After a lull, the Houthis of Yemen are amping up attacks on shipping at one of the world’s busiest commercial lanes, adding marine life to the growing list of their victims.

A Greek-flagged oil carrier, the MV Sounion, was hit Wednesday near Yemen’s shores by four rockets. A French crew evacuated the 29 crew members. As the tanker is now adrift, laden with 150,000 tonnes of crude oil, it “represents a navigational and environmental hazard,” a European Union group, known as Aspides, writes on X. 

“It just highlights the multifaceted risk that continues to rise as ships are continuing to be targeted by Houthis in the region,” a United Nations spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, tells the Sun. “A lot of oil flows through the Red Sea in that area. It’s home to an amazing biodiversity, which is at risk, and there’s a physical risk, obviously, to the seafarers.”

The Houthis launched their campaign to disrupt Red Sea shipping back in November, declaring their goal was to disrupt Israel’s economy and aid Hamas after its October 7 terrorist attack. In December, the U.S. Navy launched Operation Prosperity Guardian, meant to protect shipping. The Houthi attacks, though, now block more than 70 percent of traffic in the Red Sea, over which 20 percent of world commerce travels.

The commercial interests of more than 70 countries have been hit as hard as, or worse than, Israel’s. A sizable portion of Egypt’s economy, for one, is based on Suez Canal traffic, which is currently mostly paralyzed. Its Red Sea shores are a magnet for scuba divers who are amazed at the corals, rare fish, and uniquely clear water — all of which now stands to be polluted by a leaking oil tanker.  

Major shipping companies are now sailing around Africa, instead of attempting the Red Sea. The rerouting is adding to shipping costs and stoking global inflation.

A fanatic Islamist group, the Houthis have yet to even take over the entirety of Yemen, one of the world’s most impoverished countries. Yet they now pose a major risk to global freedom of navigation. America, which possesses the world’s most powerful military — and which for centuries has built the world’s strongest Navy with the specific goal of guaranteeing that freedom — is yet to find a solution to the Red Sea conundrum.

On August 20, after the Houthis hit a home near the American consulate at Tel Aviv and killed one person, the Israeli air force conducted one of its farthest-flung missions, hitting oil installations at the Yemeni port of Hodeidah. The port was set ablaze and was burning for days. Since then, Red Sea attacks had mostly subsided; now, they have renewed. Following the hit on the Sounion, a British force in the Red Sea had to scare off attack boats on Thursday.  

The daring Israeli Hodeiodah operation “wasn’t meant to end the Houthis’ military capabilities,” a Mideast watcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, Yoni Ben Menachem, says. Rather, the goal was to “hit their economic capabilities, paralyze activity at the port, and disrupt Iran’s arms deliveries.”

Such operations are “not one and off, it’s a long, protracted battle,” the Israeli UN ambassador, Danny Danon, tells the Sun. “But you need to look at who is initiating all of this, and that’s Iran. For now, we are battling the proxies, but we need to concentrate on Iran.” 

America, meanwhile, has mostly stayed on Red Sea defense, sporadically hitting Houthi targets. On Thursday it “successfully destroyed an Iranian-backed Houthi surface-to-air missile and radar system in a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen,” the U.S. Central Command said in a statement posted on X. 

Instead, America needs to attack not just “missiles, radars, and supply depots,” a military affairs watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Brad Bowman, says, but should aim at “a broader set of military targets,” including Iranian ones. 

Yet, Washington habitually has been risk-averse — and even more so in an election year. Since October 7, President Biden has constantly warned against Mideast “escalation,” and specifically cautioned against any direct confrontation with Iran.

The Pentagon has gathered an impressive coalition in Operation Prosperity Guardian, Mr. Bowman says, but the Biden administration’s top priority is to avoid a wider regional war. Yet, he adds, “anyone who spends any time on a playground knows that if you keep telling the bully, ‘I don’t want to fight,’ that’s the best way to get another punch in the face.”