How Yemen is Wrecking the Entire Global Economy

as the world's attention is still largely focused on the brutal War being waged in Gaza that's already claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people something else is happening nearby to the south in the Red Sea that has the potential to escalate the war between Israel and Hamas into a greater Middle East wide conflict that's already severely affecting the entire global economy you see after Israel initiated its fullscale invasion of Gaza the houthis a Shia Muslim military organization in Yemen that's funded and armed by Iran declared their full unwavering support for Hamas and the Palestinian cause against Israel but geographically located about 1,600 km away from Israeli territory and more than 1,800 km away from the main fight going on in Gaza the houthis were incapable of participating in the war happening around Gaza directly and so they decided to begin intervening on the side of Hamas Moore indirectly in November of 2023 the houthis declar that they would begin attacking every single ship they could find sailing nearby to their territory in the Red Sea that was linked in any way to Israel including any ships traveling to or from Israeli ports any ship ship with Israeli ownership any ship flying an Israeli flag or any ship with an Israeli crew and then they further stated that these attacks on Israeli shipping would continue indefinitely until Israel fully withdrew from Gaza and ended its war against Hamas but there was a slight problem with the houthi plan you see the ownership structure of the globalized 21st century Merchant shipping Fleet is a very complicated business Merchant ships very often travel between origin and destination in different countries the ownership structure of the ship itself is often divided between multiple different nationalities that may have nothing to do with where the ship's origin or destination is the flag of call that the ship flies may be completely different altogether while The Crew That's operating the ship may be of completely different nationalities from everything else as well determining which Merchant ships operating on the world's oceans are considered Israeli or not is not as simple a task as it appears at first but that didn't dissuade the houthis from deciding to intervene Anyway by attacking whatever ships they determined were Israeli their attacks began on the 19th of November 2023 with a Brazen hijacking of an empty car carrier sailing through the Red Sea that was traveling from Turkey to India the hthis raided the ship with a helicopter that transported a heavily armed Special Forces Squad onto the ship's deck who quickly managed to subdue the ship's crew and rerouted it back to the houthi controlled Port of Heda in Western Yemen the ship was called the Galaxy leader and its registered owner was a company known as Galaxy Maritime limited that's based in the Isle of Man a UK dependency the ship was being chartered by a Japanese company its flag of call was based on the Bahamas and its 25 crew members hailed from the Philippines Romania Bulgaria Ukraine and Mexico the only connection that the ship had to Israel was that the company that owned the ship Galaxy Maritime limited was further owned by another company known as Ray car carriers which is a business that's co-owned by a well-known Israeli businessman and billionaire named Abraham unar who has a current net worth of approximately $3.25 billion US based on that the houthis decided that the ship was fair game to attack and hijack and it would be far from the last in the weeks and months that have followed after that initial attack the houthis have Unleashed a torrent of hundreds of missiles and drones and launched further hijacking attempts against against dozens of merchant ships caught sailing through the Red Sea Merchant ships that have been linked to dozens of countries from all around the world and the missiles drones experience and intelligence that they've received to launch all of these attacks have largely all come from a single Source their biggest Patron the Islamic Republic of Iran Iran has spent years carefully cultivating the houthis from a ragtag group of militia into a legitimately dangerous state-like military force with a massive arsenal of guided anti-ship missiles and swarms of cheap explosive kamakazi drones that they can use to overwhelm Maritime anti-air defenses with through sheer numbers backed by Iran the houthis have arguably become the most dangerous and heavily armed piracy force in modern history and unlike the Pirates before then they used to launch out from Somalia and raided commercial shipping in the Arabian Sea the Hy Pirates control a significantly more advantageous geography to wreck the global economy from they currently dominate the Northwestern third of Yemen's territory including most of Yemen's population and most of Yemen's Coastline along the Red Sea which gives them Direct access to launching hijacking ships missiles and drones into one of the world's most critical arteries of globalized trade the Red Sea itself can be thought of as the primary Maritime passageway between Asia and Europe and the passageway is bounded by two narrow Gates on either side of it that regulate access through it the babal men Deb straight in the South between Yemen and jibuti and the Suez Canal in the north that