‘Pirates’ operating off east Africa a decade ago were largely teenagers in sandals with rusty AK-47s, nothing like the Houthis directed by Tehran
By James Stavridis / Bloomberg Opinion
With the fall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, yet another vicious proxy of Iran has been defeated, his execrable regime in ruins. In the Gaza strip, Hamas is effectively a broken organization, with thousands of operatives killed and its leader, Yahya Sinwar, dead.
In Lebanon, most of the Hezbollah top leadership has been eliminated by everything from drone assassinations to precision airstrikes to exploding beepers, and funding and support from Iran are effectively cut off.
Some analysts, both in Israel and the US, are calling for further and more potent strikes directly against Iran (the Israelis hit a limited number of Iranian military sites in October).
Illustration: Mountain People
The argument is that the Iranians are so weakened by the losses of their proxies and the weakening of their air defenses by Israel that it is time for a crippling blow.
And there are tempting targets: The Iranians’ nuclear weapons research and construction sites, oil production facilities and further military-industrial installations.
However, there is a final proxy enemy that needs to be dealt with more immediately: Houthi terrorists [sic] operating in Yemen on the shores of the Red Sea.
By using a combination of medium-range cruise missiles, drones, small boats, helicopters and highly trained assault teams, the Houthis have managed to damage, sink or capture dozens of merchant ships. They have also brazenly attacked US and allied warships operating in protection of commercial shipping. They are not just a regional threat, but one to the global economy.
Not since the Barbary pirates of the 18th century has the international maritime community been as significantly threatened by a rogue force as it is today by the Houthis. The Somali pirates [sic] of east Africa, whom I fought as NATO supreme allied commander a decade ago, were largely teenagers in sandals with rusty AK-47s. They were nothing like these Houthi terrorists who are trained, equipped, organized and directed by Tehran.
Most major Western shipping has now been diverted away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, where traffic is down more than 50 percent since the attacks on Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 last year. The Houthis have largely closed one of the world’s major maritime routes, from the Suez Canal in the north to the Bab el Mandeb Strait at the south of the Red Sea, forcing tankers and cargo ships to go all the way around the African continent.
With the fall of al-Assad and the retreat of his Russian supporters, Iran in such a diminished military position, Israeli successes across the region, and an incoming US administration led by president-elect Donald Trump that will not be afraid to use military force, what would a campaign against the Houthi terrorists look like?
Step one would be to get full alignment of the global maritime community. This would entail ramping up two diplomatic structures already in place: Operation Prosperity Guardian, the US-led military consortium conducting operations defending commercial shipping; and the Abraham Accords of 2020, which brought Israel and several Arab states into heightened cooperation.
What is needed to stop the Houthis is a combination of air, sea and land power. By apportioning the tasks to various international components of those two elements, the right level of force can be brought to bear.
A good initial division of labor would be for the US to commit to the presence of a carrier strike group on station just off Yemen’s southern coast. This would include not only the 80 combat aircraft carried by a nuclear-powered carrier, but also the firepower of the cruisers and destroyers that accompany it: Tomahawk land-attack missiles, naval gunfire and special forces cadres. The force would position itself within 160km of the entrance to the Red Sea.
The second major task would be to sever the supply links between Iran and the Houthis. This could be handed to the EU. A European task force centered on either a British or French aircraft carrier, backed up by a squadron of frigates and destroyers, could effectively cut off the supplies of advanced weapons flowing from Tehran to the Houthis. This force would operate in the waters to the east of the US carrier force, off the southern entrance to the Strait of Hormuz.
A third component would come from Arab nations and Israel. With Iranian power so sharply denuded, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Oman, Egypt and Jordan might be willing to provide a combined ground force for operations in Yemen against the Houthis. These Arab units could receive significant intelligence, special operations, naval and air support from Israel. The US and European carrier strike groups would also provide logistics and combined fire support to the ground force.
It might seem hard to believe that the Israeli and Arab militaries would cooperate this way, but they already do so (either overtly or covertly) on intelligence, special forces and air defense. This would add counterterror ground operations to the list.
The initial objective would be Houthi military capability — boats, helicopters, drones, missiles, ammunition caches and radar installations. A second wave of targets could include the land-based command-and-control stations and logistic hubs used for repair and storage of Houthi military machinery. If necessary, destruction of Houthi ground forces could follow, hampering their ability to attack the internationally recognized Yemeni government they are fighting in a seemingly endless civil war.
The coalition ground forces would be deployed for tightly focused operations, then withdrawn quickly to sea after accomplishing their missions. This was the pattern NATO and EU forces used to go after the Somali pirates successfully a decade ago.
On the diplomatic side, the culmination of a ceasefire in Gaza would be helpful. The Houthi attacks were ostensibly launched in solidarity with Hamas; a Gaza ceasefire could cause the terrorists to stop their war on global shipping.
However, we cannot allow them to retain the capability to quickly restart their assaults — either of their own accord or at the behest of Iran.
Tehran has the weakest hand of cards it has held in two decades, since it undertook the construction of its elaborate network of terrorist proxies. Culling the remaining threat on the shores of the Red Sea is the best course to further weaken the rotten regime in Teheran and to reopen one of the world’s most important shipping lanes.
James Stavridis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a retired US Navy admiral, former supreme allied commander of NATO and vice chairman of global affairs at the Carlyle Group. He is dean emeritus of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He is on the boards of Aon, Fortinet and Ankura Consulting Group, and has advised Shield Capital, a firm that invests in the cybersecurity sector. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
