Defense and Security

On 13 December 2023, following discussions with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, US President Joe Biden rejected congressional calls to stop or condition US military assistance to the Jewish state.

“We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing,” he said at the time.

A month earlier, Vice President Kamala Harris said the United States “(was) not going to create any conditions on the support (it) was giving Israel to defend itself.”

As the US engages in a dialogue with the Iraqi government over the future of the coalition forces combating the Islamic State, Washington must ensure a continued relationship between the US Special Operations Forces and the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service.

In mid-January, with the war in Gaza continuing to rage on, Iran launched a series of surprise missile attacks on its immediate neighbors Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan over two days. Taken together, these attacks illustrate that the Islamic Republic puts regime survival above national interest in its foreign policy calculations, which undermines its efforts to engender solidarity and good relations with other Muslim-majority states in the region.

Houthi rhetoric focusing on Palestine underscores the militia’s strategic alliance with Tehran as part of the “Axis of Resistance.” This relationship, central to understanding the Houthi movement’s actions and narratives, frames its position within the larger geopolitical contest in the Middle East.

The Biden administration has largely relied on airstrikes to prevent the Houthis from causing further harm to international maritime trade in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. But as we have seen already, this approach is unlikely to work against an armed group that has survived years of such one-off attacks from above. To effectively degrade the military capacity of the Houthis, a comprehensive and fully-resourced interdiction regime at sea is needed to target their supply lines and deny them the use of various forms of Iranian assistance.

On the evening of Saturday, Feb. 3, local time, US warplanes bombed facilities used by Iranian forces and Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, in retaliation for the death of 3 US service members in a Jan. 28 drone attack on Tower 22, a US military base in northeastern Jordan on the Syrian border. The airstrikes primarily targeted locations in eastern Syria and western Iraq.

A Memorandum from MEI’s Defense and Security Program with Recommendations for President Biden

Forty-five years after Iran’s February 1979 revolution, American officials continue to struggle to understand this nation of almost 90 million. Rather than trying to solve a crisis that threatens to draw the US into direct conflict with Iran, the Biden administration appears more intent to manage it.

(Washington, D.C.) – The Middle East Institute (MEI) is proud to announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Rabdan Academy, a UAE-based higher education institution specializing in a range of defense and security issues. The MoU outlines plans for the two organizations to explore avenues of cooperation and collaboration on research & analysis, training, and events.

Nine nations, including terrorist groups that are de facto governments, have attacked other countries in the region over the course of about two weeks. Numerous commentators have drawn the conclusion that a regional war is already underway or soon will be.

Last Thursday, military forces from the United States and the United Kingdom struck nearly thirty different locations across Western Yemen to degrade Houthi military capabilities and dissuade the rebel group from further attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea. It will take a bit more time to assess the actual damage caused to Houthi radars, missiles, drone launch bases, and command and control facilities and even longer to determine a change in behavior by the Houthis.

When the United States and the United Kingdom decided to strike Houthi targets inside Yemen to stop the group from launching attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, most European allies did not want to get involved in the operation. The sole exception was the Netherlands, which grabbed the opportunity to step forward and show its willingness to provide not only political but also military support, albeit largely symbolic.

By striking Houthi rebel targets in Yemen with Britain on Thursday, Washington sent a searing message to both the Houthis and its Iranian backers that the United States has ended its longstanding defense-only posture in the Red Sea and is determined to stop the group’s attacks against commercial ships in regional waters.