With Yemen’s Tehran-backed Houthi militia escalating its attacks on shipping in the Red Sea as a way of supporting its fellow Iranian proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, Washington has put together an international task force to protect commercial vessels in the area. Ari Heistein provides some important background about the ongoing war in Yemen, and argues that America and its allies will have to act aggressively if they want to succeed:

The challenges of devising an effective response to the Houthis are the result of a fundamental difficulty in influencing the decisions of an actor that is guided by a radical and paranoid ideology, possesses military capabilities that provide significant leverage, and has little to lose.

If the Houthis are searching for international prestige, the best way to convince them to stop doing so in destructive and dangerous ways is to create consequences that make them look foolish. For example, it might be well-advised to respond to Houthi attacks by launching airstrikes in Sanaa—but instead of hitting Houthi targets, aiming for Palestinian terror groups present in Yemen. In addition to creating a sense of embarrassment among the Houthis, who would be exposed as unable to protect their Palestinian “guests” in Sanaa, the absence of a direct strike on the group itself may reduce the risk of stumbling up the escalation ladder.

The Houthis appear poised to maintain some form of perpetual friction with external entities, as peacetime would prove a more challenging environment to justify their misrule over 20 million Yemenis than war has been.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.