runs across Egypt the route between these Gates across the Red Sea is a part of the shortest possible Geographic route for merchant ships to take traveling between Asia and Europe and so it's the preferred route of choice for container ships carrying manufactured goods and raw materials from places like China Japan South Korea Taiwan and India to take when transporting their goods to the huge European consumer market and from another perspective this trade round is also a major artery for the flow of global energy resources from origin to Consumer like oil and gas from places like Russia Kazakhstan and aeran towards Asia in One Direction and oil and gas around the Persian Gulf towards Europe in another Direction as a result roughly 12% of the entire World's Trade volume used usually flows through the Red Sea on an annual basis which includes nearly a third of the entire world's containership traffic roughly 10% of the world's Seaborn oil and roughly 8% of all the world's LNG an average of 50 Merchant vessels usually Transit through the sez Canal on a daily basis in this overall makes the sez canal and the babelan Deb straight the second most critical Maritime choke point for globalized trade anywhere in the world remaining only behind the Singapore straight in Southeast Asia in overall importance and all of this massive volume of trade and energy that usually flows through the Red Sea makes its overall security and stability an extremely important core interest for dozens of countries and actors from all around the world to Russia the Red Sea is still its most vital artery for exporting their own crude oil and LG Resources by sea towards their new primary consumers China and India well Kazakhstan and aeran rely on the route to a lesser extent for their own oil exports as well from China's perspective the Red Sea is its most vital artery to receive energy resources from Russia through and to transport their own manufactured products to the European consumer Market through which is a similar concern to Japan and largely why both China and Japan maintain overseas military bases in Djibouti nearby to help Safeguard their own trade routes to Qatar the Red Sea is its primary trade route to export their LNG supplies to Europe while to Saudi Arabia the United Arab Emirates Bahrain Kuwait and Iraq the Red Sea is their primary trade route to export their crude oil to Europe through to the European Union the Red Sea is their primary trade route for receiving manufactured goods from Asia and energy resources from the Persian Gulf through while to the United States Washington wants to ensure the continuous flow of Maritime trade through the Red Sea to keep the global economy and globalized system that it Champions and protects humming along and Egypt as the controller of the sez Canal that regulates all of this trade stands to arguably benefit the most when the trade is running smoothly and lose out the most when the trade isn't running smoothly Egypt Suz Canal Authority is the guardian of the canal and they charge various fees and tolls on every ship that passes through it as ships usually have no other alternative the only other possible Geographic Choice the ships can take to travel between Asia and Europe is the much much much longer way all the way around the entire African continent around the Cape of Good Hope a route that usually adds anywhere between 7 and 10 days of travel time and significantly higher cost for ships to take under normal circumstances the tolls and fees that Egypt charges on ships passing through the SE Canal are still much cheaper than the alternative of sailing around the whole of Africa and it's also usually one of the Egyptian government's largest sources of Revenue as the world began recovering from the logistical supply chain bottlenecks that were caused by the covid-19 pandemic an all-time high record number of ships passed through the sez Canal during the fiscal year between June of 2022 and June of 2023 25,8 187 ships took the journey which also netted Egypt an all-time high annual revenue from the Suez Canal about $9.4 billion us about enough to help fund 10% of the entire Egyptian government's operating budget and this is all in addition to to the fact that many countries can only import their goods from abroad through the Red Sea the only Maritime ports that Jordan Sudan and arrea have are all just located on the Red Sea while djibouti's Port nearby to the Red Sea on the Gulf of Aiden currently supports roughly 95% of landlocked Ethiopia's trade volume and so the safe secure and reliable flow of trade continuing through the Red Sea is extremely extremely important to all of these dozens of countries from all around the world both near and far from it but unfortunately the Red Sea has always existed within one of the most geopolitically turbulent regions in the world and ships are also their most vulnerable when transiting through either side of the narrow Gates on either end of it both the Suez Canal in the North and the babelan Deb Strait in the South can be blockaded intentionally or even accidentally and when they are the Red Sea passageway for global trade comes to a complete halt this has happened twice before in fairly recent history once for a long period of 8 years when the entire suiz canal in the north was shut down between 1967 and 1975 during the Arab Israeli Wars after