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9 December 2023

The Right Response to Red Sea Ship Attacks: Dismantle Iran’s Proxy Axis

Seth Cropsey

Responding to initial reports of an attack on the USS Carney in the Red Sea on Sunday, the Biden administration belatedly declared that the warship was not attacked; it simply shot down drones heading for an unspecific target during a series of attacks on shipping off the Yemeni coast.

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, an Iranian proxy, readily claimed credit for the attacks, which are part of a broader campaign to push the U.S. out of the Middle East and isolate its crucial ally, Israel. A rational Washington would respond with force to reset — or, more accurately, establish — deterrence, destroying Houthi launch sites and compelling Iran either to escalate elsewhere or to accept the loss of its proxy.

Indeed, the best way to defeat Iran’s current offensive is to destroy its “Axis of Resistance,” member by member.

Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel was the most barbaric element of a much broader plan by Iran. The Islamic Republic has constructed the Axis of Resistance, an alliance of proxies and state-enablers, with painstaking care since the late 2000s. The axis operates through a unique combination of standard non-state tactics and regular state activities.

Its model member, Lebanese Hezbollah, demonstrates Iran’s underlying objective in each geography. Hezbollah infiltrated and displaced the Lebanese state over a 20-year period and, today, is capable of ruling half the country while manipulating politics in the other half.

Iran’s strategy through the Axis of Resistance is, therefore, one of state capture on a longer timescale.

Alongside Lebanon, Iran has executed this plan in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. Since 2014, Iran has dominated Iraqi politics through its control of various Shia militias, foremost among them Kataib Hezbollah, which comprise the Iraqi “Popular Mobilization Forces,” Iraq’s de facto military after the stunning ISIS offensive in 2014. Naturally, divisions remain in Iraqi politics, but Iraq increasingly has become an Iranian possession.

In Syria, Iran’s plan has been to prop up the Assad regime while slowly capturing its security services and thus absorbing the state. It has yet to succeed fully, but Syria is well on its way to being a full-fledged proxy.

Yemen, by contrast, is unique. The easiest route into the Yemeni state was backing the Houthis, a tribal Zaidi Yemeni organization with Zaidi Shia religious affiliations. Since 2021, Hamas has been a full-fledged axis member as well.

The Axis of Resistance provides Iran significant benefits, including “implausible deniability.” A comparison to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine is illustrative: Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region with Russian soldiers — the Kremlin’s “Little Green Men” who wore Russian uniforms, used Russian weapons, spoke Russian, and employed Russian military tactics, techniques and procedures. Ukraine’s Donbas “separatists” also were transparently Russian-designed, considering the number of Russian security services personnel involved in that war’s opening weeks. Yet the fact that Russia denied involvement in both events meant Europe and the U.S. could pretend an invasion was a civil war to which Russia was not party.

Similarly, the sheer number of proxies Iran employs in its axis means that Tehran can deny (albeit implausibly, except to the credulous) any involvement in specific attacks — whether against U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria, against Israel on Oct. 7, or now off the Yemeni coast — compelling hair-splitting distinctions between Iranian “backing” and Iranian “involvement.”

Yemen’s Houthis have now hit three commercial ships in the southern Red Sea while lobbing drones and missiles “in the vicinity of”— and quite probably at — the destroyer USS Carney. This follows other missile attacks on the Carney and a Houthi-backed piracy incident in mid-November.

Iran can maintain its proxies at full readiness in Iraq and Syria near-indefinitely, while Israel must demobilize at some point or risk severe economic strain. An Israeli attack on Iranian territory is inconceivable at this point because the U.S. has been unwilling even to hint that it might punish Iran directly for the actions of its proxies.

Yemen plays a specific role in Iranian strategy today. It reminds Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that Iran can still do significant damage to both, thereby encouraging them to press Israel and the U.S. for a ceasefire, ideally while Hamas remains in Gaza. It also raises the stakes for European powers and China, since the Suez Canal-Red Sea route handles one-tenth of global trade volumes. As fighting continues in Gaza, Iran hopes accumulating diplomatic and economic pressures will compel Washington to tie Jerusalem’s hands or break with it altogether.

The U.S. could attack Iran directly if not for the Biden administration’s fear and folly in hewing to the Obama-era fantasy of Iran as a stabilizing force in the region. But this move, regardless of its merits, would signal a new strategic era in the Middle East and cause significant political blowback in Arab capitals. This is relevant, not because of some potential oil embargo, but because the U.S. long-term strategy should still be the creation of a regional coalition that can contain Iran and assist the U.S. in broader Eurasian competition. A massive strike on Iran would make that coalition near-impossible to assemble over the next decade.

The U.S. may well take this risk — but an alternative is available.

Instead, the U.S. can break apart the Axis of Resistance, bit by bit.

Beginning in Yemen is reasonable, since the U.S. has obvious cause to respond to protect a U.S. Navy ship and international trade. The U.S. should execute a large-scale airstrike campaign against Houthi targets in Yemen, hitting any cruise missile, ballistic missile or loitering-munition launchers. The USS Eisenhower strike group, currently in the Red Sea, is eminently capable of maintaining air control over Yemen. By blunting the Houthis, the U.S. can both undermine Iranian pressure on global trade and reduce a threat against Saudi Arabia and the UAE, thereby buying Israel more time in Gaza and elsewhere.

This strategy, of course, assumes that military force can be used as a tool of statecraft, and that escalation, in a calibrated fashion, is an effective method of policy. Thus far, in Ukraine and the Middle East, the Biden administration has shown no appetite for such policy — but the longer it refrains from the use of force, the more force it will need to apply to accomplish American objectives in the future.

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