Houthi rebels allied with Iran in Yemen attacked again over the weekend, launching drone and missile attacks on two Saudi oil installations. It was the latest sign that President Joe Biden’s efforts to get Tehran to curb its pawns are not working.
This is in fact the second attack by an Iranian-trained militia since Biden launched airstrikes on a group in Syria in late February – an action the administration said it intended to deter attacks, especially on US forces in Iraq.
The Biden strike (one of the two planned, with the other called at the last minute because of concerns about possible civilian casualties) was a response to a Feb. 15 missile attack on a U.S. military base in northern Iraq that killed one contractor and others injured.
Undaunted by Biden’s response, another Tehran puppet militia fired 10 missiles on March 3 at Ain al-Assad Air Base in western Iraq, which houses about 2,000 American soldiers. There have been no deaths, but Washington has not responded yet.
And now the challenges are growing, with Sunday’s attack on the Saudis, which Riyadh claimed did no damage or casualties. But it targeted oil tanks in Ras Tanura port and an Aramco residential area – the latest in recent years of Houthi firefights that include more than 500 drone attacks and more than 300 rocket attacks.
Of course, Iran and its servants could assume that Biden will accept attacks on the Saudis, as he obtained direct US military support for their anti-houthi coalition in the bloody war in Yemen.
In addition, Washington last month released an old intellectual report claiming that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman explicitly accepted the assassination of Saudi emigrant journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. As the report had only circumstantial evidence, the world read this as another Biden team signals that he is coming out with Riyadh.
Meanwhile, Bidenites are practically begging Iran to start talks on reopening the Obama nuclear deal. Washington ignored the endless violence sponsored by Iran while initially negotiating that agreement; The Iranian rulers no doubt expect to get the same margin now, as Biden has already done so for the most part.
Bottom line: a single half-hearted blow to the Iranian pawns will do nothing. Rather than play games with calibrated force, Biden must use his imagination, as the Trump team did in eliminating Tehran’s terrorist leader, General Qassem Soleimani, in January 2020.
Again, Biden’s current top advisers warned then that Trump’s strike could trigger a regional war, just as they insisted that the effective relocation of the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem would bring disaster.
They have turned out to be completely wrong in both respects, but Biden’s lame approach to the Middle East conflict so far suggests that they have learned nothing.