Created by the Israeli team behind the wildly successful show Fauda, the miniseries Ghosts of Beirut dramatizes the story of Imad Mughniyeh, the former second-in-command of Hizballah. Mughniyeh—who before 2001 had killed more Americans than any other terrorist—was killed in Damascus by the CIA, with the assistance of the Mossad. Hussain Abdul-Hussain argues that the series distorts crucial facts about its subject’s career, and thus about the history of jihadism.

The show opens with [Iranian] Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers approaching Mughniyeh, then working as a car mechanic, and plucking him out of obscurity. This is incorrect. If anything, it was Mughniyeh who helped found the IRGC.

In 1970, Jordan expelled Palestinian militias, then under the command of Yasir Arafat. They relocated to Lebanon, . . . which allowed Palestinian armed factions to roam the country freely. Arafat thus became Lebanon’s strongest militiaman and de-facto ruler, just like Hizballah’s chief Hassan Nasrallah today. In his tug and pull with the Lebanese state, Arafat instructed his second-in-command, Khalil al-Wazir, better known by his nom du guerre Abu Jihad, to form an elite unit, Force 17, designed to counter Lebanon’s Police Force 16.

Because the shah [of Iran] had been Israel’s ally, Arafat had sponsored and trained the Iranian opposition that would seize power in the revolution.

It was through his association with Force 17 that Mughniyeh came into contact with the Iranian jihadists who seized control of Persia in 1979, founded the IRGC, and now direct Hizballah:

After America went to war in Iraq in 2003, Mughniyeh planned attacks that killed American troops. While Ghosts of Beirut covered these attacks well, it incorrectly implied that some of them were ordered by Mughniyeh without IRGC knowledge. . . . To depict Mughniyeh as anything other than a pawn of Tehran goes against everything that is known about [him].

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.