Kathianne
07-24-2024, 10:02 AM
Incompetence all the way down:
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/a-turning-point-in-the-u-s-iran-shadow-war/
JULY 23, 2024 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A Turning Point in the U.S.-Iran Shadow War?
by Seth Mandel
The tagline of the seminal reality-tv show, MTV’s The Real World, was: Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. It was a lesson the Iran-backed Houthis learned over the weekend after killing an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv with a drone and receiving a clear message in the form of an Israeli air force strike in response. In the past few months, the Houthis have only earned retaliation from the U.S.
And that American retaliation has been nothing if not polite.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, has been unusually assertive of late in warning the administration and in particular Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Americans were going to get killed if the administration refused to do more than fire mostly symbolic strikes at the Houthis.
“Kurilla called in his letter to Austin for a stepped-up ‘whole of government’ effort against the Houthis, employing economic, diplomatic and potentially stronger military pressure to discourage attacks on ships in the Red Sea and a narrow strait known as Bab el-Mandeb, off Yemen’s coast,” reported the Journal.
The White House’s strategy has thus far centered on trying to destroy Houthi missiles and drones before they are launched. The Pentagon countered Kurilla’s criticism by insisting it has destroyed “a significant amount of Houthi capability,” which highlights the weakness of the strategy in the first place: The Houthis are still firing, so is the Pentagon’s position that this will continue until they run out of missiles, and that they will run out of missiles sooner because of U.S. strikes? Do they happen to know when that might be?
The most important metric here is deterrence. If the response hasn’t altered the Houthis’ ability to threaten the sea lanes, then the overall number of missiles we’ve blown up doesn’t matter much. Kurilla seems to speak for a not-insignificant part of the defense establishment that would like permission to, as the Journal puts it, “carry out a broader range of strikes.”
“If you tell the military to re-establish freedom of navigation and then you tell them to only be defensive, it isn’t going to work,” one U.S. official told the paper. “It is all about protecting ships without affecting the root cause.”
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is flirting with providing the Houthis with antiship cruise missiles, which would certainly make U.S. officials wish the conflict had been solved already. In fact, Russia is leveling that threat as a direct response to U.S. support for Ukraine, more proof that the conflicts cannot be compartmentalized and treated as if in a vacuum. As if to reinforce the point, on Tuesday a Ukrainian security team guarding a cargo ship in the Red Sea appears to have destroyed a Houthi naval drone fired at their vessel.
Behind the Houthis stands Tehran, behind which stands Moscow, behind which stands Beijing. American strategists may not like it, but they cannot pretend otherwise anymore.
That is especially true because the U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv was nearly hit by the Houthi drone and may very well have been its target.
In its response, Israel did not seek to be polite. The strike had to be real. And it had to be attention-getting, because the Houthis do not ultimately act independently. So the air force struck the port of Hodeidah, which is controlled by the Houthis and used as a transit point for Iranian weapons. The strike did extensive damage to the port’s oil storage facilities and halted all ship traffic for a couple of days.
“The Houthis attacked us over 200 times,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required. The blood of Israeli citizens has a price.”
Yet the Tel Aviv attack was also an escalation, a finger in the eye of the U.S. defense establishment, which has been failing to deter the Houthis for months. The fact that the Houthis—and thus, the Iranians—may have targeted the U.S. consulate is not just dangerous but deeply insulting: The Houthis could not possibly be less afraid of the American superpower.This is why Biden and Harris should be done. Yesterday.
U.S. presidents have long justified their aversion to taking strong retaliatory measures by dismissing the terrorist target as unworthy of the effort and posing no real threat to the United States. But this is Iran shooting at our consulate, and it is Russia threatening to give them advanced antiship missiles. Time to get real.
https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/a-turning-point-in-the-u-s-iran-shadow-war/
JULY 23, 2024 FOREIGN AFFAIRS
A Turning Point in the U.S.-Iran Shadow War?
by Seth Mandel
The tagline of the seminal reality-tv show, MTV’s The Real World, was: Find out what happens when people stop being polite and start getting real. It was a lesson the Iran-backed Houthis learned over the weekend after killing an Israeli civilian in Tel Aviv with a drone and receiving a clear message in the form of an Israeli air force strike in response. In the past few months, the Houthis have only earned retaliation from the U.S.
And that American retaliation has been nothing if not polite.
On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the head of U.S. Central Command, Gen. Erik Kurilla, has been unusually assertive of late in warning the administration and in particular Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin that Americans were going to get killed if the administration refused to do more than fire mostly symbolic strikes at the Houthis.
“Kurilla called in his letter to Austin for a stepped-up ‘whole of government’ effort against the Houthis, employing economic, diplomatic and potentially stronger military pressure to discourage attacks on ships in the Red Sea and a narrow strait known as Bab el-Mandeb, off Yemen’s coast,” reported the Journal.
The White House’s strategy has thus far centered on trying to destroy Houthi missiles and drones before they are launched. The Pentagon countered Kurilla’s criticism by insisting it has destroyed “a significant amount of Houthi capability,” which highlights the weakness of the strategy in the first place: The Houthis are still firing, so is the Pentagon’s position that this will continue until they run out of missiles, and that they will run out of missiles sooner because of U.S. strikes? Do they happen to know when that might be?
The most important metric here is deterrence. If the response hasn’t altered the Houthis’ ability to threaten the sea lanes, then the overall number of missiles we’ve blown up doesn’t matter much. Kurilla seems to speak for a not-insignificant part of the defense establishment that would like permission to, as the Journal puts it, “carry out a broader range of strikes.”
“If you tell the military to re-establish freedom of navigation and then you tell them to only be defensive, it isn’t going to work,” one U.S. official told the paper. “It is all about protecting ships without affecting the root cause.”
Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin is flirting with providing the Houthis with antiship cruise missiles, which would certainly make U.S. officials wish the conflict had been solved already. In fact, Russia is leveling that threat as a direct response to U.S. support for Ukraine, more proof that the conflicts cannot be compartmentalized and treated as if in a vacuum. As if to reinforce the point, on Tuesday a Ukrainian security team guarding a cargo ship in the Red Sea appears to have destroyed a Houthi naval drone fired at their vessel.
Behind the Houthis stands Tehran, behind which stands Moscow, behind which stands Beijing. American strategists may not like it, but they cannot pretend otherwise anymore.
That is especially true because the U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv was nearly hit by the Houthi drone and may very well have been its target.
In its response, Israel did not seek to be polite. The strike had to be real. And it had to be attention-getting, because the Houthis do not ultimately act independently. So the air force struck the port of Hodeidah, which is controlled by the Houthis and used as a transit point for Iranian weapons. The strike did extensive damage to the port’s oil storage facilities and halted all ship traffic for a couple of days.
“The Houthis attacked us over 200 times,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said. “The first time that they harmed an Israeli citizen, we struck them. And we will do this in any place where it may be required. The blood of Israeli citizens has a price.”
Yet the Tel Aviv attack was also an escalation, a finger in the eye of the U.S. defense establishment, which has been failing to deter the Houthis for months. The fact that the Houthis—and thus, the Iranians—may have targeted the U.S. consulate is not just dangerous but deeply insulting: The Houthis could not possibly be less afraid of the American superpower.This is why Biden and Harris should be done. Yesterday.
U.S. presidents have long justified their aversion to taking strong retaliatory measures by dismissing the terrorist target as unworthy of the effort and posing no real threat to the United States. But this is Iran shooting at our consulate, and it is Russia threatening to give them advanced antiship missiles. Time to get real.