Israeli media recently quoted IDF spokesman Hagari as saying that the Israeli army is adjusting its deployment in Gaza accordingly in anticipation of a "protracted war".
He said Israel's war with Hamas could "last a whole year" in 2024 and that the Israeli army was ready for a long fight.
Meanwhile, U.S. forces announced the sinking of three Houthi ships in the Red Sea region, which the U.S. Navy said was in response to a distress signal from a merchant ship passing through the area.
IDF spokesman Hagari
Subsequently, Houthi spokesman Yahya Saryea confirmed that the US attack on the Houthi naval forces had killed 10 Houthi fighters and sunk three ships.
On behalf of the Houthis, he also said that "the United States should bear the consequences of this crime and will not prevent the Houthis in Yemen from fulfilling their obligations to support the humanitarian community in Palestine and the Gaza Strip."
In other words, Israel is preparing for a year-long war against Hamas, while the United States and the Houthis are on the verge of a formal exchange of fire over supporting Israel and counter-supporting Israel.
Now that the U.S. military has directly sunk three Yemeni Houthi ships and killed 10 Houthi fighters, the risk of a direct conflict between the Houthis and the United States is even higher.
Houthis
In order to show solidarity with Palestine, the Houthis will not stop attacking and harassing Israeli-related merchant ships in the Red Sea region, and now the US military is directly attacking Houthi fighters. Then, in the future, Houthi attacks and attacks against US warships may become more frequent.
In this context, once a U.S. Navy warship is hit, it may directly detonate a war between the United States and Yemen's Houthis, or even with Iran.
At present, a source revealed that the United States and Britain have planned to issue an "ultimatum" to the Houthis in Yemen, warning them to stop attacking merchant ships passing through the Red Sea, otherwise, Western military forces will take action.
It is foreseeable that Israel's plan to carry out a long-term military operation in the Gaza Strip has sharply increased the risk that this round of Palestinian-Israeli conflict will begin to spread from the Gaza Strip to other parts of the Middle East, and even involve the two great powers, the United States and Iran, in direct involvement.
Iranian President Raisi
Taken together, every day that the Israeli offensive in the Gaza Strip continues, the risk of the situation in the Middle East spiraling out of control increases by one point.
Coupled with a series of recent statements by the White House, the United States is actually not willing to go to war with the Houthis in Yemen, or Iran behind the Houthis, or even the entire Middle East, for the sake of Israel, which is not in line with the strategic interests of the United States.
But the crux of the matter is that Israel continues to fire on the front lines, and the United States directly sank Houthi ships. The negative consequences of these moves are:
War has its own laws, and before the outbreak of the First World War, several of the major belligerents felt that it would only be a small war, and that they would not involve everyone.
Israeli-Palestinian conflict
However, the fact is that the Sarajevo assassination led to the rapid outbreak of the First World War and its short-term intensification, becoming an intercontinental war that lasted for four years and engulfed the whole of Europe and the Middle East. The current conflict between Israel and Hamas has great potential for this.
Although Russia and other world powers may not be directly involved, there is a high probability that Iran, Saudi Arabia, and even Egypt, Iraq and other countries in the Middle East will be involved in the war.
Now that Israel has increased its claim that the war in the Gaza Strip will be protracted, and the United States claims to call for peace, but in fact it is clearly biased in favor of Israel, it will be difficult for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to end well.
Next, Iran will either exert pressure on the United States and Israel by supporting Yemen's Houthis and other direct attacks on the United States, and push for a ceasefire as much as possible. Either that, accept the fact that Israel has been conducting military operations in the Gaza Strip for a long time, and Iran has nothing to do.
American warships
Obviously, the latter outcome is unlikely to be acceptable to Iran, and it is a matter of Iran's fundamental strategic interests.
In short, if Israel is to wage a year-long war in the Gaza Strip at its current level, it is almost certain that Iran and the Iranian-backed Shiite rebels will be directly involved in the conflict with Israel.
The attitude of the United States is clearly to support Israel, and when the time comes, it is likely to be a local war that will affect the entire Middle East region, which will have a huge negative impact on the global economic situation and even the security situation.
From this point of view, the international community should put as much pressure on Israel as possible, especially the United States, since they are not willing to go to war directly with Iran and the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen.
countries of the Middle East
The best thing they should do, then, is to urge Israel to cease all military operations as soon as possible, rather than sit idly by and watch Israel prolong its military operations in the Gaza Strip. Otherwise, I am afraid that the Middle East will really become a quagmire of war that will drag the United States down.
Finally, from the point of view of Iran and Yemen's Houthis, they do not want to escalate the conflict. If the United States and Israel had not gone too far, Iran and Yemen's Houthis would not have directly provoked the United States.
But what is reflected behind this is not only the attitude of Iran, but in fact the attitude of the entire Islamic world in the Middle East. If the United States persists in refusing to exert substantial pressure on Israel, it may be a complete defeat in its Middle East strategy.