A month before the targeted killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, few would have expected the US government to eliminate him in a drone strike. Fast forward to this month, and the United States and its allies have launched a military operation to degrade and deter the Houthis. Last night, they launched strikes against more than a dozen Yemeni locations, with explosions reported in the capital Sanaa, the Red Sea port of Hudaydah, Dhamar and north-western Houthi stronghold Saada.
The Houthis are armed, financed, and resourced by the IRGC and have been targeting commercial vessels in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a sensitive global chokepoint. But the US’s operation has lacked the speed, stealth, and surprise that Soleimani’s demise carried. That risks undermining the very deterrence that Washington and London hope to build with their strikes.
It is not only a question of quantity, but the quality of targets
Military strategists and decision-makers in Iran have long sought to encircle Israel in a ring of fire. Hamas’ ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on 7 October and the ensuing response from the IRGC’s axis of resistance, comprised of militias like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, represented the first large-scale implementation of this doctrine. Tehran has been pulling the strings in the background. It has been like an orchestra, with the militias as players – and the IRGC as the conductor.
But the response from the United States and its allies has been underwhelming, unimaginative, and halting. ‘Proportionate’ responses, as Thursday’s campaign was described, have not stopped the attacks. The US government has sought to prevent escalation. But the Biden administration’s signalling that it was not interested in expanding the conflict in Gaza has failed to keep up with the IRGC’s modus operandi of multi-theater combat via proxies. Washington’s attempts to deescalate with non-responses to a variety of provocations – which have ranged from attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria to assaults on international shipping until Thursday – have prompted greater escalation from the axis of resistance.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has occupied his post since 1989 – outlasting almost six American chief executives. President Joe Biden has proven to be a predictable adversary for him, and Khamenei has his number.
While the President deployed advanced naval assets into the Middle East and warned ‘don’t’, the Iranian leadership has been unimpressed and doubted Biden’s will to use them against strategic targets of importance for the country. This has emboldened Khamenei to expand the contours of the regional battlefield, although it is still below the threshold of what would trigger a direct war between Washington and Tehran. This is the result of the United States often appearing more afraid of the Islamic Republic than the Islamic Republic is afraid of the United States.
Iran and its broader proxy network have long sensed this American hesitancy to use force to protect its interests. The sluggish and tortured deliberations over whether the United States should launch strikes against the Houthis made the actual decision to undertake kinetic action anticlimactic. The avalanche of leaks – especially from British media in recent days – in the lead up to the strikes has also encouraged the Houthis and the IRGC to move their arsenal of key weapons and personnel out of harm’s way.
The IRGC’s Quds Force stations personnel in Yemen, most notably Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior commander based in Sanaa. The IRGC, anticipating Western action, also moved its Behshad spy ship, which has been transferring intelligence to the Houthis to guide their targeting of ships in international waters. This undermined operational security.
This raises questions as to the effectiveness of the US military campaign launched last night. It is not only a question of quantity, but the quality of targets, namely their importance to the Houthis and the Iranian leadership. Iran’s defense strategy is predicated on using expendable proxies and partners to deter an attack on Iranian soil by the United States and Israel. Khamenei will fight to the last Houthi but is risk-averse in using his own forces overtly because he knows that such a conflict with American and allied forces would risk destabilizing his regime.
Khamenei has been complacent because of Biden’s perceived disinterest in forcefully confronting Tehran. This can be seen in the President’s statement announcing the US strikes on the Houthis. Nowhere did he even mention Iran or the IRGC. But the Houthis would not be the Houthis – in terms of their power – without Iranian guidance. This hesitancy is likely to make an impression in Iran’s halls of power.
The reality is that to effectively deter the Iranian leadership, the United States and its allies will have to strike targets that hold worth for the theocracy. These include IRGC bases in Iran and IRGC commanders in the region. They can learn lessons from Israel’s (and in limited cases America’s) experience in eliminating high-value targets over the years without triggering a regional war. The senior IRGC officers Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Hassan Sayyad Khodaei, and Razi Mousavi are three such examples.
There was no regional war even after Qassem Soleimani, who held great importance to the regime, was taken off field – despite the apocalyptic predictions at the time. If the violence continues, President Biden should consider doing something out of character to shock the Iranian system out of its complacency. It will, after all, not only be Khamenei, but Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin taking notes.
Middle East / The US strike on the Houthis won’t deter Iran or its proxies
19
0
12.01.2024
A month before the targeted killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020, few would have expected the US government to eliminate him in a drone strike. Fast forward to this month, and the United States and its allies have launched a military operation to degrade and deter the Houthis. Last night, they launched strikes against more than a dozen Yemeni locations, with explosions reported in the capital Sanaa, the Red Sea port of Hudaydah, Dhamar and north-western Houthi stronghold Saada.
The Houthis are armed, financed, and resourced by the IRGC and have been targeting commercial vessels in the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, a sensitive global chokepoint. But the US’s operation has lacked the speed, stealth, and surprise that Soleimani’s demise carried. That risks undermining the very deterrence that Washington and London hope to build with their strikes.
It is not only a question of quantity, but the quality of targets
Military strategists and decision-makers in Iran have long sought to encircle Israel in a ring of fire. Hamas’ ‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ on 7 October and the ensuing response from the IRGC’s axis of resistance, comprised of militias like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, represented the first large-scale implementation of this doctrine. Tehran has been pulling the strings in the background. It has been like an orchestra, with the militias as players – and........
© The Spectator
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