The Dangers of Peace in Yemen

Since 2014, Yemenis have been engaged in a devastating civil war that pits the Houthis—an Iran-backed tribal and religious group—against the pre-war government, backed by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and at times the U.S. The UN managed to broker a truce in April, which was extended for an additional two months on June 2. Efforts are now underway to negotiate a more permanent end to the conflict, but, as Katherine Zimmerman observes, the current peace process could potentially make the situation worse.

A resolution to Yemen’s war would be most welcome for Yemeni civilians and the international community, which has struggled to respond to the humanitarian crisis. But peace comes at a cost that few people discuss openly: the Houthis would be negotiating from a position of strength and thus would almost certainly retain outsized influence in the country. This is true despite the recent developments that pushed the war into a mutually hurting stalemate. Giving the Houthis—a minority in Yemen—a majority stake in the national government would extend rather than end Yemen’s cycle of conflict.

This is problematic for the United States and its Gulf partners. The internationally recognized Yemeni government will be negotiating from a position of weakness. Yemenis may see relief from their immediate suffering but only under the prospect of a more illiberal government. Although the current alternative to a Houthi-dominated government has its own problems—an endemic system of corruption and patronage, for one—the internationally recognized Yemeni government has trended toward being more representative of a broader constituency.

[T]he only way to strike a better political deal with the Houthis would be to weaken them, and that would require military action. The cost of war is steep, however, and it is possible that pursuing peace today is still the least bad outcome in Yemen. But although it is tempting to focus on all the benefits of the ongoing truce—which have provided much-needed relief to a suffering population—we must remember that any peace negotiated at this moment comes at a cost to all the Yemenis who have rejected the Houthis’ vision for their country.

Zimmerman also notes the fate of the 2016 ceasefire, which the Houthis broke with two deadly offensives that expanded the area under their control. Worse still, the Houthis have already used their territory and Iranian weapons to launch attacks at Saudi Arabia and the UAE; they could just as easily use the same weapons against Israel, at Tehran’s behest.

Read more at Foreign Policy

More about: Iran, Middle East, Yemen

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF