By Mareb Al-ward
In his first speech after taking office, President Joe Biden promised to end the war in Yemen, and indeed took several steps that contributed to the armistice and could eventually lead to peace, but those steps did not hold up after the Gaza War, as the Houthis engaged in attacking vessels arriving in Israel for allegedly supporting Palestinians. Washington has thus squandered “half-peace” gains after military intervention against them and linked the solution in Yemen to Israel’s security, with implications for (fragile) Yemen and the interests of the United States in the region.
In fact, Biden’s approach was based on general ideas embraced by the United Nations, but the shift at the time was to appoint diplomat Tim Lenderking as the first U.S. envoy to Yemen since the conflict began and to end U.S. support for the operations of the Saudi-led Arab coalition in Yemen, including related arms sales.
Linderking’s choice to lead the diplomatic effort was a step in the right direction because he has experience in the affairs of the region in which he worked for years, which subsequently contributed to the restoration of the diplomatic momentum of the Yemeni dossier by making nearly 20 trips to the Middle East and a number of European countries since his appointment in February 2021 until March 2022. These efforts resulted in an important breakthrough: an April 2022 truce that included the cessation of all offensive military operations inside Yemen and across its borders, a sign of attacks on Saudi Arabia.
Although the armistice was renewable for two months, it was renewed several times and then became a reality to date to be the longest armistice, leading to a decline in violence and facilitating the movement of fuel and goods into the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah. Flights from Sana ‘a airport to some countries resumed for the first time since the conflict began s economic situation and the detainee file, as well as the political profile, remained stagnant without any progress being made.
To assess this shift, Adnan Hashim, a researcher in international relations, says that “President Biden initially sought to partially separate the Yemeni file from the Gulf and regional files and this chapter was a good option, which he quickly retracted following his visit to Riyadh and to discuss with Saudi officials, thereby reconnecting the issue of Yemen with the Gulf”.
On that visit, Biden boasted that he was the first U.S. president to visit the region without US troops taking part in a combat mission there for the first time since September 11, 2001, and promised to work to de-escalate and end conflicts wherever possible, taking the example of Yemen’s truce.
But this approach remained merely “an inadequate view and electoral promises in the first place, rather than an approach based on a genuine and conscious understanding of the Yemeni situation itself”, as Adnan al-Gabarni is a Yemeni researcher in military and security affairs, sees it.
Part of this dysfunctional approach is the reversal of Trump’s most important actions towards Yemen, such as the de-designation of the Houthis as a terrorist group, allegedly affecting the country’s humanitarian crisis, which was a disappointment for Riyadh because it supported this designation and believed it would put the rebels in a vulnerable position. Biden’s move amounted to “retaliation against all of Trump’s actions, especially with regard to the decision to designate the Houthis, as well as the position on Saudi Arabia at the outset,” Al-Gabarni told to Yemen Monitor website.
It is clear that this approach was aimed at opening up and providing incentives for the Houthis to change their political behaviour and encourage them to negotiate, in greater insight, in the context of the broader openness to Iran that supports the Houthis as part of Washington’s quest to return to a nuclear deal with it.
The policy of openness has raised questions as to whether it will succeed, especially since this perception depends on an overvaluation or miscalculation. For example, Lenderking said in a 2022 press interview that the Houthis were “open to the role of America”, he was excluding them from starving Yemenis or forcing them to displace and talking about their cooperation with international institutions such as the World Food Programme, although the program itself accused the Houthis of stealing food from the mouths of the hungry in 2018.
Unfortunately, the result was contrary to what Washington wanted; The Houthis’ political behaviour remained unchanged as they refused to proceed with negotiations with the internationally recognized Government of Yemen and opted for blackmail, such as the abduction of staff of United Nations and international organizations and diplomatic missions for further gains.
Of course, one of the reasons for this behaviour is that the approach perceives them as an internal Yemeni problem that can be resolved with further compromises, and the underestimation of their association with Tehran, which turned out to be unrealistic after the Gaza war.