Israel secured control over the entire Sinai Peninsula and in the process the suis Canal itself became an active Frontline war zone dividing Egyptian and Israeli zones of control for those eight years until Israel agreed to return the Sinai Peninsula back to Egypt and another much shorter time when the canal be game closed once again much more recently and much more MD about in 20121 when a container ship known as the everg given got blinded during a sandstorm when transiting through the Suz canal and crashed blocking the Canal's entire width for 6 days and 7 hours the ship blocked all Passage through the Suez Canal like a cork stuck in a bottle and dramatically slowed down trade between Europe Asia and the Middle East hundreds of trade ships carrying nearly 10 billion dollar worth of goods became bottlenecked many ships decided to give up and rerouted the long way around Africa and once it was freed the Egyptian government initially demanded more than $1 billion in compensation from the ever given's owners and then on the other side of the red see the babelan Deb street is merely 23 km wide at its narrowest point and so it basically functions more like a two-lane Highway for merchant ships with one Highway running South and the other running North a single ship can't really get stuck and block the street in the same kind of way that it can in the sus Canal but the babelan Deb Strait is located in a far more precarious neighborhood right now in 2024 there are still ongoing violent Civil Wars raging all around the straight in Yemen Sudan Somalia and Ethiopia the just over the last few years have likely resulted in the deaths of more than 1 million people while arat tra is ruled by a ruthless dictatorship that is often considered to be on the same scale of totalitarianism as North Korea jibuti alone exists as arguably an island of stability within this mstom of chaos and that's why foreign countries from all around the world maintain significant military bases in the country to protect their own national interests from China and Japan to the United States France and Italy and probably shortly Saudi Arabia as well where the United Arab Emirates maintains another base nearby in the self- declared state of Somali land and Russia is attempting to acquire a former United Arab Emirates military base in Eritrea here at aab directly adjacent to the straight for years the biggest threat that was facing shipping going through the Babel M Deb straet where the Somali pirates who raided Merchant vessels mostly for money hostages and ransoms in the Gulf of Aiden and in the Arabian Sea a problem that lasted well into the 2010s until it finally began dying down after 2017 as Maritime patrols from the American UK French Russian Chinese and other International navies began conducting better patrols and better escort missions of merchant shipping through the region that dissuaded the pirates from launching any further attacks that could disrupt the global economy but now the houthis and Yemen are the ones launching dozens of attacks on this critical global trade artery and it's already been severely affecting the worldwide economy the houthi movement which is officially known as ansar la which translates to Defenders Of God arose out of Yemen's zidi Shia Muslim Community who make up about 1/4 of Yen's overall population and are native to the hills and mountains of Yemen's Northwest immediately opposite of Saudi Arabia's own largely Shia Muslim Community immediately across the border formed with militant opposition to the United States Israel and the Saudi monarchy's influence in the Middle East in mind the houthis sought closer relations with Iran while their official motto and flag have never left any doubt as to where they stand politically and ideologically it reads from Line to Line translated into English as God is the greatest death to America death to Israel a curse upon the Jews Victory to Islam a decade ago in 2014 during the midst of the Arab Spring revolts that were sweeping all across the Middle East the houthis managed to organize themselves with support and funding from Iran and stormed out from their Hills to capture the yeni capital from the yeni government SAA from there the houthis managed to expand their territorial control even further across Northwestern Yemen while the president of Yemen at the time fled the country towards Saudi Arabia at his own request for a foreign intervention to restore his own authority and Crush the houthi Rebellion Saudi Arabia decided to militarily intervene in Yemen Civil War beginning in 2015 the Saudis along with many other Arab states all supplied with arms and finances from the United States then launched operation decisive storm into Yemen the Saudis were terrified that if the Shia houthis were victorious in Yemen they could exploit their Geographic position to blockade the babelan Deb Strait in unison with their Shia supporter Iran's ability to blockade the straight of hor moves a situation that would immediately crash Saudi Arabia's entire econom that's overwhelmingly reliant on exporting their crude oil to customers in Asia if both choke points were shut down the Saudis would be forced into a situation where they could only continue selling their oil to their biggest customers by exporting their oil the Long Way to the north through the sez canal and then all the way