As with everything it does, the Biden Administration seems to be stuck in a dead end as to how to deal with the Houthis. “U.S. officials have been grappling with how to increase the pressure on the Houthis, with some inside the administration arguing that the use of force alone is not working,” CNN reported on Friday afternoon, Feb. 23. CNN claims that U.S. strategy for confronting the Houthis has shifted since the attacks began in October insofar as U.S. Central Command has begun regularly striking Houthi weaponry inside Yemen preemptively, when the U.S. can see systems being prepared to launch. “But multiple officials told CNN that the U.S. still does not have ‘a denominator’ that would allow them to assess the percentage of Houthi equipment they have actually destroyed, and it is not clear whether the U.S. will shift its military approach further. ‘They continue to surprise us,’ said one senior defense official, referring to the Houthis. ‘We just don’t have a good idea of what they still have.’” In other words, the U.S. has no idea how effective the daily strikes against Houthi forces it says are preparing to launch missiles really are.
So, the administration is stuck doing what it’s been doing: daily strikes based on what it sees in real time, punctuated by a larger wave of strikes involving its coalition of the willing, as happened for the fourth time overnight last night. “Coalition forces targeted eight locations, which included Houthi underground weapons storage facilities, missile storage facilities, one-way attack unmanned aerial systems, air defense systems, radars, and a helicopter, to further disrupt and degrade the capabilities of the Iranian-backed Houthi militia to conduct their destabilizing and reckless attacks against U.S. and international vessels lawfully transiting the Red Sea, the Bab AI-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement issued last night after the strikes.
