Houthis, their Iranian backers and others seeking political gain from the Palestinian cause exploit Western response to months of Yemini militant attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea
The U.S.-led strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels to stop their months-long maritime attacks in the Red Sea intensified the deluge of disinformation from governments prone to demonstrating their support for Palestine and opposition to Israel.
From NATO ally Turkey to Iran and Russia, top government officials engaged in anti-U.S. propaganda, misattributing the blame and misrepresenting the situation.
On January 11, the announced that the United States and United Kingdom, with support from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Bahrain, had conducted joint strikes on Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
CENTCOM said it targeted radar systems, air defense systems and storage and launch sites that the Houthis in Yemen have been using to aim unmanned aerial systems, cruise and ballistic missiles against commercial vessels.
The U.S. carried out a follow-up strike on a Houthi radar site on January 13.
CENTCOM said it aims to degrade the Houthi’s ability to carry out “illegal and reckless attacks on U.S. and international vessels and commercial shipping in the Red Sea.”
Nevertheless, the Houthis have continued their strikes, unsuccessfully targeting a U.S. destroyer in the Red Sea on January 14 and a U.S. commercial vessel on January 15.
On January 16, U.S. officials U.S. airstrikes had eliminated four ballistic missiles the Houthis were going to use in further attacks.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war in October, the Houthis have demonstrated their solidarity with Palestine and opposition to Israel by attacking commercial maritime traffic in the Red Sea.
The Houthis the ships they attacked — or hijacked — were all connected with or transiting to Israel.
The Houthi attacks have also occurred in international waters, violating the right of innocent transit and passage.
The U.S. and its allies tolerated months of Houthi attacks on civilian targets before responding.
Yet opponents of the United States — and even NATO ally Turkey — have attempted to frame Washington and its allies as the aggressors for responding to Houthi hostilities.
"All that has been done is a disproportionate use of force," Turkish President Recep Erdogan on January 12 in response to the U.S.-led strikes.
"At the moment, they are trying to turn the Red Sea into a sea of blood and Yemen, with the Houthis and by using all of its force, says it is and will give the necessary response in the region to the United States, Britain.”
Erdogan’s stance that the U.S. is to blame for escalating tensions in the Red Sea is shared by Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group. Hezbollah has received Iranian support for decades and has been instrumental in the longstanding Iran-Israel proxy conflict and the Israel-Lebanon conflict.
Like Hezbollah, the Houthis are an instrument of Iranian power projection in the region. Both are part of the Islamic Republic’s increasingly decentralized Axis of Resistance, which entails over 100 Shiite militias operating in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen, among other places.
The White House of being “deeply involved” in the Houthi’s Red Sea attacks, including through the provision of arms and intelligence.
Citing “U.S. and Middle East officials,” the Semafor news website on January 16 that “commanders and advisors” from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are “on the ground in Yemen and playing a direct role in Houthi rebel attacks on commercial traffic in the Red Sea.”
Also on January 16, Iran it attacked one of the main “espionage headquarters” of Israel’s Mossad spy agency not far from the U.S. consulate in Iraq's semiautonomous Kurdistan region, further raising fears of regional spillover from the Israel-Hamas war.
Iran’s ambitions aside, there is broad-based support for the Palestinian struggle in the Muslim world.
Erdogan, a champion of Islamist causes, has been a vocal critic of Israel’s war effort and a staunch supporter of Palestinian independence. Erdogan has called Hamas, the Iran-backed militia that runs the Gaza Strip, a liberation group.
the current war with Israel by launching a deadly attack in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Hamas took about 200 hostages during the attack. Most of them remain incommunicado, and their fate is unknown to the families.