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So, perhaps this too much of a war question, rather than a culture war one, but I'm having trouble understanding why Iran is launching attacks on random cargo ships in the Red Sea via proxies in Yemen, and now apparently directly https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-67811929 .
Ok, at least some of the vessels are Israeli linked, and they're hitting at US warships, but my confusion is what this hopes to achieve. Operation Preying Mantis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Praying_Mantis seems an apt concern for the Iranians as a repeat: they cant hope to exert serious pressure on Israel's economy, and the moment they sink or damage a warship they're getting hit hard surely? And is it earning them any friends?
Meanwhile Hezbolah is Iranian backed and maybe directly controlled, and has done little in the current conflict. If you want to apply pressure to Israel, isnt that the way, especially given that Hezbolah has resources Hamas does not and could seriously threaten another front that would need actual Israeli resources. Iran isnt going all out with its assets, or the assets in cases are refusing to for self preservation.
So why hit ships? Is it really all they can do? Do they assume the US cant respond? Maybe it earns them some respect from the muslim world for standing up, but it just seems... odd. I'm not exactly Bismark, but I'm clearly missing something.
The Iranians and their allies know that the US Navy has other commitments, they really cannot afford another front opening up in Yemen. We should be looking at this as a global conflict. It's not just Iran and proxies vs Israel and US.
Raising oil prices is good for Iran and constraining Liberian (US) shipping is good for the whole Russia-Chinese-Iranian axis. I'm not saying there's a grand conspiracy where everyone is taking orders from Xi but they do have similar motivations and shared interests. We see Russian and Chinese tankers going untouched. Elements of the Chinese navy are hanging about nearby ignoring Israeli merchant ships that complain about being attacked. It also harms US prestige for its allies to be unable to use Suez.
Times have changed since the 1980s - Iranian anti-ship missiles and anti-access, area-denial weapons generally are more potent than they were, in comparative terms. The US is shooting down $2000 drones with $2 million dollar missiles that can't be resupplied at sea. This is not really sustainable.
What is the US supposed to do? Bombing Yemen has been tried and hasn't worked out for the US alliance group. Aircraft and armaments need to be conserved for the primary theater in Asia anyway. Invading Yemen is a disastrous proposition, second only to invading Iran.
What can Israel do? They're prepared to fight Hezbollah and Lebanon but their options for fighting Yemen are much less promising. If Hezbollah and Iran preserve their strength for if/when China and Russia fully enter the war, they have a greater chance of getting what they want. Plinking away at US merchant shipping and tying down forces in the Red Sea contributes to their group at relatively low risk.
Air defence wasn't really NATO's strong suit during the Cold War. NATO prioritized fighter jets over SAMs. Since then there has been 30 years of cut backs with the war in Afghanistan and Iraq costing an ungodly amount of money. SAM-systems had little use against taliban, and they cost a fortune to buy and operate. The cutbacks lead to a big drop in capacity, as cutting spending leads to a much bigger drop in deliveries. Half the budget and the unit cost increases due to diminishing production volumes.
Ukraine is currently consuming SAM systems at a much higher rate than they are produced. Nobody expected Russia to manufacture 3000 Geran drones in a year and almost none of them to be shot down by a fighter jet. Russia manufactures more missiles than expected and defending from Russian missiles wasn't the main priority during the forever wars in the middle east.
China is manufacturing missiles and drones at an industrial rate while Iran has managed to go from barely being able to fight in the skies to having thousands of flying systems. A war of attrition between American SAM systems and Iranian, Chinese and Russian drones and missiles is a big win for the latter. Especially if they are using 10 000 dollar drones built with parts ordered online.
Quite right. Also the lethality of surface to surface missiles has increased. Scuds in the 1960s, 70s and 80s were not very accurate, you could maybe target an airbase or some big target... nothing like the precision we have now. They were big, expensive and relatively easy to target on the ground, now there's a wide range of missiles that are smaller, harder to spot, cheaper to replace. I saw a Houthi military parade on youtube, where you'd expect to see columns of tanks they just had dozens of trucks with drones on them.
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Israel can’t do anything except reroute Israeli merchant vessels via the cape. Israel can’t attack Iran directly except possibly with a nuke in a Samson option scenario.
The US can’t attack the Houthis directly, whatever can be gained by striking Yemen has already been mined by the Saudis. They can threaten to strike Iranian oil sites to pressure them, although actually doing so would be a substantial escalation. It’s probably the next step up, though, other than maybe striking some Houthi land targets which everyone knows is a pointless gesture.
China and Russia have no interest in entering the war against Israel, they’re happy to stay neutral and occasionally grandstand against Israel’s actions in Gaza to boost their reputations with Muslims. They haven’t even sanctioned Israel, which would be the first step in actually taking a stand.
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On the other hand, it hurts Russia and China as well.
China is demand starved and this severely limits their competitiveness in European markets since they only do a minority of commercial shipping out of China and that isn't changing soon. This couldn't come at a worse time for them.
Russia does very little of their own shipping and ships going around the cape means that more shipping capacity is going to get bought buy Europeans, especially in big tankers. This risks significantly decreasing the volume of commercially viable russian oil exports (which could be good for Iran I suppose).
Europe obviously hurts from the higher shipping costs.
Egypt faces catastrophy if their Forex dries up and the rest of the Arab world hurts in the sense that it further decrease their ability to affect oil prices and the higher prices go to shippers, not them.
The only ones that unambiguously win in a material sense is the US, which one could suspect is why the response has been so tepid and seemingly inept, if one is conspiratorially minded.
I think it's just that America is administratively paralysed and inept and that this coincidentally hurts everyone but themselves in a material sense but also hurts their prestige and legitimacy as hegemon which I believe is probably more important than any short term economic gains.
I agree. At least one of the reasons you’ve seen the US be very limited in its response so far is that going full World Police now just allows everyone else in the region to abrogate their responsibilities and blame all violence on America. They want China to get upset with Iran, and are willing to drag things out to get it.
Even Egypt isn’t publicly condemning the Houthis yet, and China hasn’t said anything. Ironically, Israel’s a possible winner if this drags out, especially now the overland route between Saudi and Egypt (via Israel) is gaining steam.
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Global conflict? Kind of like a...... world war?
A comparatively cold one, if you will.
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