Middle East war: In pursuit of regional hegemony Experts comment on airstrikes targeting Houthis

Overnight, the international coalition launched massive air strikes on Houthi positions in Yemen. Explosions were reported in the capital Sanaa and several other cities. US President Biden said the attack was backed by a coalition including the UK, which carried out the strikes directly, as well as Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands. He described the strikes as defensive and in direct response to Houthi attacks on tankers in the Red Sea.

What will happen next? Will Iran intervene? Should we expect a wider war in the Middle East? Caliber.Az asked foreign political analysts to take these questions.

The United States and its coalition partners have decided to step up pressure on the Houthis and force them to stop piracy and firing rockets and drones at Israel, according to Israeli journalist and Iran expert Michael Borodkin. But experience shows that it is impossible to stop the Houthis with air strikes alone. Saudi Arabia and its allies have been trying since 2015 but to no avail.

"Thus, night attacks are unlikely to act as deterrence and would require at least special forces raids to destroy missile and drone stockpiles and take out rocket launchers. It remains to be seen whether the coalition will do this or limit itself to a series of air strikes," the political analyst stressed.

According to him, Iran is asking the same question. After all, the actions of the Houthis in the Red Sea and the shelling of Israel, among other things, should have tested the US resolve to stop such provocations from the start. Iran, says the political scientist, was testing how far the Americans were prepared to go and how long they were prepared to tolerate it.

"If new airstrikes and ground operations follow, Iran is unlikely to risk confrontation with US troops. More broadly, only one Arab country - Bahrain - is involved in the operation, and the rest are unlikely to join the fighting to avoid provoking public opinion in the Arab world, which is sympathetic to the Houthis because of their association with support for Palestinian Arabs. The same goes for Israel. I don't see a scenario in which Israeli troops will join the US coalition in the near future," the Israeli political analyst said.

According to Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the Russian Middle East Institute, there is a great hegemonic war going on, with Iran and its allies on one side and the West and Israel on the other.

"Whether it will end with a blow to Iran or Israel is difficult to say. But you have to understand that the Houthis are mountain and desert tribesmen from northern Yemen, and the rockets they fire at boats did not fall from the sky. The Houthis cannot make such weapons themselves. But they are linked to Iran on almost the same level as Hezbollah and Iraq's Shia forces. So with Iran on one side, Türkiye on the other and local regional powers like Egypt, the UAE or Saudi Arabia on the third, we have a major struggle for supremacy in the region. At the same time, each one of them is also playing a game of its own in the region. The fourth force is the West, which has a relationship with all the players, including Arabs, Turks and Persians. A separate fifth force is Israel with its war in Gaza," Satanovsky said.

In this complex landscape, which began to take shape after the 1979 Iranian revolution, anything can happen, he said.

"For now, the stakes are being raised, military action is unfolding on new fronts and it is difficult to judge anything in particular. The intensifying Yemen-Red Sea front is just one of several in the region along with Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Israel, the Palestinian territories, Lebanon and others. And we should also bear in mind that Iran could strike a very powerful blow against the US even from Mexico and undermine the situation in the US itself. This is another version of the Third World War. So it is difficult to predict anything yet," Satanovsky concluded.