https://arab.news/z9qnn

Amid the fog of the Gaza conflict, inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency warn that Iran has increased threefold its enrichment of uranium to near bomb grade.

France’s UN ambassador and US intelligence officials warn that Tehran is “a couple of weeks or so” from the final stage of enrichment of sufficient uranium for three nuclear weapons. This is a stark turnaround from a few months ago, when the US complacently believed it had reached a deal with Iran to curtail enrichment.

Tehran is meanwhile using its regional proxies to exacerbate conflict. My book published two years ago about Iran-backed transnational factions — “Militia State” — warned of the risks of allowing paramilitary entities to become established at major global economic chokepoints such as Bab Al-Mandab, the Strait of Hormuz, the eastern Mediterranean and the Arabian Gulf headwaters. As a result of Houthi attacks on shipping, Red Sea trade is down by around a third, seriously disrupting the global economy, with Arab states among the most affected.

Although British Foreign Secretary David Cameron argued that not acting would be accepting that such attacks could “virtually shut a vital sea lane with relative impunity,” the US and UK airstrikes strikes left at least 75 percent of the Houthis’ missile-firing capabilities intact, with Western intelligence struggling to identify further viable targets. In any case, Tehran has always been quick to resupply its proxies — in full view of US spy satellites — and the Houthis are battle hardened by decades of conflict.

The Biden administration’s delisting of the Houthis as a terrorist group is evidence of the chronic absence of strategic........

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