Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.
While the Hamas-Israel war is still essentially contained to Gaza, the threat of a wider war is rising on two fronts, in Lebanon and Yemen. Though these two flashpoints are notably different, they also mirror each other in striking ways. And as is the case with mirror images, each side of the reflection is reversed.
The primary confluence between the flashpoints is that both Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen belong to Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a network of armed gangs that Tehran maintains in Arab states. Another one of these groups is Hamas, which sparked this fresh round of mayhem with its Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.
But the Houthis, who claim to be supporting Hamas and confronting Israel, have attacked at least 27 commercial vessels in international shipping lanes in the Red Sea since Oct. 17, bringing the fight to the international community. On the Lebanese border, however, it is Hamas’s antagonist Israel, rather than its ally Hezbollah, that is escalating and threatening war.
The Houthis’ attacks have caused some major firms to prefer the far longer and more expensive journey around the Cape of Good Hope, rather than through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, up to the Suez Canal, and on to the Mediterranean. The importance of this pathway to international commerce can hardly be overstated, since 12 per cent of global trade passes through it. As a result, the UN Security Council has demanded that the Houthis stop attacking international shipping, and the U.S. and Britain have led an ad-hoc coalition dedicated to restoring maritime security in those shipping lanes, launching three days of attacks against targets in Yemen in a necessary campaign against the defiant Houthis’ continuing piracy.
Piracy cannot be effectively controlled by patrolling vast bodies of water with naval ships; the aggressors must face heavy and ultimately unsustainable costs if they continue, as Somali pirates and others were compelled to understand. The Houthis left Washington no alternative other than a campaign of pressure, and that may well require significant escalation and persistence to restore maritime security.
Meanwhile, further north and inland, Israel is threatening an even more dangerous expanded war against Hezbollah. While the Iranian-backed Lebanese militia has made it clear in word and deed that it does not want an all-out war with Israel at the moment, a faction within Israel’s war cabinet evidently does. Just days after Hamas’s attack, Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant was reportedly pressing for a “pre-emptive” attack on Hezbollah to reduce the unquestionably potent threat posed by its massive arsenal of more than 150,000 missiles and rockets, many of which boast hyper-precision guidance. These weapons can strike any target in Israel and bypass or overwhelm the country’s Iron Dome defence system.
The Biden administration moved decisively to restrain Israel when the expanded war was first proposed, but since then, the pro-escalation faction has gained considerable ground. Israel assassinated a senior Hamas official with a drone strike in Beirut on Jan. 3, and killed a key Hezbollah commander on Jan. 13. Hezbollah’s responses were restrained and essentially symbolic – mainly a token rocket attack on an Israeli radar installation. Now, Israel is demanding that Hezbollah withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon beyond the Litani River or face an all-out Israeli assault.
Washington is seeking a diplomatic solution, which is hard to imagine given the scope of Israel’s demands. It is again pressing Israel not to charge off into an additional conflict, which would be unnecessary and unwise. Some Israeli leaders now say that compelling Hezbollah to remove its forces from the south, whether by agreement or force, is necessary to the return and security of the 80,000 Israelis who have been evacuated from the border region. But this factor didn’t exist when a “pre-emptive” attack was first floated, and it bears all the hallmarks of a pretext, especially since Israel’s demands would do little to reduce the main threat from Hezbollah: the group’s rockets and missiles.
As usual, Washington is left holding the bag. It is wisely attempting to stop the war in Gaza from metastasizing by simultaneously deterring the Houthis through air strikes in Yemen and working to mollify and restrain Israel regarding Lebanon. In both cases, friend and foe alike are testing, possibly near to the breaking point, the Biden administration’s resolve and capabilities to enforce its will and prevent a wider regional meltdown. Fairly or not, Washington will get the credit for a contained conflict – and the blame, if war in the Middle East expands.