going to face Yemen with to try to allow shipping to go through to the Zionist colony and not make it feel the pain that the Palestinians are feeling with the blockade in Gaza,” he said.

“The [recent] attack that the government in Sana’a did on the two ships in the Red Sea was the first attack recorded in any military of a ballistic missile hitting a naval target that is moving at 60-somewhat knots, which was [the speed at which] these ships were moving. So we see now that the Yemenis have actually some of the most advanced land-to-sea missiles in the world.

“Knowing that the American aircraft carrier is now parked on the shorelines of Somalia facing Yemen, they are in the range of these missiles. Probably the Yemenis will not need to hit this aircraft carrier if the United States actually attacks Yemen or any of the sites of launching these missiles from Yemen. The Yemeni forces, all they have to do is sink a few destroyers and that aircraft carrier will scurry running back home because it wouldn’t have any protection.”

“This is now a dangerous game that the United States is playing, all to defend this Zionist colony. And the American people hearing us right now must understand that the deaths of any American soldiers that are going to come in the next few days will be because the United States is defending the Zionist colony and is not defending itself. They will be dying for the sake of Israel,” he said.

“Canadian, French, British and American ships will be sinking if the United States or this coalition dares to attack Yemen. Yemen has been under attack for a decade by the United States and its vassals in the region, and even the vassals that were co-operating in the attacks on Yemen – namely the Saudi government and the United Arab Emirates government – have refused to join this coalition. Why? Because their assets will be fried if the United States attacks Yemen. And this is why we’re seeing right now: these vassals are each one of them being given a role.”

“The Emirates and the Saudis are continuing to allow trade to come through their ports on trucks to Jordan to the Zionist colony, and they’re all going to be kept out of this war. In this situation, it’s not only that their assets, their oilfields, would be attacked if they join this coalition, but also because they need to continue to be the lifeline of the Zionist colony in terms of trade in the future as this rolls out,” Marouf said.

Marouf added that “we will be entering a new stage of this war” if Yemen fires back on the coalition ships because it will trigger wider attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria by allied militia forces, which have been happening at a somewhat low intensity since early October.

The Axis of Resistance’s regional coordination against Israel and its allies “is going to be taught in military schools and strategists’ schools for decades to come,” Marouf told Sputnik.

“What has been rolling out for the last two and a half months, clearly, the Resistance Axis that includes all these groups in Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Palestine, Yemen and Iran are very coordinated,” he said.

“They have all now shared all their capabilities in terms of military and training. So we see units of each one of these components that fought in the different battlefields across the last 15 years in the region. And the technology knowledge on building capabilities has been passed along across this whole region. So now we have a more kind of homogeneous coalition between these groups.

“They all have one thing that they agree on, which is ending American presence in the region and then sovereignty for the peoples. So to see them, how they are playing out right now, each one of them, their own role separately is a brilliant thing to watch. And the United States and Israel are in a quagmire, and the end is clear for everybody to see.”

Growing US Public Opposition

He likewise noted that opposition to the Israeli attack on Gaza has continued to grow in the United States, where new protests are happening daily in hundreds of cities and towns, and constituents are pressuring politicians to take a stand against the war.

“For the American voters, it’s becoming problematic as we come closer and closer to the elections in the United States. Both parties are championing genocide and the Zionist colony, and the vast majority of Americans do not want to be associated with this genocide and do not want their country to carry the brunt of financing and weaponizing this genocide,” he said.

“So what happens in the next election? I think Palestine, just like Vietnam in the 1970s, is going to be one of the decisive things that drive this election and actually the conversation of the United States as a whole. And I hope people of all walks of life take advantage of how Palestine now has exposed all the true lines of power and the limitations of the so-called ‘democracy and freedoms’ that were touted to be given to them and figure out something before the next election. Maybe to push for a third party, if that’s even possible at this moment.”

“But if the United States is in a regional war that is spilling into a global war before this election, it may be that this election will never happen in the United States. I’m maybe too pessimistic, but I see things from now till next year, if this war keeps on going in the stages that are and how long these stages are taking us, as we see it now, it’s taking us two and a half months to get to the stage of real possibility of a regional war. And once this a regional war, how long is it going to take for it to become a global world war? Those are things that may be indicating that all this experiment of democracy in the West is dead.”

Israel’s Economy in Dire Straits

Marouf noted that Israel was suffering severe economic repercussions due to the war, not just from the recently imposed Yemeni blockade, but also due to the constant bombardments from Gaza, the simmering border war with Hezbollah, and simply due to having mobilized hundreds of thousands of citizens into the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).

