Last January 11 a coalition led by United Kingdom and give it United Stateswhich within the mission Prosperity Guardian it involved partially also Denmark, Australia, Singapore, Bahrain, Canada, Germania, Netherlands, South Korea e New Zelandlaunched around a hundred missiles against around sixty military targets in 16 different areas of the Yemenall under the control of Ansarullahthe armed movement founded by the rebels Houthi supported byIran and responsible for around thirty missile and drone attacks on commercial ships transiting the Red Sea.
A series of strikes decided without going through the UN Security Council which in the last few hours also led to the opening of a mystery regarding the – so far missing – participation of theItalia. The agency Reuters, in the aftermath of the bombings, had in fact reported Rome’s refusal to join the coalition. A refusal denied by a note from Palazzo Chigi a few hours later, in which it was specified that Italy had only been notified of the initiative, and followed by the publication of a diplomatic cable from Londondating back to New Year, in which the UK urged its European allies to “actively join together in more incisive action” against the Houthis.
Italy is currently stalling, even though it has already been present in the Red Sea since last October with two Navy frigates, the Virginio Fasan and the Federico Martinengo (the latter equipped with Aster surface-to-air missiles, capable of intercepting Houthi drones and cruise missiles, ndr), engaged within the European mission Atalanta designed to combat the Somali piratesbut from around 7 October recalibrated to meet the need to protect the merchant fleet.
Those concerning the commercial risks that loom over Italy are important numbers: if approximately 12% of world maritime tradethis percentage reaches almost 40% – 155 billion of import-export dollars – in the case of Italy, with the ports of Taranto, Gioia Tauro, Genova e Toasts who could suffer the most serious consequences of the blockade or reduced operation of one of the main global ‘bottlenecks’, i.e. the Strait of Bab al Mandeb which essentially connects Europe to East Asia.
The most spectacular of the Houthi rebel attacks on commercial ships transiting the Bab el Mandeb Strait occurred last November 19, when the rebels off the coast of Jeddah they had landed by helicopter on the deck of the cargo ship Galaxy Leadertraveling from the Turkish port of Korfez to the Indian one of Pipavavalthough without a load (it normally transports cars, ndr). The action, claimed as a measure to “stop the massacre in Gaza“, had followed the announcement a week earlier by the Houthis on their broadcaster Al Masirah of wanting to “target Israeli ships passing through the Strait, even those without a flag”.
The Galaxy – mixed crew, flying the flag of Bahamas and chartered by the Japanese Nippon Yusen by the owner Abraham UngarIsraeli entrepreneur – was then seized and anchored off the port of Al Salif and transformed into a tourist attraction for Yemenis. The evolution of this scenario had pushed a series of shipping companies, such as Coscothe Table-LLoyd and the Maersk to divert their routes from the Red Sea towards the Cape of Good Hopewith the times and costs of transporting a container from the Mediterranean Sea to China having quadrupled in a couple of weeks, not to mention an increase of around 3% in the cost of insurance of cargoes.
However, ultimately stimulating the American and British raids – which thus officially opened a new front of the conflict that exploded on 7 October – were the Ansarullah attacks on 9 January, with the almost simultaneous interception of eighteen drones, two cruise missiles e an anti-ship ballistic missile. None of the Yemeni raids to date have managed to sink any ships, although a handful have reported significant damage, with economic consequences for around fifty countries, including Italy itself. This, however, seems only the beginning of an evolution full of unknowns and potential global repercussions.
It is impossible to frame what is happening in the Red Sea only in light of the mere activation of “solidarity mechanisms” by the Houthis towards the Palestinian armed movements, which fall under the umbrella ofAxis of Resistance led by Iran: the Yemeni rebels, in fact, with these actions wanted first and foremost to send a message aimed at their full political and military recognitionon an internal and sub-regional level, which they have been pursuing with particular determination for a decade now, even outside the partnership with Teheran. A process of gradual strengthening and self-legitimation that starts from afar, since their foundation in 1992, and certainly starting from the military offensive launched against them by a Saudi-led coalition in 2015.
In these years of fighting, which ended up frustrating Saudi capabilities and strengthening the positions of the Houthis – who control a large part of the country, including the capital Occupation -, the latter have refined their military preparation, including maritime, and above all developed the ability to decentralize and hide their armaments (such as missile launch pads, which are easy to move) and their bases, resisting intense bombing campaigns planes.
This is the main reason why the recent American and British raids – aimed more at protecting global trade than just solidarity towards their Israeli ally – may not have substantially affected their drone and missile development programs, but only stimulated the preparation of new reprisals – perhaps even on the Gulf countries, as has already happened, or on other cities in Yemen beyond their control, interrupting the shaky cease-fire currently in force – possible prelude to an uncontrollable spillover. What to expect from the immediate future?
A consequence of the American and British raids has already been the mobilization immediate response of hundreds of thousands – some sources speak of numbers exceeding one million – of Yemenis, who took to the streets in recent hours in protest against the armed intervention, in the wake of a simultaneous increased feeling of hostility towards Washingtonalso because of what is happening to Gaza. The local news agency Sabah he then reported on another, contemporary mobilization, that is, the one that saw the delivery of approximately 20 thousand military diplomas to as many young Yemeni recruits, ready to become operational in Ansarullah.
Military operations in tormented places like Gaza, like l’Afghanistanas the Somalia or like Yemen – among the countries with the lowest human development indices in the world, an infant mortality rate of 60%, a poverty rate above 60% and a serious food and health crisis that has been ongoing for years – as has already been seen now bring with them the typical effect of cement the internal support (and to a certain extent also regional, ndr) – in this case to the Ansarullah rebels – which would otherwise be more precarious, given the difficulty of the latter in ensuring the basic services to the population and pay them salaries of officials.
In the short term, responses from the Houthis are therefore expected, and consequently further ones strikes Western countries, within the framework of a general increase in the militarization of the area by the American-led Combined Task Force 153 and with the participation ofEgyptin turn operating within the aforementioned mission Prosperity Guardiannext to a renewal of sanctions on Houthi armaments.
On the diplomatic level, we hope in the lateral mediation attempts of theSaudi Arabia itself – which in recent months had begun a timid dialogue with the Houthis in the wake of a partial rapprochement with Tehran mediated by Beijing – and as usual Oman, always very active in these directions. At the moment, however, these efforts appear premature to say the least. The Houthis have definitively inaugurated their entry into the conflict, fully aware of the consequences of a prolonged damage or interruption of a large part of the world‘s maritime traffic, and are officially prepared to link it to the end of the bombings on Gaza, in full harmony with the rest of the Axis of Resistance.
On the other hand, it is currently unlikely that the escalation in the Red Sea will involve localized interventions by its other partners, both Iran and Hezbollah than through its general secretary Hassan Nasrallah yesterday announced further Axis reprisals for the bombing of Yemen. Reprisals which, as in the case of the murder of Saleh Al Arourithey could arrive “diluted” in time and space.
The asymmetric strategy of the Axis itself, both in Palestine and in Yemen, currently seems to consist in maintaining a series of (contained) open fronts. And in a certain sense they are not communicating, in order to avoid conflicts of greater scope and concentration. However, keeping Western forces engaged – and potentially divided, as seen at the moment with the case of the lack of Italian participation, as well as with the Turkish condemnation of the British-American raids, for example – and world trade in partial check.