Amatzia Baram, an emeritus professor of Middle East history at the University of Haifa, has been pondering as to how the IDF might more effectively deal with the persistent threat from the Houthis in Yemen. More on his suggestions can be found here: “‘Yemen is built off Iran’: Cutting off Tehran’s supplies will stop the Houthis, expert says,” by Maya Cohen, Jerusalem Post, December 27, 2024:
Israel’s recent strikes in Yemen were effective, but to neutralize the Houthis long-term, the Iranian supply line into Yemen must be shut down, Prof. Amatzia Baram emphasized in a Friday interview with Maariv. Baram is a professor emeritus of Middle East history and the director of the Center for Iraq Studies at the University of Haifa.
The strikes targeted the Sana’a International Airport, the Hodeidah port, and other infrastructure.
“The distance is truly enormous, nearly 2,000 kilometers. This isn’t Tartus, Latakia, or Beirut—this is a completely different world,” Prof. Baram stressed.
Every IAF plane sent to bomb targets in Yemen thus has to fly 4,000 kilometers, a very long distance, requiring refueling — always a dangerous task in a hostile environment — in air.
According to Baram, the strike on Sana’a airport was “very effective,” particularly due to the damage to the control tower, which will complicate the landing of Iranian transport planes. However, he noted, “Planes can still land, but it will be very difficult, it will be problematic.”
Regarding the port of Hodeidah, Baram suggested a strategy similar to that used in the past. “The piers need to be dismantled, just as we did in 1973 at Syria’s ports.” However, he underscored the logistical challenge: “The distance—this isn’t Beirut; this is a different world.”…
The piers — the essential part of the port, where goods, including weapons, are off-loaded — need to be destroyed not just at Hodeidah, but at all of the Yemeni ports, Baram emphasizes, just as was done during the Yom Kippur war to the Syrian ports. But that is not the only naval target he thinks the IAF should destroy.
Baram suggests that the Israelis target Iranian ships once they exit from the Persian Gulf, past the Strait of Hormuz, and are in the Indian Ocean or, further out, the Arabian Sea. That will avoid having to hit Iran directly, and could mean that the Iranians won’t feel the need to massively respond, or possibly, won’t respond at all.
Baram proposed a long-term strategy based on population pressure. “When the broader population begins to feel that this involvement is costing them too much, they will start pressuring them.”
He noted that “not all residents of northern Yemen are Shi’ites. The Sunnis don’t want any part of this at all. About one-third of the population in northern Yemen is Sunni, and two-thirds are Shiite.”…
The Sunnis constitute two-thirds of the total population of Yemen, and one-third of the population in northern Yemen. They are adamantly opposed to the Shi’ite Houthis and their Shi’a backer Iran, and do not support the Houthi attacks on Israel that are then responded to by Israeli attacks that do not spare the Sunnis, or infrastructure used by the Sunnis, such as the Sana’a International Airport, the oil terminals, and energy plants.
Soon after January 20, the Trump administration will put the Houthis back on the list of terrorist organizations and place sanctions again on Houthi leaders. Baram believes that a better strategy for ending Houthi attacks is not to send Israeli planes and pilots on 4,000-kilometer missions to Yemen and back, in order to destroy Houthi weapons, but instead to prevent the Houthis from receiving any resupplying of weapons from Iran before they are delivered. This, he says, could be done by attacks that will completely destroy the piers where the goods must be delivered or still better, by striking weapons-laden Iran ships long before they arrive anywhere near Yemen, perhaps in the Indian Ocean or Arabian Sea. Prime Minister Netanyahu has overruled Mossad Director David Barnea, and decided that the Houthis must be soundly defeated before Israel turns its attention to dealing with the nuclear facilities in Iran. Professor Baram offers suggestions as to other targets — piers not ports, and Iranian ships rather than Iran itself — that could prevent Yemen from receiving weapons but would not necessarily trigger an Iranian response. His views are worth considering.
Walter Sieruk says
Answering that question ,which is “How should Israel deal with the Houthis ?”
The way to “deal” with those malice-filled vicious and deadly savage jihadists of the Houthis are nothing but stooges of that “mullah regime” of Iran. Even though they tools of those Muslim tyrants in power of Iran, they’re nevertheless are very dangerous. Therefore, the only fitting way that they should be dealt with is by a very strong power of military might.
As Thomas Jefferson had, so rightly and wisely , declared, “With every barbarous people…force is law.”
In addition, about that dangerous and deadly jihad group, the Houthis, which that hostile and vicious Islamic regime of Iran supports. It was reported in the newspaper THE EPOCH TIMES February 21-27 page A19 that “The Houthis repeatedly targets American assets, shutting down the Red Sea . In response, the Biden administration could only muster pinprick strikes and faux terror redesignation. The Houthi aggression continues.”
That article also reveals that the Houthi is a proxy jihad entity of Iran.
Of course that despicable fiend ,Joe Biden still strives, to the very end of his term in Office , to do everything that he is able to do to uphold and support that hostile Anti -America and anti-Israel Islamic tyrannical regime of Iran.
Joe Biden is truly a treasonous villain.
Walter Sieruk says
The jihadist slogan of that dangerous deadly and destructive jihad entity, Houthis, is “Allah is great, death to the US, death to Israel , curse the Jews, and Victory for Islam.”
