Daniel Pipes Cautiously Optimistic that Houthis Will Stand Down
In an interview with Kevin Williamson at The Dispatch on Dec. 19, Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes suggested that Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels will likely stand down in the face of the Biden administration's formation of a 10-nation international task force to confront their threat to international shipping.
The small number of partners in the task force belies the level of international commitment on this issue. "Clearly there are many more who are sympathetic ... [yet] don't want to be associated with the United States. But everybody who's got international trade is interested in containing the Houthi threat," said Pipes, adding:
I don't think there's any question when it comes to firepower [and] international consensus, where things lie. Nobody but the Iranians and the Houthis and a few others – very few others – like the fact that the Houthis are disrupting international trade. What you're seeing is that these gigantic container ships are going now around the Horn of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope, adding something like 10 days to their voyage, from 20 to 30 roughly, which means you need more ships, you need more fuel, you've got your goods in the seas rather than on the shelves. It's quite disruptive, and basically everybody has agreed that this is a horrible thing. So, it's going to end.
As to how it's going to end, Pipes was circumspect:
So far, the U.S. and its allies have been completely defensive. All we've done is knock down the drones and missiles that the Houthis have sent. We've not retaliated in any fashion. Sooner or later, that's got to come to an end, and then the big question is how far do we go? Do we try and get rid of the Houthi regime? Do we then move on to the Iranians? Do the Israelis go on to the Iranians?
Part of the uncertainty stems from lack of clarity as to the aspirations of both the Houthis and the Iranians. The former have managed to "take what has essentially been until now a localized conflict between Israel and Hamas – many implications, to be sure, on campuses and parliaments and so forth, but a localized conflict with a small impact internationally – and turn it into a global issue. The Houthis have single-handedly done this." Their goal, very much achieved, appears to be "establishing themselves as the anti-Israel stalwarts of the Muslim world," explained Pipes:
These are the jihadis. These are the people who are coming to the aid of Hamas. Nobody else is. Hezbollah a little bit in Lebanon, but Houthis are the real ones potentially shaking the global order. This is a completely different order of magnitude than what has preceded it for the last two months.
Whether the Iranians are pushing the Houthis along this path is the subject of considerable debate. If so, a major confrontation appears likely:
The Iranians are playing with fire, if they are, in fact, pushing the Houthis to do this – or if they're not stopping them – because who knows where this is going to go? You get the United States involved, you get Israel perhaps attacking Iran, who knows where this is going to go? It's very dangerous for Iran. The Iranians tend to be cautious at this level, and this is not cautious. This is dangerous.
If not, the situation is less clear. The Houthis appear to be of two different minds as to whether they will persist in threatening all international shipping:
There are conflicting signals coming out of Yemen. Just today, we've had two major spokesmen for the group, one of them saying 'we're going to go and attack everybody' and the other saying 'no, no, no, we're not going to attack anyone except ships that are going to Israel or are owned by Israelis.' So, there's an ambiguity there. ... Are the dissensions within the Houthis? Are these two spokesmen speaking for different factions?
Pipes is hopeful that the Houthis will be deterred by the new task force. "My inclination is to think they're going to go backwards on this, and they'll realize they're taking on too much, and they're going to reduce their threat just to Israeli owned [ships] – or manned or going towards Israel – and end the global potential crisis. But I don't know. It's not clear."
