Last week, Houthi forces in Yemen captured the Red Sea port city of Mokha. It’s the most consequential Houthi victory since the Iranian-backed group seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa 12 years ago.
While the Houthis have long targeted shipping with missiles and drones launched from the inland highlands, Mokha and nearby Perim Island give the Houthis direct control over the Bab el Mandeb gateway into the Red Sea. The price hikes American consumers have already weathered are now just the tip of the iceberg, nor will that be the end of the pain. Somali pirates are already stepping up to get their pound of flesh from ships heading around Africa.
The Saudi response, bombing Mokha Airport, is laughable. The airport handled only two flights a week. The Houthis seized Mokha for its location, not its airport. Saudi whack-a-mole strikes will be no more effective now than they have been for the past decade.
The Houthis’ assault on Mokha is the result of a decade of international naivete, Washington’s lack of reliability, and Riyadh’s cynicism. The Houthis seized Hodeidah, Yemen’s major Red Sea port, less than a month after they took Sanaa. The international coalition was ready to wrest the port from the Houthis in 2017, but human rights organizations voiced concern that any interruption of port activities could have humanitarian ramifications. While true, they ignored that the Houthis hijacked aid and used food as a weapon.
Instead of eradicating the Houthis, the United Nations brokered the 2018 Stockholm Accords. In theory, the Houthis would leave the port, and the U.N. would inspect ships. But in practice, the Houthis stayed, the U.N. paid their salaries, and the U.N. agreed only to inspect ships that volunteered for inspection. Far more Yemenis have now died because of such smoke-and-mirrors than would have if the coalition military had just finished the job. Amnesty International has blood on its hands because of its reflexive hostility to military action.
President Donald Trump also blew an opportunity. He both began and ended his bombing campaign with zero coordination with allies or anti-Houthi forces in Yemen. Worse, he cut a separate deal: The U.S. would cease bombing Houthis, and the Houthis would not attack U.S. targets. He left the Israelis, Greek ships, Indian crewmen, and others at the mercy of the Houthis. The region saw it as weaselly and concluded they could not trust Washington.
Saudi cynicism was also self-defeating. Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman struck a similar bargain with the Houthis, trading a cessation of Saudi bombing for Houthi silence. He then sought to empower the Yemeni Muslim Brotherhood as his proxy, even as its personnel smuggled weaponry to the Houthis. Finally, by kneecapping southern Yemeni fighters, bin Salman hobbled the only Yemeni group capable of standing up to the Houthis.
Rather than double down on failure, the State Department must calibrate policy to reality. International relations have no do-over, but there is a way forward if Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want to win rather than send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.
First, there is Somaliland. Somaliland has operated independently of Somalia longer than it was ever part of that failed state. It is a pro-Western democracy with the strongest counter-terror record in the region. Sitting astride the Gulf of Aden, its Berbera Airport once served as an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle. Four-man aircrews can patrol the Bab el Mandeb faster and for cheaper than an aircraft carrier. Berbera, with its highway straight into Ethiopia, can also accommodate the oilers that replenish U.S. carriers at sea.
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If the Houthi conquest of Mokha holds and Riyadh’s Yemeni proxies turn over the keys of southern Yemen to the Houthis, Iran will control 1,750 miles of key Indian Ocean coastline from Pakistan to Djibouti. Recognizing South Arabia, the original post-colonial plan for the region, would bypass Saudi incompetence and isolate the Houthis.
Defeating the Houthis would be possible only if the State Department stopped playing by an artificial set of rules.
Michael Rubin is director of policy analysis at the Middle East Forum, a distinguished fellow at India’s Usanas Foundation, and a contributor to Beltway Confidential.