Furthermore, the Muslim terrorists of the Houthis are “equipped with thousands of long –range missiles and drones that that are either made in Iran or based on Iranian designs.”
Of course, if it wasn’t for Joe Biden and those,” behind the curtains, who influence that would useful idiot, Biden would not have provided billions of dollars. Therefore, that “mullah regime” of Iran has the vast amount of money to fund, support and supply its proxy jihad terror/murder “organizations,” as the Houthis, Hamas and Hezbollah to use to as its tools to achieve its schemed Islamic agenda .
The Jihadists of those three Islamic terror/murder entities have no idea, at all ,that they are only the stooges of those in power in Iran and sit home safe when all the death dealing violent warfare is occurring.
Billy says
Israel must ban Islam, its Mosques, and its Schools for their terrorism, their discrimination, and their Criminal Gang Organizations. Allah, the criminal, in Quran 9:111 says, “Surely Allah has purchased from the believers[Muslims] their souls and their money so that they may have the garden[Heavenly Paradise]. They engage in war for the sake of Allah, so they k i l l and are k i l led…”. Allah, the murderer, in Qur’an 8:12 says, “When your lord revealed to the angels: ‘I am with you so make firm those who believed[Muslims]. I will cast a terror into the hearts of those who became infidels[Non-Muslims]. So strike above their necks(decapitation), and strike off(chop off) every finger from them.’” Allah, the terrorist, in Qur’an 49:15 says, “Surely the believers are only those who believed in Allah and his messenger. They do not doubt, and they performed jihad with their MONEY AND THEIR LIVES for the sake of Allah. Those are the truthful.” Allah, the seditionist, in Qur’an 8:39 says, “And engage in war with them[Non-Muslims] until there will not be sedition and the religion will be completely to Allah…”
somehistory says
“U.S. military strikes Houthi targets in Yemen (cbs)
The U.S. military said it conducted airstrikes in Yemen on Monday and Tuesday, targeting Houthi operations that have been used for attacks on U.S. Navy warships and merchant vessels in the region. CBS News senior foreign correspondent Holly Williams has more on the ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/u-s-military-strikes-houthi-targets-in-yemen/vi-AA1wLQIo?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=9748eadc64e14eeeb872ff9c3e3694e3&ei=36
skeptiker says
Wie Israel mit den Huthis umgehen sollte….. Da hab ich eine Idee. Als Neujahrsgeschenk einen Bombenteppich für die streng gläubigen Terroristen ausrollen, auf dem sie dann korrekt in einer Reihe gen Mekka ihr letztes Stoßgebet ausüben können.
P.S. Sollten UNO Vertreter aufgrund einer Notlandung im Jemen zufällig Zeugen dieser Neujahrsgrüße aus Israel werden, ist das bedauerlich.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Instead of Israel, how about the US tell the Saudis that we were previously mistaken, and that it’s fine for the Saudis to wage total war to wipe out the Houthis. This is not a group fighting for the right to self-determination of muslims who happen to follow the Zaidi sub-sect of shi’a islam. It’s a group carrying on a jihad against countries and entities that otherwise have no quarrel w/ it – be it Israel, US or other countries that use the Red Sea for their shipping to & from Europe
So the next time the Saudis drop any type of bombs on Sana’a or Hudaydah, just look the other way, since peace was never what the Houthis were interested in
Billy Corr says
To compel the Houthis to cease and desist from impeding lawful traffic on the Red Sea would entail occupying and garrisoning the Yemeni Red Sea coastline, an appallingly expensive task and one far beyond the manpower capabilities of the United Arab Emirates, a disproportionately well-armed oil-rich nation which now occupies and garrisons the strategically-placed island of Perim, which the British cravenly abandoned when the Wilson government scuttled out of Aden and South Yemen.
U.A.E. armed forces have also occupied a conveniently-sized island of the Socotra archipelago and have constructed a splendid new runway there. This is in addition to the U.A.E. having garrisoned the big island of Socotra itself, a shameless violation of Yemeni sovereignty which the UN, and everyone else, has chosen to ignore.
The Yemeni Red Sea coast is easily accessible and low-lying; occupying it would not be difficult.
However, the only obvious candidate with sufficient manpower is Egypt and every Egyptian who was an adult in the 1960s remembers quite vividly how Yemen became Nasser’s quagmire, a grim embarrassment for the Egyptian military.
Billy Corr says
Conspiracy theories are a dime a dozen, but this one is a sparkling gem: not only is it alleged that the U.A.E. armed forces summarily evicted the blameless and ill-used islanders of Abd El-Kuri but that there is an Israeli-Emirati agreement in place –
https://thecradle.co/articles-id/24125
Billy Corr says
“Expel the islanders! All of them! Get on with it !”
Here, a mere two-and-a-half years late, this – from a Yemeni source – was waiting to be found online. Note the claim that the Emiratis and the Israelis are working together. If true, this is reassuring!
https://en.ypagency.net/265308
Nobody – not even the amply-endowed Armenian diaspora – took any notice when the Armenians of Artsakh, formerly Nagorno-Karabkh, were forced to leave Artsakh by the Azerbaijanis and even fewer people in thew wider world knew, or cared, about this small-scale but nonetheless appalling event.
Billy Corr says
From a Yemeni source:
https://en.ypagency.net/265308