around Africa which would make their oil significantly more expensive for Asian consumers to buy and would make Saudi oil far less competitive which would mean that they would sell a lot less of their oil and Saudi Arabia finances and government would each become devastated so the Saudis wanted to crush the houthis and restore the authority of the friendly yeni government before that could ever happen as did the United States and all the other Arab states opposed to Iran over the next few years the Saudi Le a campaign would drop around 25,000 air strikes all across hthi control territory in Yemen that's estimated to have killed more than 19,000 civilians while the Saudi Leed Coalition Navy initiated a maritime blockade of the houthi controlled Coastline that intervention ultimately produced an apocalypse in Yemen with the UN saying as recently as 2023 that the situation within Yemen remained the worst ongoing humanitarian crisis in the world with more than 380,000 total deaths in the country happening since the Civil War began in 2014 resulting from violence famine and disease all attributable to the war but the houthis continually funded and armed by Iran continued hanging on to power in the territory they controlled they resisted the Saudis and the Coalition and even began firing missiles and drones into saudian UA AE population centers and retaliation that killed hundreds of Saudi citizens When Donald Trump assumed the American presidency in 2017 he chose to dramatically expand Washington's support for the Saudi war effort in Yemen as a part of his overall policy of maximum pressure applied on Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East adding the houthis to America's list of designated terrorist organizations and authorizing a deal for more than 27 billion dollars worth of additional us arm sales to Saudi Arabia including fighter jets and precision guided bombs all meant to be used in Yemen against the houthis but as the intervention in Yemen became increasingly bloody America's continued support of the Saudi war effort there became increasingly politically controversial in Washington and increasingly linked to Donald Trump personally Joe Biden vowed that after assuming the presidency in 2021 he would completely reverse Trump's course in Yemen and end all of America's involvement in the country which culminated quickly with Biden's declaration in February of 2021 that the United States would be halted in all of its support for Saudi Arabia and Yemen and that the houthis would be removed from America's list of designated Terror organizations this abrupt end of America's support for the war in Yemen under Biden and the fact that the Saudis had blown through an estimated 265 billion dollars before then just on arms trying and failing to destroy the houthis kind of forced the Saudis hand into beginning to search for an exit strategy from their war in Yemen a ceasefire agreement between the houthis and the Saudi B yeni government was agreed upon in April of 2022 that's generally held ever since with only minor flare-ups of violence as the Saudis and houthis have continued on negotiations trying to find a final peace settlement this relative calmon Yemen ever since the April 2022 ceasefire has given the hoies time to consolidate their control over the area they rule in Northwestern Yemen an area that represents only about a quarter of Yemen's total territory but more than 2/3 of Yemen's total population or about 24 million people and Yemen's capital city City the houthis therefore control more of what makes Yemen Yemen than the internationally recognized yemeni government that's backed by Saudi Arabia does and the relative peace for the past 2 years during the ceasefire has likely enabled them to covertly import huge volumes of additional missiles and drones from Iran and so now with a massive ongoing war between Israel and Hamas having exploded in Gaza Iran has been seeking ways to assist Hamas by steadily increasing the pressure being applied on Israel without directly attacking them and starting an allout war and perhaps the best way that Iran has been able to do this has been by nudging the houthis to begin launching their attacks on Merchant shipping across the Red Sea you see as the houthi missile and drone attacks on dozens of merchant ships in the Red Sea began really accelerating in December of 2023 and became increasingly indiscriminate after the Galaxy leader hijacking incident the wartime Risk insurance premiums that Maritime insurance companies charge for all ships sailing through the Red Sea began to Skyrocket major shipping companies from all around the world then faced with these rapidly increasing insurance premiums to cover their ships and cargos operating in the redc and the accompanying legitimate risks of seeing their expensive ships and their caros getting damaged or sunk or their crew members getting killed quickly began making announcements one after the other that they would begin suspending all of their maritime operations through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal until further notice these announcements have by now come from most of the world's most significant container shipping companies like MK MSC Evergreen CMA CGM Haag Lloyd and Costco which together represent more than 95% of all the container volume that usually travels through the Suez Canal