Biden’s Yemen Trap

There is a touch of irony that the Biden administration has been driven to undertake air strikes against Yemen’s Houthi “regime” to prevent the collapse of global trade and higher inflation. It is yet another case of this White House being caught in a trap of its own creation.

The current crisis in the Red Sea, as well as the chaos it is causing within the Democratic party, are merely the latest example of this phenomenon, one in which Biden and his team are being punished for their “original sin” – abandoning the successful policy not just of Donald Trump, but Barack Obama as well, and handing Yemen over to Iranian proxies while alienating American allies.

The August 2021 Afghanistan debacle was not the first geopolitical rout orchestrated by the Biden administration in a mishandled effort to end a war. During the Trump administration, the Saudi campaign against Iranian-backed proxies in Yemen had become a cause celebre on the left. While there had been some disquiet during the Obama administration, the issue picked up steam as it became sucked into the domestic culture wars of the Trump years.

Saudi Arabia and the UAE were perceived as pro-Trump because their leaders, unlike Justin Trudeau and Angela Merkel, did not shun the President of the United States. As geopolitics came to be defined on the left as a clash between Trump and anti-Trumpism, the Saudis ended up in the evil category.

This is not to say that the Saudi government was or is a shining beacon of liberty. However, it was a longtime strategic ally and was engaged in a conflict in defense of the legal government of Yemen against extremists linked to Iran.

Much as Poland and Hungary ended up on Democratic hit lists as much for domestic reasons as for anything they did, pivoting U.S. policy in the Middle East from the Gulf States toward Iran became identified with the Democratic Party. Whether that was a wise policy took a back seat, an oversight the United States is now paying for. 

Not only did Biden’s actions cause the Saudis to cut their own deal with Iran via the good offices of Xi Jinping, but they allowed Tehran to establish a base on the Red Sea from which its proxies can launch ballistic missiles at Israel and fire upon American ships. This outcome was predictable, and the failure to foresee it arose from a failure to understand what the major interests of the parties in the region were.

The rivalry between Iran and the Gulf States, whatever its ideological origins, is about power. Iran, despite its vast oil resources, is fundamentally a military land power.

Economically, Iran cannot compete with the Saudis and Gulf states, but this is a double-edged sword. Being unable to export oil is a disadvantage to Tehran, but it would cripple Saudi Arabia or the UAE. Hence, Iran, by gaining the ability to shut down shipping and trade to everyone in the region, gains effective hegemony over its rivals as it can more easily afford the ability to lose exports.

The unifying element of Iranian policy has always been strategy, not ideology. In Syria, the Iranians backed the secular Assad regime, in Palestine the Sunni Hamas, and in Iraq, they have on occasion even cooperated with Sunni-extremist ISIS affiliates against Shia groups opposed to them. The main goal Iran has is to establish proxies in place that can execute a “strategy of denial” to their opponents.

In Iraq, it does not matter what religion the militia who surround U.S. military bases are, provided they can rain down missiles at will upon them. The same is true of the Houthis in Yemen or Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The conflict in Yemen was existential for the Saudis because a Houthi victory would leave Iran in a position to close the Red Sea at will. That would be a threat not just to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, but also, as we have seen, the United States and its allies.

The Biden administration, foolishly, seems to have assumed Iran would choose not to use this power because it wanted better relations with the United States. They assumed the Iranian regime was rational while failing to define what rationality meant.

It is hard to argue that Iranian policy right now is anything but highly rational. Having gained the ability to close the Red Sea to international trade, and thereby a weapon with which to inflict inflation on the United States and Europe, what could be more rational than for Iran to exploit the opportunity? Especially when there appears little risk in doing so?

Even assuming Tehran’s goal was a deal, negotiations, as Donald Trump or any businessman understands, reflect the leverage between the parties, and Iran would be behaving irrationally if it did not demand a more favorable deal to reflect increased leverage.

The reason every concession to Iran causes Tehran to increase rather than decrease its demands is precisely because its policy is rational, and the Biden team’s approach has not been. Now they are paying for their impotence.

The Biden administration also made a second error – they mistook what Iran wanted. They assumed that Iran wanted a deal with the United States, and believed that its perceived bid for regional hegemony was a means to that end. Instead, Iran’s goal was regional hegemony, the security of the regime, and world power.

A deal with the United States was a potential means to that end – provided, of course, that the deal neutralized U.S. opposition to the Iranian regime at home and abroad, without requiring any substantive changes in behavior. It was never an alternative to Iran’s goals, merely a possible tool to achieve them.

In the current international situation, Iran has been gifted something better. In the court of public opinion, Joe Biden is paying for years in which liberal elites across the West coddled anti-Western currents in academia, the media, and society. The result has been to create a situation in which Israel, and the United States, are blamed for the consequences of any conflict Israel is involved in regardless of who started it.

The irony of the calls for a cease-fire, whether they come from a grifting Kleptocratic African National Congress Government in South Africa or members of the Squad in the U.S. Congress, is that they provide Iran, Hamas, and the Houthis every reason to escalate the conflict and none to end it. The longer it goes on and the more Palestinians that die, the weaker anti-Iranian governments become at home.

Iran can see anti-Iranian figures within the U.S. Democratic Party and its counterparts in Europe being heckled as “Nazis” and accused of promoting “genocide,” and Iranian leaders have every reason to believe that the process will eliminate their enemies from future governments.

At this point, Biden’s base on the left will blame the Houthis’ actions on the war in Gaza, and therefore any consequences will be blamed not on the Houthis but on Biden’s failure to stop Israel’s so-called “genocide.” This means any inflation caused by the blockade will be blamed on Israel and Biden, not Iran.

This is why Biden’s belated resort to military force against the Houthis will fail. Tehran has already trapped him. Tehran can keep the war going in Gaza almost indefinitely, and if by some chance Hamas is defeated, they can have Hezbollah start a new war from Lebanon, thereby creating a new “Israeli Genocide.”

If the U.S. manages to somehow bomb the Houthis into oblivion, not only will the deaths be blamed on the United States, but Iran can restart the war by having militias assault U.S. military bases in Iraq and shut down the Persian Gulf instead.

Without hitting Iran hard enough to change the risk calculus, the current dynamics are so favorable for Iran that even the most conciliatory or moderate elements in Tehran would be hard-pressed to justify changing course. Their position is better today than it was two weeks ago, and there is every reason to believe it will be better two weeks from now than it is today. That is a recipe for escalation.

The true benefit of the Saudi/UAE campaign in Yemen was deniability. The unsavory reputation of those governments meant the United States could separate itself from the political blowback, leaving the war as a purely military matter. As Iran’s entire motivation was political, not military, this in turn reduced Tehran’s incentives to continue it. Donald Trump understood this, as, with hindsight, it appears Barack Obama did. Biden is now paying for his failure to grasp the same.

The real problem is that Biden is not the only one paying for his blunders. The United States is now committed to a geopolitical conflict that it can neither win nor end. The U.S. cannot win it because America’s opponents have endless reserves of other people’s children they can send to die and no moral qualms about it. The U.S. cannot end it because America’s opponents are more concerned with inflicting political damage at home in the United States and Europe than with who dies in the region.

Walter Samuel is the pseudonym of a prolific international affairs writer and academic. He has worked in Washington as well as in London and Asia, and holds a Doctorate in International History.