viernes, febrero 14

After the US-led strikes in Yemen, how big will the war in the Middle East be?

Since the outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas nearly 100 days ago, President Biden and his aides have struggled to contain the war, fearing that a regional escalation would quickly draw in U.S. forces.

Now, with the U.S. strike on nearly 30 sites in Yemen on Thursday and a smaller strike the next day, it is no longer a question of whether there will be a regional conflict. It has already started. The biggest questions now are how intense the conflict is and whether it can be contained.

This is exactly the outcome that no one wanted, probably including Iran.

“We are not interested in a war with Yemen. We are not interested in conflict of any kind,” White House spokesman John F. Kirby said Friday. “In fact, everything the president has done is aimed at preventing any escalation of the conflict, including last night’s strikes. »

Mr. Biden’s decision to launch airstrikes, after resisting calls to act against Yemen-based Houthi militants whose repeated attacks on shipping in the Red Sea were beginning to take a toll on global trade, constitutes a obvious change in strategy. After issuing a series of warnings, officials said, Mr. Biden felt his hand forced after a barrage of missile and drone attacks was directed Tuesday against a U.S. cargo ship and US Navy ships. Navy surrounding him.

“This is already a regional war, which is no longer limited to Gaza, but already extends to Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen,” said Middle East expert Hugh Lovatt. Orient for the European Council on Foreign Relations. Washington, he added, wanted to demonstrate that it was prepared to deter Iranian provocations, so it pointedly positioned its aircraft carriers and fighters to respond quickly. But these same positions further expose the United States.

Over the course of 12 weeks, attacks on Israeli, American and Western interests came from Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, provoking modest and carefully targeted responses from American and Israeli forces. The United States has also issued warnings to Iran, which it says is acting as a mere coordinator.

What is remarkable about the retaliatory strike in Yemen is its scale: employing warplanes and sea-launched missiles, US and British forces, supported by a small number of other allies, struck a large number of Houthi missile and drone sites.

Mr. Biden walks the fine line between deterrence and escalation, and his aides admit there is nothing scientific about this calculation. Tehran and its allies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, have been cautious in their support of Hamas, limiting their actions, in order to prevent a larger US military response that could threaten Tehran’s exercise of power in Lebanon, Iraq and in Syria.

But the degree of control Iran exercises over its proxies is in question, and its leaders could also misread U.S. and Israeli red lines.

The Houthis, a small Iranian-backed tribe in Yemen, have been among the most aggressive in pushing the boundaries, trying to block international trade routes across the Red Sea and ignoring U.S. and Western warnings to desist.

Houthi officials say the sole aim of their attacks is to force Israel to stop its military campaign and allow the free flow of aid to Gaza.

Western diplomats said there had been some reluctance to strike back against the Houthis, partly to avoid upsetting the truce in the Yemeni civil war, and partly because of the difficulty of completely eliminating their threat. But the Houthis’ repeated attacks on ships, their direct fire on U.S. helicopters and their attack Tuesday on a U.S. cargo ship left the United States with what officials say was not much of a choice.

U.S. officials said the Pentagon carried out a second round of strikes against the Houthis on Friday, bombing a radar facility in Yemen.

It is unclear how long it will take for the Houthis to recover and threaten ships in the Red Sea again, as they have promised. The response so far has been muted, with a single anti-ship missile launched harmlessly into the Red Sea, far from any passing ships, a Pentagon official told reporters Friday.

But deeper U.S. military involvement also reinforces the perception around the world that the United States is acting even more directly on Israel’s behalf, risking further damage to the U.S. and Western standing as the death toll rises in Gaza . Israel is now defending its conduct against the charge of genocide in an international court.

Iran uses proxies like Hezbollah and the Houthis to distance itself from their actions and maintain credibility in the region, trying to avoid a direct attack that could endanger the Islamic Revolution and its nuclear program.

But Iran is also being dragged along by these same proxies.