“There are 7 million ‘Jewish colonists’ in Palestine and already close to a million of them have left. And you know, many of them already have second citizenships, and we heard countries like Portugal all talk about 10,000 Israeli families applying for citizenship. These are the ones that don’t have citizenship that are already applying to European countries. And so we have an exit from the Zionist colony on a scale that we haven’t seen ever since 1948. And now we also, of course, all the economy of the state is at a total standstill because they have mobilized so many people into the military.”

“Ansarullah, the government in Yemen, has been able to shut down all trade, almost 88% of trade has stopped into the [Israeli] ports, even the ones in the Mediterranean. Because remember now, although all the ones that were supposed to go to the Red Sea port in the Aqaba Gulf had to turn around.

“So now there’s a delay in an empty space in Israeli ports for the next two weeks. So, the country is in a total standstill and it’s now living off the handouts coming from the West. And the American public has an ability to make a difference if they cut these handouts, because this country cannot continue to exist at this moment without that.”

December 20, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

If US can clear way for ‘cease-fire in Gaza’, Red Sea problem would be solved

By Yang Sheng | Global Times | December 19, 2023 

The US-led joint patrol in the Red Sea following Houthi militia attacks against ships heading toward Israel shows that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in Gaza is not only affecting the whole region, but also the international community. Chinese analysts pointed out that the root cause of the trade route problem is the ongoing conflict in Gaza, and only a sustainable cease-fire and allowing humanitarian aid to enter Gaza via land and sea routes can solve the problem in the Red Sea.

China will pay close attention to the situation, and Chinese naval vessels that conduct UN authorized anti-piracy missions in the region will keep performing their duty, analysts said, adding that China will stick to the priority of realizing a cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid for the people in Gaza, rather than joining the US to conduct any military operations without UN authorization to escalate the crisis in Gaza.

The US and a host of other nations are creating a new force to protect ships transiting the Red Sea that have come under attack by drones and ballistic missiles fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Tuesday in Bahrain, the AP reported.

The UK, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain have joined, Austin said. Some of those countries will conduct joint patrols while others will provide intelligence support in the southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The Houthi militia attacked two commercial ships in the Red Sea with naval drones on Monday. The recent attacks have caused concerns about the impact on the passage of oil, grain and other goods on what is an important global trade route, and have pushed up the cost of insuring and shipping goods through the Red Sea, Reuters reported.

The Shanghai-based news website The Paper reported on Tuesday that following other international shipping companies including Denmark’s Maersk and France’s CMA, Chinese shipping giants like COSCO and Orient Overseas Container Line (OOCL) also suspended transport through the Red Sea.

Ma Xiaolin, dean of the Institute for Studies on the Mediterranean Rim at Zhejiang International Studies University, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the trade route via the Red Sea is truly important for China as it connects Europe, Asia and Africa, so China will pay close attention to the situation.

“However, although China has naval vessels in the region, their mission is about anti-piracy, rather than intervening in regional issues and other countries’ internal affairs. Only a solution to the ongoing crisis in Gaza can effectively solve the problem in the Red Sea,” Ma said.

On December 9, Al Jazeera reported that the armed group in Yemen claimed that “it will target all ships heading to Israel, regardless of their nationality, and warned all international shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports.”

“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicines it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” the group’s spokesperson said in a statement on Saturday, according to Al Jazeera.

Song Zhongping, a Chinese military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Tuesday that the “Houthis are specifically targeting Israel, so it’s unlikely it will attack Chinese vessels. China doesn’t need to be too worried about the situation and the Chinese warships in the region will stick to their plan.”

“China will keep making efforts to realize a sustainable cease-fire and clear the way for humanitarian aid to get into the Gaza Strip. This is the real priority that needs to be done,” Wang Jin, an associate professor at the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies at Northwest University, told the Global Times on Tuesday.

If Washington and its allies want to solve the Red Sea problem, they should play a responsible role in the UN Security Council to pass a cease-fire resolution and to put concrete efforts into improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which would be more effective than sending warships to conduct joint patrols, experts said.

The humanitarian situation in Gaza remains severe. According to Reuters on Tuesday, Israeli missiles and air strikes on the Rafah area in southern Gaza struck three houses killing at least 20 Palestinians, Gaza health officials said on Tuesday. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians have crammed into Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt to escape Israeli bombardments.

The lack of unity in the UN that is mainly caused by the US is another key reason why the situation is far from easing. The UN Security Council delayed until Tuesday morning a vote on an Arab-sponsored resolution calling for a halt to hostilities in Gaza to allow for urgently needed aid deliveries to a massive number of civilians as members intensified negotiations to try to avoid another veto by the US, the AP reported.

Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said at a routine press conference on Tuesday that “the UN General Assembly has adopted two resolutions with an overwhelming majority. We hope the US will listen to the voice of the international community, stop single-handedly blocking Security Council resolutions, and play its due role to promote an immediate cease-fire and prevent an even larger humanitarian catastrophe.”

December 20, 2023 Posted by | Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

US Escalation in the Red Sea – A Lose/Lose Proposition

By Russell Bentley – Sputnik – 19.12.2023

The latest escalation in world military affairs, the situation in the Red Sea and Yemen, has the real potential to eclipse both the war in Ukraine and the invasion of Gaza, both in terms of military and economic impact, on a global scale.

The hubris and abject idiocy of US plans to open yet another conflict that they cannot hope to win, and that cannot lead to anything but the destruction of the world economy can only be described as criminally insane.

In a recent letter to “Dear America”, the Houthi leaders wrote, “A desperate plea for reflection. The consequences are dire, and the responsibility lies with the guardians of the American dream. Beware, for the path you tread upon carries weighty consequences, reverberating across oceans and continents. Choose wisely…” The choice is between demanding an end to the Gaza humanitarian tragedy or escalating the conflict into a war that will have global consequences. The US has already announced its intention to choose the latter. It is a choice for which the American people, if they allow it to happen, will suffer gravely.

The US and UK have moved at least 24 combat ships into the seas off the coast of Yemen, ostensibly “to protect global shipping lanes”. This is a lie. The Houthis have clearly stated that, one, that they are only targeting ships serving Israeli interests, and that all other shipping is under no threat, and two, that they are willing to cease all military operations against Israeli shipping as soon as Israel stops its attacks on Gaza and the West Bank.

It is ONLY Israeli shipping that is under threat, and it is ONLY Israeli shipping that US and UK naval forces are deployed to protect. But by escalating the situation in the Red Sea, they are putting at risk ALL shipping passing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which accounts for 12% of all global trade and 30% of all container shipping, as well as about 8% of world trade in both oil and LNG, for a total annual value of over a trillion US dollars.

As things stand now, only Israel-linked shipping is at risk, and even that risk can be completely eliminated by the cessation of Israeli attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. But if the US attacks Yemen, the Houthis will respond, and they do have the capability to sink US Navy ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. And once that happens, the Red Sea becomes an active war zone, and then, all bets are off, along with all shipping in the Red Sea, and 12% of all global trade. Think about it…

US Navy and allies deployment in the Middle East © Russel Bentley

The economies of the EU nations are already in serious decline. The US national debt stands at over $33 TRILLION, and the era of the US dollar’s reserve currency status in global trade is closing fast. A 12% overnight decline in global trade would almost certainly lead these economies into economic depression equivalent to the Great Depression of almost 100 years ago. As I have said many times before, economic war and military war are two sides of the same coin. The Houthis have a major economic advantage based on their geography to influence and even threaten global economic activity, and have proven their ability and willingness to use it. And it is by no means certain that the Western armada assembled along the Yemeni coast can even defeat the Houthis militarily without unacceptable and unsustainable losses.

According to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Houthis are known to possess two types of larger anti-ship ballistic missiles: The Asef, which has a 450km range, and the Tankil,which has a range of 500km. These missiles can travel at speeds up to Mach 5, and carry warheads of between 300 to 500 kg. (By comparison, Chinese anti-ship missiles with 600 kg warheads have been dubbed “Aircraft Carrier Killers”.) The range of these missiles allows the Houthis to cover not only the southern third of the Red Sea, but all of the Gulf of Aden and much of the Arabian Sea as well. With the exception of the USS Indianapolis and the USCG ships in the Gulf of Oman, all of the US/UK naval ships in the graphic above are already within range of Houthi missiles.

After almost ten years of civil war against the Yemeni government backed by the US and a Saudi-led coalition, the Houthis remain an undefeated and powerful fighting force, still in control of about 20% of Yemen, in the northern and western parts along the Red Sea. Though a recent ceasefire was brokered by China and based on Saudi – Iranian rapprochement, the situation in Yemen remains volatile, exacerbated by Israel’s recent attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. With the US threatened escalation, the global military and economic risks increase by orders of magnitude.