in addition many major oil and gas companies have also announced their indefinite suspensions of sending oil and gas tiners through the Red Sea or the Suz Canal including BP and the Norwegian state-owned Oil Company Ecuador as a result the world is now facing a third Suez Crisis after the 1967 and 19751 and after the 20211 just by the end of December in 2023 more than 300 container ships and many more tankers car carriers and other Merchant vessels had already decided to divert away from the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and travel the much longer way around Africa a r that ads on average 7 to 10 days more travel time for ships plying the trade route between Asia and Europe and in many cases significantly longer because this route is a much longer distance the ships that travel it have to consume more fuel while the crews that operate them must be rotated out more frequently and have to be paid longer hours which contributes to the Cape of Good Hope route usually being about 15% more expensive to take when compared with the shorter Red Sea and sez Canal route even after considering the tolls and fees that Egypt charges that means that with more and more ships diverting around the Red Sea those 15% higher average shipping costs are going to be gradually getting passed on to Consumers which if it continues getting worse and persists will steadily begin piling on inflationary pressures on just about every product all around the world world and even worse the extended length of time that these ships are going to have to spend Out on the Ocean traveling the longer routes between Europe and Asia is expected to absorb around 20% of the entire Global Merchant fleet's capacity which of course is just going to lead to even more shipping delays and even higher costs in a worldwide cascading Avalanche of inflation for pretty much every single product you can think of the longer the Red Sea route remains closed for and there are many secondary less thought of issues that can eventually spiral out of control the longer the Red Sea has shut down international shipping for like this in a sense the houthi attacks shutting down the Red Sea have hurt Israel as they've effectively managed to completely shut down the southern Israeli Port of aot which is Israel's only non-mediterranean Port that's on the Red Sea but aot is Tiny from Israel's perspective it usually only handles a mere 5% of Israel's total Maritime trade well Israel's much larger Mediterranean ports of ashdod and hia handle the overwhelming majority and remain open for business the cost of Israeli Imports are rising as a result but the situation is hardly putting Israel under a blockade the situation is very different for other third-party countries however as I mentioned previously the only Maritime ports that Jordan Sudan and arrea each have are all only located on the Red Sea and so for however long the Red Sea remains largely shut down for all three of these countries will remain virtually landlocked and all three of them are already in pretty un stable conditions that are already either actively imploding as I speak or on the precipice of it Sudan is already locked in the middle of a devastating Civil War that has likely killed tens of thousands of people and displaced Millions more just since 2023 Jordan is facing the danger of increased instability in the neighboring Israeli occupied West Bank while arria is facing two ongoing Civil Wars happening immediately across their borders in both Sudan and in Ethiopia if these countries and especially if Sudan remained blocked off from most of their Maritime Imports of resources for long their own instability levels could also increase overall by attacking whatever Merchant shipping they can find within the Red Sea the houthis are generating a worldwide level of pain that can maybe be tolerated for a few weeks to a few months but it's a situation that likely cannot be tolerated for very much longer as the houthi attacks continue worldwide shipping will continue diverting the long way away from the Red Sea and around Africa products raw materials and energy resources will continue to get more expensive as a result and glob inflation will begin ratcheting up again which means that Iran and the houthis are probably both hoping that their attacks and the economic consequences they cause here will eventually begin increasing Western pressures on Israel to end its war in Gaza and to keep Hamas still intact without them having to escalate all the way to full-blown War the houthis have claimed that if Israel withdraws from Gaza and makes peace with Hamas then their attacks in the Red Sea will also stop immediately afterwards but the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu here has has repeatedly stressed that regardless of any International pressure their War aims against Hamas remain unchanged they will continue fighting until Hamas as an organization and government in Gaza is completely dismantled and destroyed with Netanyahu himself saying in early January of 2024 that Israelis and the world should expect the war to be a long one that will continue on for at least several more months to come and consequently the world should expect the houthis to continue launching their own attacks and raids on Merchant shipping in the Red Sea for just as long in an attempt to try and restore worldwide