Welcome to the latest humiliation of a Biden administration foreign policy premised on not being overly provocative toward our enemies.
Shipping companies have announced they are going to avoid the Red Sea and Bab-al-Mandab, a narrow strait connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, after a sustained campaign of attacks from Iran's Houthi sock puppets
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The legitimate Yemeni government has accused the them of having ties to the Iranian government. Honest they did. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is
God is Great, Death to Americaâ„¢, Death to Israel, a curse on the JewsThey like shooting off... ummm... missiles that they would have us believe they make at home in their basements. On the plus side, they did murder Ali Abdullah Saleh, which was the only way the country was ever going to be rid of him...
fighters in Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of...
This is a blow to freedom of navigation — one of the jewels of the US-led order — and a tremendous success for the Iranian-aligned Houthis, who have leveraged drones, missiles and attempted seizures of ships to gain the upper hand over the world’s foremost navy.
We are not talking about a backwater but a key passageway for East-West commerce.
Nearly 12% percent of global trade passes through the Red Sea, including a prodigious amount of oil from the Persian Gulf.
Disrupting this trade allows the Houthis to have, in effect, global reach.
Insurance rates for shipping are going up, and companies are forswearing the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, that great shortcut connecting Europa
...the land mass occupying the space between the English Channel and the Urals, also known as Moslem Lebensraum...
and Asia.