US, UK and a third European country prepare strike against the Houthis

US, UK and a third European country prepare a massive strike against the Houthis

A joint statement from the United States, the United Kingdom and a third European country — France, according to several sources — will announce in the coming hours the "imminent" start of a military operation against Yemen's Houthi rebels, The Times first reported. The plan, leaked to the media, contemplates the launch of hundreds of missiles against targets in the country. The promised response from the Houthi side has not been long in coming in the form of a threat: closing the shipping route from Asia to Europe, firing on transport and military vessels in the region, and effectively blockading the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Military sources warn that closing traffic to the Red Sea would unleash an inflation crisis in Europe unlike any seen in recent years.

The strait that keeps world trade afloat

The Bab el-Mandeb strait is the funnel through which much of the trade between Asia and Europe passes. If it closes, cargo ships would have to sail around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks of navigation. One calculation circulating in the analysis holds that three extra weeks of travel for a vessel that currently takes about 30 days between China and Europe pushes crew costs up by around 70% and cuts annual voyages from six to 3.5. The conclusion is uncomfortable: the inflation risk is not a remote hypothesis, it is shipping arithmetic.

Some offer nuance. The savings on Suez Canal tolls could partly offset the extra cost, according to a line of thinking that holds the final impact on prices would be neutral. The problem, in that scenario, shifts to Egypt: the country needs fresh foreign currency to sustain its economy and already concentrates 100 million inhabitants along the Nile. Its destabilization would be, in the words of those who trinc the issue, "very problematic."

Who responds, and with what

The operation against the Houthis fits into a broader chessboard. Part of the analysis reads it as a move to provoke Iran and Russia and force them to ease off in Ukraine. Another school interprets it as the weakest link in the so-called "axis of evil": Iran as the West's main antagonistic ally, with China playing at ambiguity — a declared friend of the West on one hand, a quiet cheerleader of these wars on the other — and Russia and China serving as shelter that allows Tehran to defy the West.

The Houthi capacity to respond is not negligible. The Persians, the argument goes, are no slouches: even if they do not yet have nuclear cucumbers, they could assemble a dirty nuclear bomb over Riyadh, Dubai or God knows where. The closure of the Red Sea would also hurt China, which would lose competitiveness, and Egypt, which would see its toll revenue fall. Nobody wins outright from the blockade, and that is precisely what makes it dangerous.

The dependency nobody looks at

More than half of the world's merchant fleet sails under flags of convenience with non-Western crews. It is the fact that usually stays out of the headlines: if for any reason those crews stopped boarding, there would not be enough Westerners to sail the ships. The vulnerability is not only in the strait; it is in who holds the helm.

The geopolitical reading intersects with the domestic one. Part of the analysis holds that the civilized world will eventually grow tired of having a far-left government in the heart of Europe. Another recalls that Spain discovered America the last time the route to the East was closed. And a third, more prosaic one, points out that if the passage is blocked, it may be time to relocate production and leave made in China behind.

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The operation has been announced, not executed. The missiles have not yet left. And the question hanging over the whole analysis is not who will win, but how long it takes the first cargo ship to change course.