The Houthis demands are clear and precise: Stop the attacks on Palestinians, and the threats to Israeli shipping will cease. Escalate, and the Houthi response will be asymmetrical and world-changing. To any who might scoff at the idea of a rebel army in an impoverished 3rd world country being able to take on the US military, I would simply remind them of the fact that the US has failed to achieve any meaningful victory in any of the wars it has started over the last 30 years.
The choice is clear – either end the Palestinian tragedy, or unleash a global catastrophe of unimaginable proportions. The US government has announced its ill-advised decision to choose the latter option. It is up to all good people in the world, and US citizens in particular, to prevent this global and suicidal miscalculation from taking place, or suffer the consequences.

December 19, 2023 Posted by | Wars for Israel | , , | 2 Comments

US pressures Saudi Arabia to postpone imminent peace deal with Yemen

The Cradle | December 18, 2023

The US is exerting pressure on Saudi Arabia to delay the signing of a peace agreement with Yemen and instead join an expanded maritime protection task force to confront Yemeni attacks against Israeli-linked ships in the Red Sea.

According to a report by Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a draft peace deal between Sanaa and Riyadh has been finalized. It could be signed before the end of the year, potentially ending a NATO-backed war that has decimated the Arab world’s poorest country for eight years.

“Saudi Arabia is going through a difficult test between two options […] Either it will emerge from the Yemeni quagmire under a roadmap agreed upon with Sanaa, or it will submit to US dictates and join the international maritime coalition, and this means remaining vulnerable to [western] blackmail,” the Al-Akhbar report details.

Despite the pressure from Washington, the kingdom is reportedly “continuing on the path to peace” and is working to “speed up” the completion of the peace agreements to avoid “further obstruction by the Emiratis or local agents.”

Saudi and Yemeni negotiators have given their final comments on the agreement. The revised version was recently delivered to UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, who has started coordinating an official peace ceremony.

According to Al-Akhbar’s sources in Riyadh and Sanaa, the peace deal includes the complete lifting of a land, sea, and air blockade imposed on Yemen by the Saudi-led coalition, a “consensual mechanism” to pay the salaries of public employees, and the free export of oil from Saudi-controlled regions.

“The ball is in Riyadh’s court, which is under US pressure to delay the signing and enter into a war alliance against Yemen in the Red Sea,” Al-Akhbar highlights, adding that UAE-backed forces are also looking to derail the peace process.

A peace agreement between Saudi Arabia and Yemen would significantly hamper US efforts to deploy an international naval task force to the Red Sea to protect Israel’s maritime trade.

“The force, provisionally entitled Operation Prosperity Guardian, is due to be announced by the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, when he visits [West Asia],” UK daily The Guardian reported on 17 December.

The US war chief is set to visit Israel later this week to meet with senior officials. According to the British outlet, western officials believe Washington has secured the involvement of Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, Oman, Egypt, and Bahrain.

For the past several weeks, the Yemeni armed forces have been launching attacks on Israeli-linked commercial vessels attempting to cross the Bab al-Mandab Strait south of the Suez Canal.

In response, five of the world’s largest shipping companies have announced a complete cessation of activities in the vital sea route. These are Hong Kong-based OOCL, France’s CMA CGM, the Danish Maersk, the German Hapag-Lloyd, and the Italian-Swiss-owned Mediterranean Shipping Co.

December 18, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

US Sends Carrier Strike Group to Gulf of Aden Amid Houthi Attacks – Reports

Sputnik – 17.12.2023

The US Department of Defense has recently dispatched a carrier strike group to the Gulf of Aden in response to attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Ansar Allah rebel movement, also known as the Houthis, American press reported, citing anonymous officials.

Earlier in the day, the War Zone website reported, citing an unnamed Pentagon official, that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will announce the launch of an international operation dubbed Prosperity Guardian during his trip to the Middle East next week to protect ships in the Red Sea from the threat posed by the Houthis.

“The Pentagon has in recent days moved the Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group from the Persian Gulf into the Gulf of Aden, off the coast of Yemen, to support a potential US response to attacks,” the official told the newspaper.

Another official was quoted as saying that the US military also gave commanders the option to “strike the Houthis.”

On Saturday, the Semafor news portal reported, citing officials from the administration of US President Joe Biden, that the Pentagon was considering the possibility of striking Houthi military targets in response to increased attacks on ships in the Red Sea.

On Friday, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Iran should take steps to end the threat to shipping posed by the Houthis in the Red Sea.

The Houthis have earlier said that they would continue to prevent the passage in the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea of ships linked to Israeli companies or bound for Israel until Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip ends.

After the armed conflict between Israel and Palestinian movement Hamas resumed on October 7, the Houthis have conducted multiple missile and drone attacks, threatening civilian infrastructure in Israel and commercial shipping operating in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

December 17, 2023 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »