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January 09, 2024
Washington Can’t Let the Houthis Take Yemen
Originally published in
The Wall Street Journal
It’s time for the U.S. to stop thinking tactically about the Houthis in Yemen and start thinking strategically. The growing number of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea demonstrate they are now a strategic threat to America, its allies and the global economy. We must address them as such.
For the past two decades, the U.S. has dismissed the Houthis as a nuisance. Washington recoiled when the Saudis and Emiratis intervened in Yemen against them in 2015, and the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations have tried to end the fighting with minimal exertion regardless of the outcome. Americans have tended to see the civil war as a humanitarian catastrophe and a breeding ground for terrorists. Our position therefore has been that all that mattered was peace—not who won or on what terms.
That has proved mistaken. The Houthis have made significant gains in Yemen, allowing them to commit aggression beyond the country’s borders. They are doing so as part of Iran’s axis of resistance—the loose alliance of anti-Israel and anti-U.S. groups in the Mideast—and for their own interests.
Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal