The Joe Biden White House has been employing a similar tactic with Iran since Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza. It insists that it’s Tehran and its “proxies’’ – the Houthis in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon – that are escalating tensions in the region, and the only way the United States can de-escalate and deter is to provide more weapons to Israel – to continue its Gaza carnage – and to bomb Yemen.
The latest excuse to bomb one of the world’s poorest countries – with ever faithful Britain tagging along for the ride – is that the Houthi rebels have been threatening shipping lanes in the Red Sea in “retaliation” against Israel’s military siege of Gaza. This is, of course, the narrative loyally repeated by the Anglo-American media, with the occasional “critical” pieces that warn Biden may be playing into the hands of Iran. You have to love the levels of deliberate delusion the mainstream media will always reliably rise up to in any international crisis that Washington creates or worsens.
Chinese FM Wang Yi opens Africa tour with jab at US-led strikes on Houthi
Chinese FM Wang Yi opens Africa tour with jab at US-led strikes on Houthi
So far, Tehran has actually done very little. The capture of an oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman by its navy looks more like a tit-for-tat with Washington. The US seized the same tanker in 2021 and subsequently took the Iranian crude oil it carried for breaching its sanctions against Iran.
It’s hard to see how Iran’s capture is any more or less legal or legitimate than the US’ previous seizure.
There is, of course, Western propaganda that the Houthis and Hezbollah are nothing but Iranian proxies, so anything they do is not of their own agency but ordered by Tehran. That’s reminiscent of Washington’s lies about the North Vietnamese – who were actually fierce nationalists – being nothing but puppets of Soviet Russia during the Vietnam war.
The Houthis may be Shiite and ideologically close to the Iranians but they are also an indigenous resistance movement that enjoys popular support and is ever closer to taking over most of the country. That prospect alarms the US and its Arabic allies more than anything else.
The only thing different about the current bombing campaign in Yemen is that it’s being done by the lord and master himself whereas for the better part of the past decade, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates had been bombing the country to smithereens with US weapons and intelligence in the ongoing civil war there.
Houthis fire missile at US warship in first attack after Yemen strikes
Houthis fire missile at US warship in first attack after Yemen strikes
No wonder the rest of the world including US allies – except Britain – have no desire to join the multinational task force Washington had dismally failed to put together.
The outcomes in both Yemen and Gaza have been the same – catastrophic humanitarian crises that has displaced millions and killed tens of thousands, resulting in famine or the constant threat of it – paid for or subsidised by American taxpayers.
In the eyes of the Muslim world, the Houthis are doing what the West will not – to try to stop Israel’s genocide. Their response to Israel’s operations in Gaza has won widespread support in Yemen, where hundreds of thousands have rallied, and across the region.
In exercising its R2P, the Houthis have killed no one so far, other than having their own fighters killed by the US military. It’s hard to see how their claim of R2P isn’t even more legitimate than, say Nato’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 to protect Muslims from ethnic cleansing in Kosovo; or the United Nations-authorised intervention in Libya in 2011, which resulted in the murder of Muammar Gaddafi and has plunged the country into chaos ever since.
US sanctions Hong Kong and UAE firms over Houthi support
US sanctions Hong Kong and UAE firms over Houthi support
The US and Israel could stop the senseless killings in Gaza and then the Houthis would have no reason to continue its R2P. But of course, both allies prefer to risk an expansion of the conflict by provoking and confronting their Shiite enemies.
With Israel being accused of committing genocide in the world court and the US supplying the weapons it needs to carry it out in Gaza, the Houthis’ R2P looks more courageous and legitimate by the day.
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