American Institute: Why can't the West defeat the Houthis without controlling the ports of Hodeidah?

The port of Hodeidah has long been a lifeline for Yemen’s Houthi rebels. While the Houthis also receive Iranian weapons via smuggling routes through Oman, the most sophisticated Iranian weapons come through Hodeidah.

The Houthis know that the port is their lifeline and are working proactively to ensure it remains in their hands. As the Saudis and Emiratis intensify their campaign to support the internationally recognized government against the Houthis, Houthi propaganda has gone into overdrive...

Progressives in both the Democratic Party and the European left and most in the humanitarian community have accepted their narrative that the cost of ejecting the Houthis from Hodeidah would be too high to bear, especially if it halted port operations and humanitarian aid deliveries.

Then came the United Nations, which sought to engage the various parties to the conflict in a dialogue to alleviate the humanitarian suffering. This process culminated in December 2018 in the so-called Stockholm Agreement, which required the Houthis, among other provisions, to allow a neutral third party to manage the port and then use the port revenues to pay public sector salaries.

The Houthis failed from the start to abide by the agreement. They demanded that the port keep its employees, effectively creating a situation where the UN pays the Houthis salaries.

The UN-initiated inspection regime was the kind of solution that prioritized symbolism over effectiveness, and which the UN specializes in: ships could go to Djibouti for inspection before heading to Hodeidah.

The UN could then assert that its inspectors found only humanitarian goods on each ship. But the loophole was enormous: If ships chose not to inform inspectors, they could still go directly to Hodeidah and offload their supplies—often weapons and other contraband—to Houthi port workers who quickly whisked them away.

The Stockholm Agreement had another function. It provided a pretext to avoid military action. If the world could claim that the agreement solved the problem of arms smuggling through Hodeidah and the humanitarian shortage, it could avoid an imminent battle.

But the Houthis’ Iranian patrons sought to secure themselves. Before the December 2018 deal, United Arab Emirates forces appeared to be massing to take the city. The Emiratis had forces in southern Yemen, a military base in Berbera, Somaliland, and a naval command ship nearby.

In May 2019, as the UAE prepared to seize Yemen’s key Houthi-held port of Hodeidah to deal a fatal blow to the Houthi rebels, suspected Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) operatives sabotaged four ships in Emirati waters with underwater charges.

The following month, suspected members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attached limpet mines to two ships, owned by a Japanese and a Norwegian company, respectively.

Abu Dhabi never acknowledged a connection to the limpet mine incident, but it quickly called off the attack on Hodeidah and withdrew most of its forces from nearby Somaliland.

In December 2015, Ali Fadavi, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, identified the Gulf of Aden as within Iran’s strategic borders.

The country is ready for a new beginning, and the Yemenis are ready and waiting for the Houthis to follow Hezbollah into oblivion.

Source: American Enterprise Institute - AEI