“Iran is really pushing for it,” said François Heisbourg, a French military analyst. “That’s another reason they don’t want war now: they want their centrifuges to work peacefully.” The Iranians do not have nuclear weapons, but could enrich enough uranium for military purposes within weeks, increasing from the current enrichment rate of 60 percent to 90 percent, he said. “They did 95 percent of the work.”

Israel is also escalating its attacks against Iran’s proxies, notably in Lebanon and Syria. After the Hamas attack, Hezbollah in Lebanon launched a series of strikes from Lebanon, leading Israel to evacuate citizens close to the conflict.

Following that, the Israeli air campaign killed 19 Hezbollah members in Syria in three months, more than double the rest of 2023 combined, according to a tally by the Reuters news agency. More than 130 Hezbollah fighters were also killed by Israel in Lebanon during the same period.

Amine Hoteit, a retired Lebanese army general and analyst, listed several goals of Israeli attacks in Syria: maintaining attention there and pressuring the Syrian government «to cut off the supply route Iranian”.

U.S. troops deployed to Iraq and Syria to prevent a resurgence of ISIS have been attacked by Iranian-backed militias 130 times since Oct. 17, according to a Pentagon tally Thursday, totaling 53 attacks in Iraq and 77 in Syria. The United States retaliated on fewer than ten occasions, usually after American losses.

Each time, the United States said its response was intended to deter further attacks and was intended to send a message to Iran and its proxies, which operate freely in Iraq and Syria. But no American soldiers were killed. The worry, U.S. officials say, is that sooner or later one of the attacks will kill troops, and the response will then be much deadlier and could spiral out of control.

On Jan. 4, the U.S. military launched a rare retaliatory strike in Baghdad that killed a militia leader it blames for recent attacks on U.S. personnel, a move condemned by the Iraqi government.

While the Iraqi government is now dominated by parties close to Iran, the U.S. presence has been tolerated largely out of fear that without U.S. help, the Islamic State could quickly regain ground.

But on Friday, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry condemned the strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. “We believe that expanding the scope of targets does not represent a solution to the problem – rather it will lead to an extension of the scope of the war,” the statement said.

While the main focus has been on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah, the Houthi threat to trade could have the greatest global impact, as some 30 percent of the world’s container ships transit the Red Sea . Volvo, Tesla and other European automakers have already suspended production for a few days or more due to interruptions in receiving parts as ships sail around the Red Sea and Suez Canal.

The United States and more than a dozen other countries have created a coalition to protect shipping, Operation Prosperity Guardian. But the Houthis continued to attempt to attack ships, whether or not they had ties to Israel, and Maersk decided to suspend all shipping on the Red Sea after a Dec. 31 attack on one of its ships. The company has warned customers to expect significant disruption and analysts expect rising prices to add to global inflation.

In public speeches this week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah reiterated that they do not want a wider war. But Colin P. Clarke, a counterterrorism expert and research director at the Soufan Group, said Israel could not afford to become complacent given its grave miscalculation before Oct. 7 that Hamas was also not interested in a war.

The recent assassinations that struck at the heart of Iran’s ties to Hezbollah and Hamas have angered Iranians who described them in chat rooms and on social media as being «slapped in the face again and again.»

Brig. General Sayyed Razi Mousavi, killed at Christmas in Damascus, was responsible for two decades for supplying missiles, rockets and drones to Hezbollah in Lebanon and allied militias in Syria and Iraq, according to Iranian media. Mr. Khamenei performed the ritual of praying for the dead over his body at his funeral, an honor reserved for the most revered underlings.

Saleh al-Arouri, deputy political leader of Hamas, killed in a drone strike in the heart of Hezbollah’s power base in Beirut’s Dahieh district, was the Hamas member closest to Iran and Hezbollah and the person they trusted most with their sensitive messaging and facilitation. financing and technical know-how from Iran.

Alissa J. Rubin contributed to reporting from Baghdad, Hwaida Saad from Beirut, and Helene Cooper And Eric Schmitt of Washington.