A cargo ship attacked by Yemen’s Houthi rebels sank Monday in the Red Sea, the group said, raising new concerns over safety in the waterway crucial to global shipping, as Israel targeted the rebels with airstrikes.
The Houthis attacked the Liberian-flagged, Greek-owned bulk carrier Magic Seas with drones, missiles, rocket-propelled grenades and small arms fire on Sunday, forcing its crew of 22 to abandon the vessel.
The Magic Seas attack and subsequent Israeli airstrikes early Monday targeting the rebels raised fears of a renewed Houthi campaign against shipping that could again draw in U.S. and Western forces to the area, particularly after U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration targeted the rebels in a major airstrike campaign.
The ship attack comes at a sensitive moment in the Middle East, as a possible ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war hangs in the balance, and as Iran weighs whether to restart negotiations over its nuclear program following American airstrikes targeting its most sensitive atomic sites during an Israeli war against the Islamic Republic.
Posted by John3262005
3 Comments
The Houthis have discovered a trick. Its gonna be hard to untrick it.
1 – territorial base for drone and missile attacks on shipping, on Israel, and whatnot.
2 – Do not care at all about reprisal. Fighters, civilians, economic assets, etc… all gladly sacrificed. Drone strikes are a gentle tickle compared to the Yemen Civil War as a whole.
3 – Be such a cartoon hellscape that no one wants to invade, because no one wants any piece of that problem.
In a very indirect way… Haiti is/was a sign we had arrived at this point. Complete descent into anarchy… and no one came close to intervening. Not even a little.
The “you break it you buy it” imperative is the very peak of the strategic interest pyramid. It doesn’t matter how bad the alternative. You cannot allow your country to be responsible in any way for the ills of Haiti. It doesn’t how many are emiserated.
Mad max scenarios are going to be left as is… in the coming years.
Why doesn’t the west just do what it did to ISIS in Iraq? An extensive airstrike campaign against houthi targets alongside providing some logistics support for the Yemeni govt? Like sure it’s corrupt AF but so was the Iraqi govt….and the coalition was still able to get the job done.
This was a Liberian flagged, Greek owned bulk carrier, heading from China to Egypt with none of the 22 men on board being Israeli. What was the point of this other than just attacking a ship simply because it was there?