faith in merchant shipping through the Red Sea the United States announced the creation of a brand new international military Coalition called operation Prosperity Guardian on December the 18th that aims to defend all Merchant ships in the Red Sea and Israeli ports from houthi missile and drone attacks the operation at least so far has been strictly limited to only intercepting houthi missiles and drones flying over the Red Sea and safely escorting Merchant ships through the Red Sea with warship ships without directly attacking the houthis themselves in Yemen the United States committed one of its own aircraft carriers to the Red Sea for this operation along with four of their own destroyers while the British also committed one of their destroyers and both Denmark and Greece have agreed to each send a frigate while the French and Italian navies have remained separate from the operation but have deployed their own frigs to the Red Sea to operate independently other countries have technically signed on to the operation but with extremely minimal commitments compared to the Americans British Danes and Greeks 10 other countries have signed on to the operation anonymously and two of them are almost certainly Egypt and Saudi Arabia two countries whose National Security both utterly depends on the Red Sea remaining open and accessible Egypt so they can keep earning revenue on ships passing through the SE canal and Saudi Arabia so they can continue exporting oil quickly to Europe but there are also two Muslim majority countries who don't exactly want to be publicly viewed by their own people right now as assisting the United States fighting against an organization that proclaims it is fighting for the Palestinians against Israel they don't want to be viewed in any way as assisting Israel even if it's in the name of their own national interests since going into operation the warships of prosperity Guardian operating within the red SE have already shot down dozens of houy drones and missiles fired in merchant vessels and encouraged by the progress both meis and hapag Lloyd cautiously announced on the 24th of December that they would begin resuming their shipping operations through the Red Sea and the sez Canal again but then just 9 days later disaster struck again on the 2nd of January 2024 AER container ship traveling through the Red Sea was struck by a houy missile before four small houthi ships sailed towards them and attempted another hijacking the MK ship radio to distress call and the US aircraft carrier in the region responded by dispatching helicopter gunships to intercept the houthi Pirates once they arrived the American helicopters opened fire on the houthi boats and sank three of them killing 10 of the houthi Pirates Who were on board and marking the first time that the Americans and the houthis engag directly in combat the same day both marisk and hapag Lloyd announced that they were once again suspending all of their travels through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal and they would begin only taking the longer and more expensive route around Africa Furious on the following day on the 3rd of January the White House released an ominous joint statement with many other governments from all around the world that at the end reads quote let our message now be clear we call for the immediate end of these illegal attacks and release of unlawfully detained vessels and Crews the houthis will bear the responsibility of the consequences should they continue to threaten lives the global economy and free flow of Commerce in the Region's critical waterways we remain committed to the international rules-based order and are determined to hold malign actors accountable for unlawful seizures and attacks end quote as it stands now America and the Biden Administration arguably have only four possible options for how to proceed with this dangerous situation one America could choose to Simply do nothing let the houthi attacks on Merchant shipping in the Red Sea continue as long as Israel's war in Gaza continues news and suffer the worldwide negative Economic Consequences and pressures that will follow during a critical presidential election year two the United States can begin applying tougher pressures on Israel to begin winding down its war in Gaza and hope that that ends the houthi attacks on Merchant shipping diplomatically Israel however will probably not accept this piece unless the pressures from Washington begin growing significantly tougher which could strain Israel us relations three America can increase the number of Warships that has deployed to the Red Sea as a part of operation Prosperity Guardian in order to cover a larger area and escort more Merchant vessels unfortunately this option has a lot of cons from Washington's perspective many countries for a variety of reasons have refused to send warships to the Red Sea even after being requested to do so by Washington like Australia America itself has few Surplus warships to spare right now here to the Red Sea while it's trying to maintain a permanently large Naval presence in the Western Pacific around Taiwan to dissuade a potential Chinese amphibious in Invasion from ever happening and the warships that America already has deployed to the Red Sea Fire Advanced guided missiles that cost millions of dollars each to intercept the clouds of cheap