Bracing for wider conflict after Houthis hit Tel Aviv

Lethal Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv marks dramatic new phase for war since Oct. 7 (Amos Harel, Haaretz)

Israel has gradually learned what the Saudis and Emiratis learned during their long war supporting the Yemeni government against the Houthis. That group is a determined, radical enemy that's hard to deter. The Houthis invest a lot of effort in psychological warfare and are armed with increasingly sophisticated long-range weapons supplied by Iran.

This is an excellent deal for the Iranians: The Houthis help them attain their goals but provide them with plausible deniability.

When the war began, the Houthis started attacking ships in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea in solidarity with Gaza, which was being bombed, and to punish Israel. They managed to suppress most of the traffic through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, and to completely shut down the Port of Eilat.

They reaped a heavy price from the West and the international shipping industry, as costs surged for ships' new journey from the Far East to Europe: around Africa. In response, the United States, Britain and other Western countries attacked a raft of targets in Yemen, but they haven't yet bent the Houthis to their will or ended the crisis.

In principle, Israel can hit Houthi targets from the air. The question is the added value of such steps after the attacks by Western forces. Israel also has to handle multiple fronts, some of which look more urgent: the war on Hamas and even more so the possibility of an all-out war with Hezbollah backed by Iran and a host of Shi'ite militias in Iraq and Syria.

Restraint no longer an option (David Horovitz, Times of Israel)

Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another of Iran’s terror proxies avowedly seeking to destroy Israel, have been targeting the country since soon after Hamas’s October 7 invasion and slaughter. And Israel had elected not to strike back, even after a missile scored a direct hit on Eilat in March.

But in the early hours of Friday morning, an apparently upgraded Houthi drone evaded Israel’s defences — for reasons thus far ascribed by the IDF to “human error” — and exploded in Tel Aviv, striking an apartment bloc and killing a 50-year-old Israeli, Yevgeny Ferder. The Houthis declared that this marked a “new phase” in their operations against Israel.

At this point, Israeli security chiefs are reported to have told cabinet ministers who gathered in an emergency session on Shabbat afternoon, restraint was no longer an option.

Israel’s air force had therefore just targeted the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation in a recorded video statement after Shabbat had ended, because it was the entry point for Iranian weaponry used by the Houthis against Israel and other Iranian enemies in the region. 

Israeli military chiefs have said privately in recent months that one of the problems of grappling with the Houthis is that they do not appear to be particularly susceptible to deterrence. Indeed, following Saturday’s Israeli strike, a senior Houthi leader vowed that Israel would “pay the price” and that “we will meet escalation with escalation”.

Israel's Attack on the Houthis: Justified? Yes. Proportionate? No. Game-changer? Unlikely (Alon Pinkas, Haaretz)

However justified, this is a recipe for escalation that Israel does not want. The Israeli attack was by definition and estimated consequences tactical. It does not change anything fundamental in the Israeli-Iranian power equation. What it may potentially do is significantly increase the risk of region-wide escalation.

Now ask yourselves, who has an interest in escalation and expanding the Gaza war into a rolling multifront conflict? Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia. Of course you knew that.

Who patently doesn't have an interest in escalation? Israel, the United States, NATO, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Lebanon (or whatever is left of it politically).

For the Americans, preventing regional escalation has been the paramount interest since October 7. The Iranian firing of ballistic missiles and drones at Israel in mid-April (in response to the assassination of one of its Revolutionary Guards generals in Damascus) threatened the containment of the Gaza war. However, in the last three months, despite incessant Hezbollah attacks, it seemed under control and to exist within implicit lines of engagement – however intolerable in the long term.

Now comes the attack in Yemen that may again lead to escalation. Will the Israeli airstrike successfully deter the Houthis and force them to revisit their policy? Unlikely. Conversely, could it prove to be the validation they need to continue their attacks and harassment of maritime traffic entering the Red Sea? Likely.

Israel's strike on Yemen: A tactical success that exposes a strategic failure (Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz)

Gaza may no longer be a launching pad for Iran's proxies, but it took a terrible price and Iran still has these capabilities in Lebanon and Yemen. This is a strategic failure of Israel in general, and in particular of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's doctrine of focusing on Iran's nuclear threat while discouraging the efforts to rein it in through arms treaties. He also encouraged then-US President Donald Trump to withdraw from the nuclear deal – which, however imperfectly, was aimed at doing just that. Meanwhile, Netanyahu ignored the widespread view within the Israeli security establishment that more attention needed to be focused on those proxies.

Now Israel is facing a resurgent Iranian nuclear program, closer than it ever was to weapons capability, and is encircled by Iranian proxies with large missile and drone capabilities.

Israeli officials stressed in the aftermath of the Al-Hudaydah attack that it was a signal that Israel could also attack Iranian targets closer to Israel. But Iran already knows that. That's why it has empowered its proxies – to deter Israel from doing so.

Iran is perfectly happy to continue shedding Palestinian, Lebanese and Yemeni blood to attack Israel while shielding itself. More than anything else, the fact that Israeli pilots flew so far to bomb a port in Yemen is proof of how its deterrence against Iran, the real and closer threat, is limited.