Foreign Policy: Yemen will be at the forefront of the coming “aftershocks” in the Middle East

The American magazine Foreign Policy suggested that the Yemen file would be at the top of what it described as the upcoming "aftershocks" in the Middle East, at a time when the Trump administration will find it extremely difficult to withdraw from a region that is still being reshaped by the effects of October 7.

The magazine published an analysis by Rafael Cohen, director of the Strategy and Doctrine Program at the RAND Corporation’s Air Force Project, which began by saying, “In early December 2023, I interviewed a retired senior Israeli intelligence official about the Hamas attack of October 7 and the rapidly changing dynamics in the Middle East.

The writer explained in his report, which was translated by “Yemeni Youth Net”, that October 7 “was like an earthquake, and the entire region will be dealing with aftershocks for some time, and although he did not predict where the aftershocks would occur, his comprehensive predictions of deep tremors proved to be largely insightful.

A little more than a year later, Hamas was decimated as a fighting force, its top leaders assassinated; Hezbollah was seriously wounded, its leader Hassan Nasrallah and much of its top leadership killed; and the Assad regime in Syria collapsed, its longtime dictator exiled.

The geopolitical landscape in the Middle East has shifted as a result of these aftershocks, the writer asserted. But with a ceasefire in Lebanon, the prospects of a ceasefire in Gaza, and Syria’s new leaders busy consolidating their country, the question today is whether the aftershocks of October 7 are finally coming to an end.

After all, US President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to “get rid of wars” quickly, even before taking office, and new top defense officials have signaled their desire to reorient the United States to the Indo-Pacific region.

But in practice, withdrawing from the Middle East may prove more difficult than they anticipate. And as the region heads into 2025, the aftershocks are sure to continue, threatening American interests for some time to come.

The analysis suggests that the first tremors are already underway in Yemen. For more than a year, the Houthis have exploited international shipping in the Red Sea, despite efforts by the US-led coalition to stop the attacks.

However, over the past few weeks, the Houthis have intensified their targeting of Israel, launching more than 200 rockets and 170 drone strikes. While Israel and the United States have succeeded in repelling most of these attacks, they are occurring with increasing frequency, increasing pressure on the Israeli government to launch a more forceful response.

It is no surprise that Israeli warplanes have struck Yemeni ports and other infrastructure in an attempt to deter further Houthi missile attacks. But the Houthis appear undaunted by Israeli retaliation, and Israeli leaders are not backing down either. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently vowed that “the Houthis will also learn what Hamas, Hezbollah, the Assad regime, and others have learned.”

Such bellicose rhetoric would quickly translate into military reality. During the Yemeni civil war, the Houthis have withstood a years-long Saudi-led air campaign. Yemen is more than 1,300 miles from Israel, making an ongoing air campaign more logistically complex for Israel than neighboring Gaza or Lebanon.

Most significantly, the authors argue, Israel has considered Hezbollah its main adversary since at least 2006 and has spent more than a decade preparing to fight it. This preparation has paid off, as evidenced by the dramatic Israeli attacks based on the careful infiltration of Hezbollah’s supply chain of walkie-talkies and pagers.

By contrast, Israel did not view the Houthis as an imminent threat until recently—and now it presumably has fewer tricks up its sleeve. A campaign against the Houthis may not be as swift or as spectacular as eliminating Hezbollah.

But just because Israel is having a harder time destroying the Houthis doesn’t mean it won’t try. More pressingly, renewed strikes will destroy much of what remains of Yemen’s battered infrastructure.

Israeli airstrikes have so far focused on the Houthi-controlled ports of Hodeidah, Salif and Ras Katheeb, as well as Sanaa International Airport, all in an attempt to cut off Iranian arms supplies to the group. Israel has also vowed to target the Houthi leadership, a move that both Israel and the United States have so far avoided.

If these efforts succeed, the Houthis’ military capabilities could eventually be reduced, if not eliminated. But in the near term, some Israeli analysts recognize that Israel will need U.S. help in countering Houthi missiles and drones, and international shipping will need to rely on the U.S.-led maritime coalition for safe passage through the Red Sea.

At the same time, renewed military action could have ripple effects across the Arabian Peninsula. In 2020, the United Nations estimated that 70 percent of Yemen’s imports and 80 percent of humanitarian aid—including much of the food—flowed through the same ports as Iranian weapons.

Given that some 21 million Yemenis – two-thirds of the country’s total population – depend on this aid, cutting off Iranian arms flows could also mean destabilizing an already fragile humanitarian situation.

Even if the Trump administration is not affected by the humanitarian plight, it will still need to consider the possibility that the conflicts in Yemen could spill over into neighboring Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening global energy supplies.

If the Houthis were one aftershock, Iran is another—and perhaps more significant—one. Israel and Iran have long been locked in a covert war, but after October 7, that war broke out into the open.

In addition to arming a range of proxy groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, Iran has twice launched missile and drone attacks directly at Israel, and Israel has struck military facilities in Iran in return.

This would pose an immediate problem for Iraq, Jordan, and the rest of the region, but given the group's nature as a global terrorist organization, its reemergence would ultimately pose a problem for the United States as well.

This gets to the fundamental challenge facing the next US administration. Like the first Trump administration—and the Obama and Biden administrations, for that matter—the incoming team wants to get out of the Middle East.

But getting out comes at a price. Leaving the Houthis unchecked risks continued attacks in one of the world’s busiest sea lanes, rockets raining down on Tel Aviv, and the potential for violence to spread to Saudi Arabia.

Ignoring the Iran problem risks allowing a country whose president has been installed on chants of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” to acquire nuclear weapons, not to mention further nuclear proliferation in a volatile Middle East. A complete withdrawal from Syria risks a resurgence of the Islamic State and jihadist terrorism.

That’s the problem with earthquakes and aftershocks: At best, you can use the destruction to build something better in the aftermath of an earthquake, or you can simply try to mitigate its damage. You can even ignore its effects entirely and accept the consequences. But ultimately, you can’t prevent aftershocks.

The same is true of the Trump administration’s incoming Middle East policy. Like its predecessors, the new administration can choose how to respond to the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East—with greater or lesser effectiveness—but it cannot end the turmoil with a presidential decree, any more than a spell can stop an earthquake.