A-Infos (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: YEMEN - The escalation of the war - Anarchist Hyenas (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

On the night of January 12, the United States and the United Kingdom 
launched a massive offensive on Yemeni territory as a response against 
Houthi attacks on Israeli merchant ships - or those headed towards that 
State - transiting between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea . U.S. Air 
Force Commander Alex Grinkiewicz said more than 60 military targets in 
16 locations were hit. ---- Several Houthi military bases and airfields 
have come under British-US fire - including a military base near the 
airport in Sanaa, Yemen's capital. As CNN reported, (1) a senior US 
military official said the strikes destroyed a significant portion of 
the Houthis' military facilities.

The offensive was conducted by aircraft, ships and submarines; in total 
more than 100 precision munitions were used, including Tomahawk cruise 
missiles.

After the missile attacks against the Houthis, the price of Brent crude 
oil increased by 4.1%, reaching $78 per barrel. According to Saul 
Kavonich, (2) analyst at MST Marquee, a possible interruption of oil 
supplies near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could " be three times greater 
than that of the oil crisis of the 1970s and more than double that of 
the war in Ukraine on gas markets, with consequences for already fragile 
supply chains and stock levels."

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates (3)      that up 
to a quarter of global maritime traffic passes along this route - 
equivalent to several billion tonnes of goods every year -, while 
according to the US Energy Information Administration, in that part of 
About 4.5 million barrels of oil pass through the sea every day (coming 
from the countries of the Persian Gulf and Asia).

The Houthi attacks, which have intensified in recent months, have pushed 
the largest transporters of containerized goods by sea, including the 
world leader "Maersk", to abandon this route and move to the 
circumnavigation of Africa - spending ten days longer than Before.

According to Jonathan Panikoff, a former US intelligence officer and 
analyst at the Atlantic Council Center, it is unlikely     (4) that the 
offensive on Houthi military facilities will lead to an immediate 
cessation of attacks on merchant ships.

Wars between capitalists

Since the massacre in Palestine began, the United States and its NATO 
allies have regained strength in the Middle East and parts of the Red Sea.

US President Joe Biden said      (5) that the missile strikes were " 
defensive " and " a direct response to the unprecedented Houthi 
attacks,"      while White House spokesman Kirby said the US was not 
interested " in a conflict with Yemen ".

The thirty-year war being fought in Yemen has seen the USA, Saudi Arabia 
and the United Kingdom take to the field against these rebels and, more 
generally, against the Yemeni population - carrying out countless 
massacres and destruction.

On a global level, however, the attacks in Yemen, together with the 
death of Abu Taqwa al Said in Baghdad and the repeated clashes in Syria 
and Iraq between US troops and armed groups supplied by Iran, are part 
of an ever-increasing clash between the allies of USA-EU-NATO and those 
of the Russia-China duo.

The US strategy is to eliminate Iran's military allies throughout the 
Middle East and, de facto, isolate it from this geographical context and 
push it to depend solely on China and Russia. The agreements reached in 
April between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year     (6)      will probably 
fall through.

The Chinese leadership, for its part, invited the USA and the United 
Kingdom to respect the territorial sovereignty of the states bordering 
the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, while Russia, however, accused London 
and Washington of having violated the UN charter following these attacks 
in Yemen.

The fear of the governments of Moscow and Beijing is the loss of 
political-economic-military influence in that part of the world - in 
favor of the USA-NATO-EU. This translates into the following: Russia, 
after almost two years of war in Ukraine, finds itself having to trade 
under embargo with China and its allies (including Iran); China, 
however, fears that a possible escalation between the Red Sea and the 
Gulf of Aden could endanger its trade and economic-financial agreements 
with al-Sisi's Egypt.

It appears clear how war and the fake opposition to it by governments 
and their bourgeois allies are measures aimed at reproducing and 
renewing capitalist material conditions - through the destruction 
(through massacres and genocides) and the exploitation of territories 
considered geographically strategic (such as the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden in 
our case).

In the world of commodities there is no room for feelings of global 
peace and prosperity. On the contrary. Only a part of this population 
will be able to benefit from this. And when this is threatened, as 
happens in our case, then the intervention will be ruthless and radical.

Those who will pay the price for this entire state of affairs will be 
that human population that will put up with the media propaganda and/or, 
in the worst case scenario, the bullets and missiles of this systemic 
state-capitalist aberration.

Note

1) 
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/11/politics/us-strikes-houthis-yemen/index.html

2) 
https://www.oedigital.com/news/510735-oil-prices-rise-over-2-5-after-us-uk-strikes-in-yemen

3) 
https://www.nationalgeographic.it/perche-lo-stretto-di-bab-elmandeb-e-cosi-important-per-l-economia-mondiale

4) 
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/fastthinking/will-us-uk-strikes-against-the-houthis-halt-their-red-sea-aggression/

5) 
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/12/us-uk-air-strikes-yemen-houthi-rebels-red-sea-crisis

6) See the paragraph "Changing Saudi foreign policy strategy" in 
"Normalizing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria, the Arab League and 
the counter-revolutionary process", 15 June 2023.            Normalizing 
the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria, the Arab League and the 
counter-revolutionary process | Galatea Anarchist Group (noblogs.org)

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