(LifeSiteNews) — As Yemeni rebels continue attacks on Israeli-linked shipping in the Red Sea, it is clear that U.S. military intervention and aid is fueling a fire which may soon rage out of control.
The presence of U.S. carrier strike group Eisenhower has not deterred attacks on shipping undertaken in response to the U.S.-backed Israeli assault on Gaza.
Now the U.S. with the U.K. has launched bombing raids on Yemen in a move which the French President Emanuel Macron has refused to endorse, fearing “wider escalation” – towards a potential world war with a nuclear dimension.
The attacks have been described in The New York Times as “ineffective,” with the Yemenis responding with mass demonstrations. “Make it a world war,” they chanted, “We don’t care.”
Millions of people in Yemen’s capital Sana’a chanting in unison:
“We do not care (3x): Make it a world war!” pic.twitter.com/PkCEvOdjMt
— روني الدنماركي (@Aldanmarki) January 12, 2024
This crisis has exposed the limits of U.S. military power to contain tensions in the region, ignited by an operation by the Israelis in Gaza which has been described as “genocide” in a case before the International Court of Justice.
What is the big picture?
In this second Suez crisis, the U.S. is no longer in control. What makes these wars dangerously different from those past is that none of them will stop when the U.S. says so. What is more, Israel and U.S. policy appears to be aimed at escalation to a wider war.
READ: The US has lost all control as Middle East slides deeper into war
What is the context?
Middle Eastern wars have been a regular feature since the Suez Crisis of 1956, when the United States halted British and French military intervention in Egypt to secure the Suez Canal. This saw the formal replacement of British Imperial power with that of the U.S.
What does this mean now?
The last Suez crisis was decided by American power. This one is determined by its limits. For the last 70 years the U.S. has said when these wars start – and stop. The current war presents an existential threat to Arabs and Israelis alike. All bets are off in what is now seen as a fight for survival for Palestinians – and for the state of Israel itself.
This means the likely entry of allies on both sides into a regional, then potentially global, war – with a nuclear dimension.
READ: Inside the rise of an Israeli faction seeking to provoke Armageddon
What comes next?
Arab states in the region including traditional western allies such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, and Jordan are facing immense public pressure to intervene in this war to defend the Palestinians.
Colonel Douglas Macgregor is among many who warn that in the absence of military action regional Arab leaders may face a revolt from their own populations. His recent interview with Judge Andrew Napolitano asks, “Is Biden starting a regional war in the Middle East?”
With the U.S. and its allies isolated against mounting condemnation of Israel’s assault in Gaza, the International Court of Justice looks likely to hear a charge of genocide against Israel.
READ: How the genocide case against Israel could upend the globalist order
With a strong faction in the U.S. renewing calls for a war against Iran, the region looks likely to explode in a conflict which could trigger the involvement of global and region powers such as Turkey and even Russia. With bases in Syria, it already has a military presence in the region.
From Gaza to global war? The crisis in detail
With U.S. and U.K. airstrikes on Yemen a new war front is opening in a region already ablaze.
Yemeni rebel group Ansur’Allah – known as the Houthis – have been attacking Israeli-linked commercial shipping transiting the Suez Canal since last November. The rebel group, which controls much of northern and western Yemen, says the attacks are a response to the Israeli assault on their fellow Arabs in Palestine.
The U.S. responded by moving the USS Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the region, but the attacks have continued. A few lightly Houthi fighters in small boats have seen much of global shipping rerouted around Africa to avoid the attacks, which the Houthis say will continue until Israel halts its Gaza offensive.
Western media routinely describes the Houthis as “Iran-backed.” Whilst the Houthis are Shia, and are friendly with Iran, they are not an Iranian proxy. Their attacks on Israeli-linked shipping are one sign of pan-Arab solidarity at the treatment of the Palestinians by the Israelis.
Neither the presence of the U.S. Navy in force nor the U.S./U.K. air strikes have stopped the attacks. The New York Times conceded these attempts have failed. What is more, bombing Yemen has effectively declared the region a war zone, effectively closing the route to much global shipping due to soaring insurance costs.
U.S. military action and the supply of weapons and aid to Israel is simply adding fuel to a fire which threatens to rage out of anyone’s control. It is clear there is no military solution to the crisis in Israel, nor in the wider region – unless the threat escalation is in fact the “solution” desired.
The U.S. plan: Attack Iran?
The U.S. plan is not working, if it is understood as one to contain and eventually halt the unfolding crisis. However, another dimension to U.S. aims is the long standing push for a war on Iran.
The desire to strike Iran has been a staple of neoconservative war hawks in and around the U.S. government for decades. Senator Lindsey Graham threatened Iran in November that if the war in Israel escalates, “war is coming to you.”