Iranian manufactured drones that only cost a few thousand to build if the Iranians and the houthis continue maintaining their heavy pace of Cheaper drone and missile attacks on the merchant ships and the American Navy continues shooting them down with their much more expensive missiles the costs that will be borne on the US defense department will likely rise into the tens of billions of dollars with only a matter of months a tough pill to swallow while Washington is simultaneously struggling to provide more funding and arms directly to both Israel's war against Hamas and Ukraine's war against Russia and then there's option four the most dangerous option of all but the one that's appearing increasingly likely to happen by the day ordering a direct US Air campaign to bomb the houthi bases in Yemen to try and Destroy or deter their ability to continue launching attacks on Merchant shipping in the future but this option carries with it a series of extremely high risks that need to be considered beforehand first of all American bombing campaign against the houth greatly risks shattering The Fragile ceasefire across Yemen that's been in place ever since April of 2022 would the houthi political enemies that are still on the ground in Yemen like the Saudi backed government or the United Arab Emirates backed separatist Southern government really all be expected to just sit back and do nothing while the houthis get blasted from the air by the United States there would become an enormous incentive for them to renage on the ceasefire and begin launching renewed ground offensives against the houthis again and if the situation got worse for the houthis from there and they seemed like they were imminently about to collapse would their primary backer Iran then be expected to also just sit back and watch them collapse without doing anything Iran could and likely would then choose to escalate the pressure on the United States and Israel even further by ordering their militias in Syria to attack Israel in the Golan Heights or even order healon Lebanon to open up a massive second front line for the Israelis in the north of their country that the United States would be forced to divert attention away from Yemen and the houthis to deal with and then of course bombing the houthis without attacking the source of where they're actually getting their weapons from does nothing to prevent them from Simply acquiring even more weapons over and over again that will keep having to be destroyed over and over again Iran can and likely will just choose to continue sending weapons to the houthis even if the United States is bombing them but if America decides to attack Iran supply lines that are running to the houthis then it risks escalating the US bombing campaign on the houthis into a direct us Iran War that both sides almost assuredly truly want to avoid and partially for those reasons the United States might choose to carry on with the same cautious approach towards the houthis that they've so far been maintaining a cautious approach that is no doubt being championed by Saudi Arabia ever since the Biden Administration ended America's support for the Saudi intervention in and Yemen back in 2021 the Saudis have been desperately trying to find a way to pull themselves out of their costly War peace negotiations between the Saudis and the houthis have been ongoing ever since with the Saudis reportedly offering concessions such as allowing more direct flights to open up to the houthi controlled Capital an easing or even ending of the still ongoing Saudi Naval blockade and perhaps most critically an offer by the Saudis to help facilitate payments and salaries of yeni public sector employees working within the houthi controlled territory but as American officials in the US Congress openly demand that the houthis be readded back to the list of designated terrorist organizations and as the US and British militaries are each apparently considering launching air strikes the Saudis are worried that their peace negotiations will fall apart how after all could the Saudis help to facilitate payments to the houthis if they become a US recognized terrorist organization once again and become suffocated underneath American economic sanctions and if the United States does end up to deciding to militarily intervene more forcefully against the houthis there is fairly recent historical precedent for such an operation throughout the 1980s during the Iran Iraq war both the Iraqi and Iranian militaries began opening fire on Merchant vessels operating across the Persian Gulf with missiles Iran and particular began firing missiles at Kuwaiti oil tankers and retaliation for Kuwait support and financing of Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1986 the US Navy decided to intervene in the conflict and begin sending their warships to safely escort Kuwaiti oil Tinkers through the gulf and out past the straight of Hormuz in 1988 one of these American warships impacted an Iranian Naval mine within international waters that severely damaged and nearly sank it in retaliation the US Navy decided to launch operation praying mantis within Iran's own territorial Waters the American Navy attacked and sank five Iranian ships including a frigate severely damaged another frigate and blew up two Iranian offshore oil platforms killing dozens in the process an action