Hours after Israel’s retaliatory response to the attacks by the Yemeni Houthi militia, Oman brokered a ceasefire between the US and Yemen. Is the conflict in the Red Sea and with Israel coming to an end?
Late Tuesday evening, Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi said on X that “following recent discussions and contacts… with the aim of de-escalation, efforts have resulted in a ceasefire agreement between the two sides”.
The two sides are the US and the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which is designated a terror organization by the US and others.
“Neither side will target the other… ensuring freedom of navigation and the smooth flow of international commercial shipping” in the Red Sea, Albusaidi added in his statement.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump said that the Houthis had “capitulated” and “announced to us … that they don’t want to fight anymore,” and that the United States would “take their word.”
The Houthis are yet to comment on the agreement with the US, however, a recent statement on X indicates that their attacks on Israel, which they say are in support of Hamas and the Palestinians in Gaza, are going to continue.
The announcement came only hours after Israeli fighter jets had destroyed the country’s international airport in Sanaa, and a day after Israel had attacked dozens of targets along the Yemeni coast, in particular facilities in the port of Hodeida, according to the Israeli military’s post on X.
Last Sunday (May 4), a rocket fired from Yemen was not intercepted by Israel’s otherwise very effective air defense systems but landed near Israel’s international Ben Gurion Airport. Six people were slightly injured.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by threatening the Houthis and Iran with retaliation. “The Houthi attacks are coming from Iran,” Netanyahu wrote on Sunday on X.
On Monday, Iran denied that it was responsible for the Houthi attacks on Israel.
A long way away
As the distance between Israel and Yemen is around 2000 kilometers, military operations are difficult for Israel, as well as for its partner, the US.
“The attacks of recent months have been successful in some respects,” Constantin Grund, head of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) office in the Yemeni port city of Aden, which lies outside the Houthis’ territory, told DW.
“Previous attacks on the port of Hodeida destroyed thousands of tons of oil,” he said, adding that “this is enormous damage that the Houthis have to compensate for.” This also applies to the other targets, including many military ones.
Nevertheless, the geographical distance between the countries remains a challenge. While Israeli fighter jets only need a few minutes to reach their respective targets in the conflict with the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, another Iran-backed militia, it takes Israel hours to reach Yemen.
According to security consultant Ari Heistein from the Israeli Counter Extremism Project, and Amos Yadlin, the former head of the IDF Military Intelligence, this makes planning the missions extremely challenging, they wrote in an analysis for the Israeli newspaper Times of Israel.
Strike capability hardly affected
Until now, the Israeli attacks have mainly been aimed at preventing the smuggling of weapons and fuel from Iran to the Houthis. “Despite their military superiority, the US and its allies have not seriously degraded the capability of the Houthis to launch attacks, nor their ability to resupply their arsenals,” Fabian Hinz, a military analyst from the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) wrote in December 2024.
According to Hinz, the Houthis now have extremely powerful missiles at their disposal. They can therefore be fired from deep inside the country. The country’s mountainous terrain further helps to conceal the Houthi’s operations from enemy surveillance.
Yemen’s communications infrastructure is extremely rudimentary. According to an analysis by the Yemeni think tank Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, the Houthi militia is taking advantage of this very fact. It largely refrains from using digital communication. This renders the monitoring of the Houthis’ internal communication difficult for their military opponents.
“In their cost-benefit analysis, [the Houthis] want to implement their anti-Israeli, anti-American ideology while taking into account that Israel’s ability to hit them is limited,” Nachum Shiloh, a research fellow at Tel Aviv University’s Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies (MDC), told Israeli media, adding that “Yemen’s impoverished population and under-developed economy make for very few valuable military targets to Israel.”
Ground offensive unlikely
It will be difficult to end the conflict through air strikes, observers agree. Above all, according to many experts, the Houthis are unlikely to be persuaded to end their attacks on Israel and international shipping in the Red Sea in this way.
The question is therefore whether Israel or the US could also launch a ground offensive in Yemen?
In view of the rather unsuccessful military fight of the international coalition, led by Saudi Arabia against the Houthis between 2015 and 2023, however, this is hardly an appealing option. At the time, the Saudi-led coalition was “unable to break through the Houthis’ defensive positions in the Yemeni mountains in any significant way,” according to Constantin Grund.
Source : https://www.dw.com/en/yemen-is-the-us-houthi-ceasefire-ending-israel-and-red-sea-attacks/a-72456389
