From the outbreak of the Israeli-Hamas war nearly 100 days ago, President Biden and his aides have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw in American forces.
Now, with the American-led strike on 16 sites in Yemen on Thursday, there is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already begun. The biggest questions now are the conflict’s intensity and whether it can be contained.
This is exactly the outcome no one wanted, presumably including Iran.
“We’re not interested in a war with Yemen. We’re not interested in a conflict of any kind,” John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, said on Friday. “In fact, everything the president has been doing has been trying to prevent any escalation of conflict, including the strikes last night.”
Mr. Biden’s decision to unleash airstrikes, after resisting calls to act against the Yemen-based Houthi militants whose repeated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea were beginning to take a toll on global commerce, is a clear shift in strategy. After issuing a series of warnings, officials said, Mr. Biden felt his hand was forced after a barrage of missile and drone attacks on Tuesday were directed at an American cargo ship and the Navy vessels around it.
“This is already a regional war, no longer limited to Gaza, but already spread to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” said Hugh Lovatt, a Mideast expert for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Washington, he added, wanted to demonstrate that it was ready to deter Iranian provocations, so it conspicuously placed its aircraft carriers and fighters in position to respond quickly. But those same positions leave the United States more exposed.
Over the course of 12 weeks, attacks on Israeli, American and Western interests have come from Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, prompting modest, carefully targeted responses from American and Israeli forces. The United States also issued warnings to Iran, which the Americans say is acting as a loose coordinator.
What was notable about the retaliatory strike in Yemen was its breadth: Employing fighter jets and sea-launched missiles, U.S. and British forces, backed up by a small number of other allies, hit Houthi missile and drone sites in nearly 30 places.
Mr. Biden is walking the fine line between deterrence and escalation, and his aides concede there is no science to the calculation. Tehran and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, have been careful in their support for Hamas, keeping their actions within limits, to prevent a larger American military response that could threaten Tehran’s exercise of power in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria.
But how much control Iran has over its proxies is in question, and its leaders may also be misreading American and Israeli red lines.
The Houthis, a small Iranian-backed tribe in Yemen, have been among the most aggressive in pushing the envelope, trying to block international trading routes through the Red…
2024-01-12 16:22:25
Source from www.nytimes.com
rnrn