that today State represents the US Navy's largest surface engagement since the second world war that American attack put pressure on Iran to se peace with Iraq just a few months later but unlike then an American attack on the houthis now in 2024 is fairly unpalatable for the Biden Administration to consider for two very big reasons one the Biden Administration doesn't want to be viewed as expanding the war between Israel and Hamas and Gaza into a Regional Middle East Wide War and an American bombing campaign against the houthis in Yemen would inevitably become widely viewed as an American declaration of war against the houthis in support of Israel which would carry further risks of the war escalating even further to potentially include Hezbollah in Lebanon or Iran itself and second Biden's entire foreign policy stance ever since taking over as president in 2021 has revolved around ending America's presence and forever wars in the Middle East in order to Pivot towards facing the perceived greater threat threats of China in the Indo Pacific and Russia in Europe almost immediately after Biden took office he ended America's support for the Saudi war in Yemen he removed the houthis from the list of designated terrorist organizations he finally withdrew All American forces from Afghanistan after 20 years and he's been continually attempting to mediate a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia to make them begin cooperating together in the Middle East in America's absence deciding to open up another American war in the Middle East by bombing and attacking the houthis and Yemen after all that previous effort would be a serious reversal of policy for the Biden Administration to consider and it has the risk of dragging the United States back into yet another war in the Middle East again with an uncertain time frame and with major risks of even further escalation and unexpected consequences in the future and for those reasons the situation in the Red Sea is an incredibly dangerous one and there's no telling where it will all end up going from here now over the past 3 months since the crisis in the Red Sea began the houthi attacks have been covered extensively by hundreds of different news sources and articles the story of the US Navy helicopters opening fire on and sinking the houthi boats has been covered by more than 208 different sources and the reporting on it has been fairly split along partisan lines with 28% of the reporting coming from the left and 30% coming from the right and if you compare the headlines you start seeing something pretty interesting in some of the framing from this far left Source you have an article referring to the houthis as the deao government of Yemen and from this far right Source you have an article referring to the houthis as an iran-backed militant group and this is why I've been using this video sponsor ground news to research important issues like this in a way that lets me see past these kinds of partisan spins it's a website and app designed by a former NASA engineer on a mission to give readers an easy data driven objective way to read and parse through the news every story comes with a quick visual breakdown of the political bias factuality and ownership of the sources that are reporting all backed by ratings from three Independent News monitoring organizations and you can directly compare related articles from different sources to see what details are being emphasized exaggerated or left out I also really really like the blind spot feed which highlights stories that are being disproportionately covered by one side of the political Spectrum this feature showed me that if you lean left you likely would have missed out on this story about Maris culting all of their shipping through the Red Seas since only 6% of the sources that were covering it have come from the left and if you leaned right you likely would have missed out on this story about house Democrat Jamie Rasin demanding Trump return the 7.8 million dollar that foreign governments paid his companies while he was President I personally believe that it's very important we understand how our current partisan media environment operates and the impact that it might have on our politics so that we can engage in constructive dialogue break out from unproductive Echo Chambers and maybe even challenge some of our own assumptions in the process you can go to ground. newsreal lifel right now to get 30% off of the ground news Vantage plan which includes another great feature called my news bias which is basically dashboard for your entire news diet showing you what your top news sources are whether you engage with different perspectives what topics you're most interested in and a whole lot more so go ahead and go to ground. newreel or click the button that's here on your screen or follow the link that's down below in the description to see how your reading habits change over the next month and support an independent news platform working to make the media landscape more transparent it'll also help out supporting my Channel's reporting at the same time and as always thank you so much for watching

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 2,137,291

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know

Id: XXn8yBknK40

Length: 37min 28sec (2248 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2024