By Ivan Kesic
More than four months after the start of Yemeni operations against Zionist interests in the Red Sea, the Arab country has achieved a tactical and strategic victory against the Israeli-Anglo-American coalition.
Back in October last year, immediately after the Israeli regime’s invasion of the besieged Gaza Strip, accompanied by genocidal war crimes, Yemen stood up in solidarity with the people of Palestine.
The Yemeni military launched a string of attacks at Israel-linked ships in the Red Sea, involving drones, cruise and ballistic missiles, which sent ripples across the world.
As the Israeli genocide in Gaza raged on, in mid-November, top Yemeni officials made it clear that they would no longer tolerate any maritime transport linked to the Israeli regime off their coast.
Brigadier General Yahya Saree, the spokesman for the Yemeni armed forces, announced that the Yemeni military would target all ships owned or operated by Israeli companies or carrying the Israeli regime’s flag.
Along with this move in solidarity with the Palestinian people, Saree also called on all nations to withdraw their citizens working as crews on such vessels, sending a clear signal of what was to come.
The warning was not taken seriously. West underestimated the Yemeni military might, depicting them as tribal warriors with rudimentary weapons, and sea traffic through Bab-el-Mandeb continued.
A few days after the official announcement, Yemen began spectacular military operations against the Israeli-affiliated merchant fleet, first seizing the 189-meter-long cargo ship Galaxy Leader by using helicopters and speedboats.
Over the next two months, twenty more such ships were attacked with drones, anti-ship and ballistic missiles, showing a global audience an impressive arsenal of various weapons manufactured locally.
Some of these weapons included naval missiles Rubij, Faleh, Mandab, Asef, Sayyad and Sejjil, long-range cruise missiles of the Qods family, and the loitering munition of the Waeed and Sammad families.
The surprises did not end there because Yemen later showed even more powerful and advanced weapons, the sophistication of which was confirmed in a recent interview by Admiral Charles Brad Cooper, the Deputy Commander of the US Central Command.
In mid-December, the United States and the United Kingdom tried to form a broad naval coalition aimed at containing Yemen, finding a lukewarm desire for involvement from European, Arab and other allies.
Their move was a response to the request of the Israeli regime premier Benjamin Netanyahu, who previously asked US President Joe Biden to stop Yemen, clearly unnerved and rattled.
Despite the establishment of naval patrols in the Red and Arabian Seas, Yemen stood undeterred and attacks on Israeli-affiliated shipping continued with greater pace and conviction.
The Anglo-American coalition made another miscalculation when it launched a series of missile attacks on the Yemeni mainland in mid-January, believing that aggression would force Yemen to stop its operations.
Yemen nevertheless did not stop the strikes, but intensified operations and expanded them to the merchant fleets of the countries involved in the aggression, thus leading to an even more significant drop in global traffic through the Bab-el-Mandeb.
Since the Anglo-American involvement, Yemen carried out the largest single attack with dozens of drones, used new underwater drones and anti-ship ballistic missiles against about thirty ships, damaging a dozen others and sinking two British cargo ships.
US Admiral Cooper spoke to CBS News recently about the scope and goals of the Anglo-American coalition, explaining that their operation involves 7,000 sailors and is unprecedented since World War II.
At the beginning and end of the interview, he emphasized that their goal is the free flow of trade through the Red Sea, through which 15 percent of the world’s international trade flows.
However, the statistics on the transit through Bab-el-Mandeb clearly show that their objective ended in a fiasco, since in the first days of the naval operation it dropped sharply to 70 percent compared to the pre-war period, and after the missile attacks it further dropped to below 40 percent and below.
For the economy of the Israeli regime, the situation is even worse because the transit in the southern port of Eilat has decreased by 90 percent, as per available reports, and the Mediterranean ports of Haifa and Ashdod, dependent on the Red Sea, have recorded roughly 70 percent transshipment losses.
Several corporate giants are not impressed by the operation and have canceled transit through the Red Sea, and the presence of Anglo-American ships has no psychological effect on the ship’s crews, who individually refuse to sail through the area.
Equally shameful for the US and the US which boasts of global naval supremacy, is the tactical defeat against Yemen, a country that has long been considered a minor player on the international stage.
Offensive military operations of the Anglo-American coalition were aimed at destroying launch platforms and targeted killings for the sake of intimidation, and defensive operations at protecting the merchant fleet from missile attacks. Everything failed.
There are thousands of launch sites in Yemen, which are well camouflaged and dispersed. The cost of targeting them with expensive missiles is enormous, and the local Yemeni media report that in many cases mock-ups have been hit.
Missile attacks have no effect on intimidating the Yemeni leadership either, which is fully expected considering that they have been under heavy airstrikes by the West-backed and Saudi-led coalition for the past ten years, but they did not buckle under pressure.
According to official Anglo-American reports, Yemeni drones and missiles aimed at their warships were shot down and there was zero damage, suggesting total military-technological supremacy.
This is, however, far from the truth because if they had such defense systems, they could organize merchant convoys under the protection of warships and ensure a safe transit.
However, the situation on the ground says something completely different. Since the beginning of their engagement, a greater number of ships have been hit than in an equally long period before, with more catastrophic results that include the sinking of vessels.
Another frustrating fact for the coalition, evident from the interview with Admiral Cooper, is that so far they have fired about a hundred standard surface-to-air missiles, each of which costs up to $4 million, against $10,000 Yemeni drones.
In addition to the huge cost-efficiency difference, bigger problems are the limited number of such missiles on board (usually dozens), resupplying silos with new missiles, and limited domestic stocks.
For these reasons, the British destroyer HMS Diamond was officially forced to withdraw to Gibraltar for several weeks without an adequate replacement, although unconfirmed information suggests that it was also hit by a Yemeni missile.
The lessons learned are a warning for the Israeli regime as to what would happen in the Mediterranean Sea in the case of a flare-up of conflict with the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, as well as for the Anglo-American duo itself in the case of warmongering adventures in the Persian Gulf.
Ivan Kesic is an independent journalist and researcher.
(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV)