With the increasing attacks on navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, from which 12% of global trade passes, there has been a marked change in the American approach to the Houthis that includes a combination of stick and island policy; Military, political and financial pressure with promises to lift some of these actions if the attacks stop.
Washington announced a coalition on December 18. “The Guard of Prosperity“, a security initiative involving many countries to counter attacks and ensure freedom of navigation. None of these countries had any Arab countries, including the Red Sea, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, For fear of appearing before their people that they stand with Israel.
, in addition to seeking to avoid any impact on their interests.
The motive for change
as Hashim says in an interview with Yemen Monitor website, “The priority of Israel’s security, not that of the Gulf. This explains their refusal to join the alliance, except Bahrain, because it is the headquarters of the Fifth Fleet. This alliance is therefore about the West and its interests in general, not about the Gulf, and this affects relations between Washington and the Gulf States”.
The United States then escalated military pressure on January 10, moving from defending against attacks to attacking military positions inside Yemen, its first direct attack on the Houthis and the first aerial bombardment of Yemen by any force since the Armistice Agreement was announced.
Simultaneously, political pressure was used, with Washington on January 17 reclassifying the Houthis as a designated global terrorist group, the lowest level of Trump’s designation, while giving them a 30-day deadline to retract their operations in exchange for de-designation but refusing, in addition, to impose sanctions on individuals and entities supporting the Houthis financially linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
But these actions by the United States did not affect the Houthis who continued their attacks, showing that they had sophisticated military capabilities such as ballistic missiles, drones and unmanned naval vehicles that posed a threat to ships, prompting Washington to focus on Iran’s role in supplying weapons and raise the issue of implementing the arms embargo on Yemen at Security Council meetings.
America knew that there were many shortcomings and weaknesses in the United Nations inspection and verification mechanism for ships arriving at the ports of Hodeidah to implement the arms embargo under Security Council resolution 2216, and apparently overlooked the entry of ships into the ports without inspection in 2023, by the admission of an official in America’s mission to the United Nations last July.
The most significant gaps in the UN mechanism according to a senior Gulf official include “inspection of vessels with cargo exceeding only 100 tons in the port of Djibouti, while the rest do not pass through the inspection mechanism, including smaller vessels, although many are capable of carrying missiles or parts thereof”.
In mid-October, the US delegate stressed that “the Security Council must take steps to strengthen the Mechanism because it is important to stop the flow of arms to the Houthis”, noting that the Mechanism is “constrained by funding gaps and understaffing, and that America provided $1 million to support the Mechanism in 2024, asking everyone to contribute further to its budget for 2025 without any restrictions.”
Last July, as Biden said he was the first US president of the century to inform Americans that America was not at war with anyone in the world, the US military was announcing hours before his speech that it had bombed Houthi military positions inside Yemen.
The approach taken by the Biden administration will not help bring peace or deter the Houthis, so Yemenis’ hopes for peace have been victimized by the foreign adventures of the Houthis and Iran’s territorial interests, even though they are trying to hide this with acceptable arguments such as Humanitarian solidarity with Gaza, and America is also responsible for undermining peace efforts because it has begun to linked the solution in Yemen with Israel’s security and calls for a cessation of attacks before the implementation of the Riyadh-Houthi agreement “although to proceed with the agreement would mean Yemen emerging from a state of war and implementing Biden’s promises”, explains researcher hashim.
It is wise for America to realize that keeping Yemen out of regional conflicts maintains its armistice efforts and contributes to moving towards a political solution, which requires abandoning the current approach that Hashim considers to be “Yemen is viewed from the perspective of the Israeli interest because it will bring Washington many problems and may bring Russian and even Chinese interference and may affect the unity of the Security Council around Yemen if a future draft resolution is proposed.”
Al-Jabarni agrees with this compelling view that “the Biden administration initially viewed Yemen from the perspective of its relationship with Saudi Arabia and is now looking at Yemen from the gateway to Israel’s interests, so this approach will continue to create further counterproductive results as long as it is not based on the results of understanding the reality in Yemen”.
In fact, there are reports indicating some of this influence, such as some powers supporting the Houthis with weapons, which, in Lenderking’s view, would be “game-changing”.
