Strategic Implications of Houthi missile strikes at US Navy ships
Mike Walker, Col USMC (retired)
All,
Some are characterizing the firing of Iranian-supplied missiles by Houthi rebels at US warships in the Gulf of Aden as a local affair tied to ongoing civil war in Yemen. That conclusion is both wishfully simplistic and wrong.
This is a tactical initiative supporting a far larger strategic vision. Yes, the Yemeni civil war is a surrogate war between Iran and Saudi Arabia but even that contest is part of a larger objective of the Islamic Republic to force the United States out of the region in order to facilitate Iranian hegemony over the Middle East.
If the Houthi’s successfully drive the U.S. Navy out of the Gulf of Aden, Iran will gain control over one of the world’s most important littoral sea lines of communication (SLOCs). It will also badly destabilize the Middle East as the Iranians are already seeking to drive the US Navy out of the Persian Gulf with its strategic passage at the Straits of Hormuz.
Most of the world’s oil (about 65%) passes through these two SLOCs in combination with the overland pipelines. Iranian sea control over the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden would place the existing flow of supplies at the mercy of Tehran as the pipeline network simply could not make up for the loss of the shipping volume.
Add in the fact that the Syrian civil war has degraded the pipelines to the Mediterranean and another transverses Lebanon where Iran’s Hezbollah allies have the power to shut it down at will. Finally, if a pro-Islamic Republic regime (led by the likes of Mutaddah Sadr) took power in Iraq, the pipelines through Turkey would also fall under Iran’s control.
If the Islamic Republic realizes those goals, America’s allies in the Arabian Peninsula only would be left with the two pipeline ports at Duqum, Oman, on the Arabian Sea and Saudi Arabia’s al Baha on the Red Sea. In other words, their oil-driven economies would be devastated. Finally, the passage through the Gulf of Aden is far more than a key stretch of an oil-gas SLOC, it is a chokepoint for an economic sea lane of global importance. If Iran achieved these objectives then Tehran's message to the Arab states would be abundantly clear: Submit to the Islamic Republic or face economic ruin.
What this all means is that pushing the US Navy out of the Gulf of Aden is but one important part of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s long-term strategic plan and the plan’s ends are not primarily economic. They are principally political-military goals whose attainment must inevitably end in war -- as the flying Houthi missiles so amply demonstrate.
The stakes are truly great.
Semper Fi,
Mike
