Washington — U.S.-led efforts to thwart attacks on international shipping by Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen are nothing more than a “shock absorber” and are unlikely to lead to stability or safer seas, according to a senior U.S. commander.
Vice Admiral George Wikoff, who heads the U.S. naval efforts in the Middle East, shared the blunt assessment Wednesday, saying that not only have U.S. strikes and defensive efforts done little to change the Houthis’ behavior, it now appears unlikely the group will be swayed by military force.
“The solution is not going to come at the end of a weapon system,” Wikoff told an audience in Washington, speaking via video from U.S. 5th Fleet headquarters in Bahrain.
“We have certainly degraded their capability. There's no doubt about that. We've degraded their ability,” he said. “However, have we stopped them? No.”
The comments build on other U.S. assessments that have questioned the ability of the United States and its allies to stop the Houthis from targeting commercial ships transiting the Red Sea, which account for up to 15% of international maritime trade.
An unclassified report issued this past June by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, found container shipping in the region plunged by 90% from December 2023 through mid-February 2024.
It also warned that despite U.S. and European countermeasures, such as the U.S.-led Operation Prosperity Guardian and the European Union’s ASPIDES mission, the Houthis still carried out more than 43 attacks between November 19 and March 23, driving up security costs and insurance premiums.
Wikoff on Wednesday said U.S. forces have seen some signs of stabilization since February but called it an “unacceptable stabilization,” with the number of ships crossing the Bab el Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, still down by about half.
Yet the attacks and threats to commercial shipping and U.S. forces in the region persist.
Houthi officials Wednesday claimed they launched attacks on a container ship and on two U.S. military vessels, although a U.S. defense official told VOA there was no “operational reporting to support those claims."
Separately, U.S. Central Command, which oversees American troops in the Middle East, has said its forces have destroyed seven Houthi aerial drones, seven Houthi missiles, one Houthi naval drone and one Houthi missile launcher, all in the past five days.
“It's a struggle we have every day to try to figure out where are we on the meter with regards to stability in the region,” Wikoff said.
The Houthis have said their campaign in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden is to show solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza amid the war between Israel and Hamas.
But Wikoff pushed back against that notion, noting Houthi attacks on shipping predate the war while describing the U.S.-designated terror group as “a weapon looking for a reason to use it.”
And if the Houthis have anything they value enough that they do not want to risk using it, the U.S. and its partners have yet to find it.
“It's very difficult to find a centralized center of gravity that we can hold at risk over time and use that as a potential point of deterrence,” Wikoff said. “So, trying to apply a classic deterrence policy in this particular scenario is a bit challenging.”
It is an argument some experts have been making for months.
“We have very little leverage over the Houthis, and air strikes are unlikely to deter them,” according to Elisabeth Kendall, a Yemen specialist at the University of Cambridge in Britain.
“They have a high tolerance for casualties, they are highly adaptable, they do not need sophisticated weapons to wreak havoc, they just need to keep going — not losing is winning, and they believe they have God on their side,” she told VOA via email. “In reality, air strikes by the U.S. and U.K. benefit the Houthis by providing evidence to back up their propaganda narratives against the U.S. and its allies.”
But other experts, such as former British Ambassador to Yemen Edmund Fitton-Brown, are more critical of the approach taken by the U.S. and its allies in trying to degrade and dissuade the Houthi attacks.
The U.S.-led responses have been “meticulously proportionate,” said Fitton-Brown, now a senior adviser for the New York and Berlin-based Counter Extremism Project.
“We need to be more determined and creative about what to do about this,” he said. “We are looking at a de facto authority, and a de facto authority has fixed points you can attack.”
“They have military bases that were previously in the hands of the government. They have intelligence headquarters. They have security deployments in [the port city of] Hodeidah,” Fitton-Brown told VOA. “Significant escalation of targeting is possible without changing the legal status of the conflict.”
The U.S. vice admiral in charge of U.S. naval forces in the region, however, is wary that military force will ultimately move the Houthis.
“Our mission remains to disrupt their ability and try to preserve some semblance of maritime order while we give an opportunity for policy to be developed against the Houthis,” Wikoff said. “The more players in the field that can get involved in a diplomatic piece of this, the better off I think we'll be.”
