A week ago, the US, the UK and 10 other mostly western nations told Yemen’s Houthi rebels that they would “bear the consequences” if they launched further attacks on merchant shipping in the southern Red Sea. For a brief period – six days – the Houthis paused, before at 9.15pm on Tuesday launching their most sophisticated attack yet.
Eighteen drones, described by the British as of Iranian design, and three missiles appear to have targeted a fleet of warships in and around the 18-mile-wide Bab el-Mandab strait, where the Red Sea comes closest to Houthi-controlled Yemen. Though they were all shot down, the brazen nature of the attack was not lost on western politicians.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, on a trip to Bahrain, the only Arab country to publicly sign up to last week’s warning, said on Wednesday: “If this continues, as it did yesterday, there will be consequences.” In Britain, the defence secretary, Grant Shapps, said “watch this space” and warned the current situation “cannot continue”.
What began as an opportunistic Houthi campaign targeting merchant shipping travelling south of the Suez Canal in mid October – in support of Hamas in Gaza – appears to have become something different: a determined attempt to attack and provoke a retaliation from Washington as the US electoral cycle is heating up, bringing the UK and other allies alongside.
Prior to Tuesday night, 61 drones had been fired in 25 attacks. But in the early evening, a group of 18, probably the relatively inexpensive delta-wing Shahed 136, appear to have been aimed at the warships directly. Seven were shot down by HMS Diamond, which Shapps told reporters “potentially was targeted”.
Attacking in a swarm is a tactic taken from Ukraine, where several Shahed drones are deployed in an effort to overwhelm local air defences – and even when they are all stopped, it imposes costs on the defenders.
A Shahed 136 costs $20,000 (£16,000) to make, while missiles for HMS Diamond’s Sea Viper defence system cost £1m to £2m a time, although the costs of losing a warship – or human lives – is far greater.
But the risks of a Houthi drone getting through are potentially worse, spurring arguments in Washington that the US should take a more active approach.
“If we only sit there in a defensive posture, eventually one of these missiles or drones will get through and kill sailors,” said Michael Allen, a former White House national security policy specialist.
Last month, one former US commander of the Central Command in the Middle East, Gen Joseph Votel, suggested the US could target coastal radars, coastal gun systems and missile systems, which he argued were “very clear military targets”. But it is very unlikely that one round of western airstrikes would halt the raids in the Red Sea.
Battle-hardened after years of fighting in Yemen’s long civil war, the Houthis enjoy Iranian backing and military aid. Describing them as rebels is simplistic: the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates their military is 20,000-strong and a parade in September showed an organised military of some scale, which would be determined to show it had not been beaten by whatever the US attacked with.
However, any extended conflict risks further disaster for Yemen. Peace talks were close to ending the nine-year conflict before 7 October and in some western quarters there is desperate anxiety about a US retaliation, because of the risk to civilians of any military action, however calibrated it is.
On Wednesday night, Blinken’s rhetoric in Bahrain was markedly similar to the warning the Houthis had ignored the week before, perhaps suggesting a wider western military response was not imminent.
But it is also hard to see the emboldened Houthis stopping their campaign, given their access to relatively cheap missiles and drones and desire to show resistance to the west.
• This article was amended on 11 January 2023. A previous version incorrectly referred to HMS Richmond, rather than HMS Diamond.
