Modish Blockades: The Houthis, Trump and Expanding the War

The naval blockade has become conveniently modish, particularly when it comes to narrow straits of water where heavy international traffic and cargo pass through. The Iranians were the first to realise an eventuality long suspected: that the Strait of Hormuz might be feasibly shut for lengthy periods of time with minimum use of force, periodically and selectively opened to balance the strategic books when needed. It has been seen, no less, as a divine gift with ambrosial properties.

The Iranian-backed Houthis of the Ansar Allah (Partisans of God) movement are now doing much the same thing with their July 20 announcement of a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia. The measure is intended to counter the Saudi blockade of ports and airports in the Houthi-controlled area of north-western Yemen. In the words of Yahya Sarea, a Houthi military spokesman, Saudi Arabia had imposed an “unjust and oppressive siege on our dear people for nearly 12 years, plundering our resources and imposing a comprehensive blockade on our ports and airports by land, sea and air.”

In an email to shipping operators from the Houthi-operated Humanitarian Operations Coordination Center, the threat was unmistakably clear: “Vessels are banned from loading or discharging cargo at or from any Saudi ports.” Any vessels carrying Saudi cargo “may be subject to targeting in any location within the operational reach of the Yemeni Armed Forces.”

This amounts, without even the firing of a shot, to cutting off the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, yet another critical waterway found between Yemen to the northeast and Djibouti and Eritrea to the southwest. The volume of traffic passing through this small body of water is less impressive than the Strait of Hormuz but still hefty: some 10-12% of global shipments, with somewhere between 6% to 7% of oil shipments moving through. The Red Sea has become even more critical as a means of bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, helped by an increasing use of Riyadh’s East-West Pipeline. The rerouting of oil tankers with the closure of Bab el-Mandeb could, according to an estimate arrived at by Abdulwahab Al-Qahtani of Al Yamamah University in Saudi Arabia, increase shipping costs in the order of 20% to 40%.

The threats have worked sufficiently to alarm the European Union’s naval mission ASPIDES to issue a warning on July 22 that vessels with ties to Israel, the US or Saudi Arabia should avoid “transiting the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden until the threat level decreases.” While the mission thought it premature to fully assess the scope and duration of the threat, “previous patterns indicate that attacks could involve anti-ship missiles, UAVs, USVs and small crafts.”

The ties to those three countries do not necessarily exempt other shipping; all are potentially netted by the blockade. Oil tankers are altering their travels. These include, among growing list of u-turners and re-routers, the Liu Jiang Kou, a vehicle carrier run by Chinese shipping company Cosco Shipping Specialized Carriers, the oil tanker New Champion, two Hong Kong oil tankers Xin Tong Yang and New Prime, and the Indian tanker Desh Viraat.

The Saudi foreign ministry, seemingly caught unawares, tried to maintain a brave posture. The Houthi threats were roundly condemned and “all necessary measures” would be taken to protect the shipping. (US President Donald Trump offered the unsubstantiated promise that the US would “take care of it.”) Nor did the ministry see what the Houthis were fussing about: the Kingdom had been supporting and working with Yemen, if only through the offices of the “legitimate government.”

While the Yemeni threat ripens, Trump’s hold on the Iran bombing campaign is becoming tenuous to the point of mania. The Iranians continue to attack regional powers as retaliatory punishments for the ongoing US bombing campaign. Attacks on the Muwaffaq al-Salti air base in northeastern Jordan resulted in the deaths of three US personnel. For Trump, the Jordanians were, at least implicitly, to blame.  “They did slip something through in Jordan,” came his lament. “And if we had other operators, you know, [it] would not have happened unfortunately.”

The death of US troops and the obstinate bravura of the Iranians in enforcing their blockade of the Hormuz Strait with strikes against commercial shipping have made peevish commander-in-chief turn to foamy threats of bombing and destroying “one bridge or power plant” for each ship hit by Tehran in the Strait, “including those located next to, or in, the Capital City of Tehran.” US Central Command has also continued releasing its quotidian list of targeted items for the 11th consecutive night raids on the Islamic Republic, noting Iranian military operation centres, maritime capabilities, aircraft hangars, drone storage facilities and military logistics infrastructure. This is military spread sheeting and procedural clerking, not strategic awareness or political soundness.

Even as he threatens war crimes, Trump’s ragged focus is so diminished as to seek other targets, widening the scope to include Kolang Kouh (Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La), also known as Pickaxe Mountain. This has no doubt been tickled by Israeli prompts that thousands of nuclear centrifuges have apparently been moved into a tunnel complex buried in the mountain. “We’ll be hitting that area very soon,” the president declared on July 21 during a visit by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun. “There’s nothing they can do about it.”  A dollop of mendacity followed. “You know, normally, I wouldn’t say that. If I thought they could do something about it, I would never say that. But we’ll be hitting that area pretty soon, and very heavily.” Soon, in Trumpian lingo, may be an abortive matter, given previous airings on such fora as the Hugh Hewitt Show. On July 13, the program heard he was going to “take out Pickaxe Mountain.  Tell the Iranians to be ready.”

And heavily it will have to be, given the buried facilities dug to a depth of between 80 and 100 metres beneath the solid granite cap. “This granite structure,” Iran Wire is convinced, “offers a far greater resistance than sedimentary rock, significantly reducing the effectiveness of conventional bunker-buster weapons such as the 30,000 pound GBU-57 bomb.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei assessed the latest violent promises by Trump as the product of inventive fabrication: “Washington’s obsessive focus on Kolang Kouh (Pickaxe Mountain) where no nuclear activity is taking place is nothing more than a fabricated pretext for aggression, destruction and sabotage.” He also reiterated the position that continuous attacks and threats against Iran’s nuclear program “not only constitutes a flagrant violation of the core principles of the UN Charter, international law and the relevant resolutions of the IAEA Board Governors, General Conference, and the UN Security Council.”

With that said, Iran could hardly be blamed, given the debilitating martial hysteria against its nuclear ambitions, were Kolang Kouh to genuinely house nuclear material and the incipient products for a weapons program. The Institute for Science and International Security suggests that, were Iran to start rebuilding its centrifuge manufacturing capability, it might well install a centrifuge assembly facility in the mountain complex to service a nuclear weapons program.

Caught between the terrain of the imbecilic and the high ground of the hopeful, the expanding conflict will have some time to go yet, if one is to read Trump’s remarks with any degree of conviction. The US was “not finished at all” regarding the war, while Iran had not “seen anything yet. We have been nice.”  It falls to the Iranians and their Houthi allies to behave just as nicely.