The United States, which has been rampant in the world for many years, never imagined that it would fall on the Houthis. The U.S. military is now making frequent mistakes in the Middle East, and Iran's capabilities are grossly underestimated.
Recently, the United States and Britain once again carried out air strikes on the Houthis, and the Houthis responded by launching missile attacks on American cargo ships. Although the West has launched several rounds of military deterrence, the Houthis have become more and more aggressive, and the threat to the United States is also increasing.
Since the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict last year, the United States has gradually fallen into passivity in the Middle East, and has made diplomatic efforts and military deterrence, but to no avail.
The number of US military bases in the Middle East and North Africa accounts for 53 percent of the total number of US military bases overseas, but in this Middle East crisis, these military forces have almost become ornaments, and there is little recourse in the face of attacks by anti-American forces. In particular, the Houthi blockade of the Red Sea has not only dealt a heavy blow to Israel's economy, but also greatly weakened the US maritime hegemony in the region.
U.S. warships launched cruise missiles at Houthi targets
The Houthis are not strictly a regular army, but a semi-regular, semi-guerrilla armed force, although they have missiles and drones, but the weapons are not advanced, such as their missile and drone guidance capabilities, because there is no satellite guidance, so they need visual guidance.
Theoretically, in modern warfare, such a method of warfare is very dangerous and very inefficient. Judging by the effectiveness of several recent attacks by the Houthis on American warships, such weapons are also unable to break through the ship's air defense.
Second, the Houthi missiles and drones are very limited, and judging by the several attacks on cargo ships, the most serious ones are only deck and bridge damage, and do not pose a threat to the hull.
The Houthi anti-ship missiles, it seems, have no way to inflict damage on the hull below the waterline. It is very difficult to sink a ship.
A merchant ship hit by the Houthis
However, again, the core of war is people. With limited weapons, the Houthis have achieved their strategic objectives.
Although the weapon is outdated, as long as it is used in the right place, it will burst into amazing effects. Instead of waging direct war against U.S. forces in the Middle East, the Houthis have targeted Israeli merchant ships passing through the Red Sea, and now they have expanded their targeting to include merchant ships from countries such as the United States and Britain.
Even if these merchant ships are escorted by warships, they have almost no air defense of their own, and as long as they are close to the Red Sea, the probability of being hit is very high. Although there is no way to sink, it is still easy to cause a fire to threaten the cargo on the deck, which is the current "seven inches" of the United States. As long as there is no way to curb the Houthi attacks on cargo ships, the current US air strikes and sanctions will be in vain.
And the United States is gradually discovering that although the Houthi missiles and drones are backward in performance, they are large enough to manage, and the cheap cost and simple process make it possible to replenish them quickly. However, the United States' air defense missiles are different, and if they take hundreds of thousands of dollars of missiles to stop tens of thousands of dollars of drones, this kind of business will continue to be done for a long time, and they will have to lose everything.
Western warships patrolling the Red Sea, but nothing works
Although the United States has not yet really fallen into the quagmire of war in the Middle East, it is already in a dilemma.
It is not difficult to resolve the crisis in the Middle East, and China has already given the answer, that is, to implement the two-state solution of Palestine and Israel in accordance with UN resolutions. The demands of the Houthis and other anti-American and anti-Israeli forces in the Middle East are mostly nothing more than that, with one more point: the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
But the United States has been tied to the chariot by Israel, and there is no way for the United States to agree to these conditions unless Israel accepts them. And agreeing would mean abandoning Israel, which for the United States would be equivalent to the collapse of its Middle East strategy.
Therefore, now the United States can basically only dry up. Of course, another way is to launch an all-out war in the Middle East and use military means to safeguard its hegemonic interests, but this requires abandoning the "Indo-Pacific strategy", which is even more more than worth the loss.
In addition, Iran has shown more strength than expected in this incident. Iran has adopted the most popular form of "proxy war" in the United States to completely disrupt the US strategy in the Middle East.
And judging from the material preparation of Hamas, Houthis, Allah and other organizations, Iran's industrial production capacity cannot be underestimated. Therefore, if the United States wants to fight a war of attrition in the Middle East, it has little chance of winning.
It is worth mentioning that Iran also took the opportunity to demonstrate its long-range precision strike capability, and its missiles hit the facilities of Israeli intelligence agencies 1,000 kilometers away, showing off its strategic deterrence capability, which also made the United States and Israel somewhat afraid to act rashly.
Iran's power is clearly grossly underestimated by the United States. Underestimating the cost of Iran now seems to be dearly.