To this faction, which is “funded by the big defense contractors,” the creation of a runaway crisis in the Middle East is a golden opportunity to launch a war so reckless that it would be in any other circumstances unthinkable.
Despite the dangers of attacking Iran, whose regional power and growing nuclear capacity make it a serious enemy, the ensuing war will likely be impossible to contain in the region.
Finally, the United States will not be able to simply call a halt to this war, as it did in Iraq. Once this genie is out of the bottle, each of the regional players will be in a fight to the death.
The Israeli plan: Draw the U.S. into war
Israel’s assault in Gaza is not a success – unless viewed in the same way. Israeli attacks on Hezbollah in Lebanon have shifted attention to the dangers of a second front in Israels war which would see its army divided between conflicts in the south and the north of the country. Meanwhile, an assault in the Palestinian population of the West Bank, which borders Jordan, is also in the cards – leaving its limited forces divided on three fronts.
It is widely feared that Israel would not win under these conditions. It has also struck targets in Iraq and in Syria, threatening international expansion of a domestic war it lacks the means to win.
Why then is Israel driving towards a conflict it is expected to lose?
Israel’s policy is to promote a war on multiple fronts that it cannot hope to win alone. Its strategy of escalation relies on drawing the United States into this war – which will likely become global – if it succeeds.
Greater Israel
The dream of a Greater Israel is one which in less febrile times would be unmentionable. Yet it is this idea – of absorbing parts of Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan which now combines with Israeli war aims in a direct provocation of its neighbors.
In October last year Israeli Finance and Defense Minister Bezalel Smotrich delivered a speech before a map of “Greater Israel,” describing the Palestinians as “fictitious.”
The Netanyahu government has refused to bow to U.S. pressure to climb down from its obvious and stated policy of clearing Arabs from Israel. Whether by elimination or population transfer, this is the goal of the Netanyahu government, and it is one supported by the vast majority of Israelis.
This is the reason Arab and Muslim nations refuse to accept Palestinian refugees en masse.
As the King of Jordan said in a press conference on October 17, he and the Muslim world know that to do so is to aid the Israelis in removing the Palestinians from their claimed homelands permanently.
READ: Jordan, Egypt refuse Palestinian refugees as conflict threatens to expand
The Israeli government has leaked a plan to push the Palestinians out of Gaza, with two senior ministers calling for the transfer of the Palestinians abroad – perhaps to Europe.
READ: Israel dismisses US condemnation of calls to expel Palestinians to Europe
In recent months, members of the Israeli parliament, the Knesset, have called for the use of nuclear weapons in Gaza.
Nuclear blackmail
Israel’s high stakes gamble in sparking wars it cannot win alone rely in part on a policy described as “nuclear blackmail.”
Israel’s nuclear weapons doctrine is known as the Samson Option. In the event of an “existential threat” to Israel, such as that posed by a regional war with Hezbollah and Iran, it will launch nuclear missiles at cities in the Middle East, Russia, and Europe.
This is intended to bring the world down with Israel, as Samson did in collapsing the pillars of the temple of the Philistines.
American support in the 1973 Yom Kippur War was reportedly secured with the use of this threat. In 1991, when Saddam Hussein launched ineffective Scud missiles over the Israeli border, Israel readied its truck-launched nuclear missiles in a warning to the world, warning the U.S. “we are going to attack Iraq – move your planes.”
A wider nuclear threat
Israel is not the only player with a nuclear threat. Iran has begun enriching weapons-grade uranium, an action from which it has refrained over the past decades. With no diplomatic incentive remaining as it faces threats of U.S. military action, Iran is now preparing material to produce nuclear weapons.
In addition, Iran’s regional rival Saudi Arabia vowed last September to develop nuclear weapons if Iran succeeds in building them. The Saudis also have access to nuclear missiles from Pakistan in the event of a war. NATO member Turkey is long rumored to be developing a similar arrangement.
Turkey has the largest military in NATO behind the U.S. – of around 2 million troops.
The sheer volume of military force which threatens to combine in this conflict would make U.S. domination impossible. With a growing atomic threat, it could quickly cross the nuclear threshold.
The power of public opinion
Public opinion can still shape international affairs. If the public in the U.S., the U.K. and in its Western allies in Canada, Australia, and Europe can apply similar pressure to their governments as that seen in the Arab world, then the crisis may not develop into a catastrophe.
What is crucial is widespread public understanding of the dangers of sparking a conflict to which there will be no end in sight other than rapid escalation to war on a scale not seen for generations.
Contact your representatives today to press for diplomacy and not destruction.