US needs to ‘put up or shut up’ in Red Sea as Blinken repeats ‘consequences’ threat after Houthi’s largest attack yet: expert

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By Alex Oliveira

The US should forcefully respond to an attack by Houthi rebels on container ships in the Red Sea that prompted US officials to issue a second threat of “consequences,” experts said Wednesday.

Bill Roggio, a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told The Post that putting off action any longer could give the group more time to prepare their next move and eventually lead to disaster.

“It really is time for the US and allies to put up or shut up,” Roggio said. “This is the opposite of deterrence. This is how you embolden them, you just keep giving them the time and space to do what they do.”

Roggio, who was embedded with the US military during the Iraq War, said he is familiar with the dangerous methods of insurgent operations.

His warning came after US fighter jets and a British warship shot down 18 drones and three missiles fired from Yemen on Tuesday.

The Houthi attack — ostensibly carried out against vessels bringing aid to Israel — was one of the most elaborate assaults by the Iran-backed Islamist militants since they began harassing container ships passing through the Red Sea in October.

The assaults have crippled commerce in the vital shipping corridor, leading some of the world’s largest shipping companies to halt Red Sea operations and instead pass to and from the Mediterranean by sailing around southern Africa.

The US responded by dispatching a coalition of defensive warships to the sea in December — but the missiles have continued to fly in the face of repeated US threats to take action.

“That just tells you that last week’s threat has gone unheeded,” Roggio said. “It’s just stunning that the international community is allowing them a second-rate militia to become a regional superpower that is able to influence global trade.”

After Tuesday’s attack, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken again repeated warnings of consequences if the Houthis don’t behave, but failed to elaborate on when they would be actually implemented.

“I’m not going to telegraph or preview anything that that might happen,” Blinken told reporters Wednesday, according to CNN. “We’ve been clear with more than 20 other countries that if it continues, as it did yesterday, there will be consequences.”

Exactly what those consequences would be also remains unclear, but reports from the New York Times suggest the Pentagon has plans in place to eliminate Houthi launch sites and attack-ship ports in Yemen.

But plans or no plans, threats or no threats, every day the US and allies fail to take action the Houthis are winning, Roggio said.

“The Houthis don’t have to hit anything to cause nearly all of the cargo trade to bypass the Red Sea. They’re succeeding in their mission,” he said.

“The only thing that is going to stop them is going to be action, and it’s not going to be one strike or two strikes. It’s going to have to be considerable action that reduces the capabilities as well as punishing the real masters behind this, and that’s the Iranians.”

Iran is well-known to back a number of extremist groups in the Middle East, including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Islamist militias in Syria and Iraq, along with the Houthis.

Fashioning themselves as the “Axis of Resistance,” the groups are dedicated to eradicating US, Israeli, Saudi, and Western influence from the Middle East and spreading Islamic rule throughout the region.

“The longer they wait, the more emboldened the Houthis, and Iran, and militias in Iraq and Syria are with in conducting further attacks,” Roggio said.

US helicopters did sink three Houthi boats attempting to hijack a container ship in late December, killing all the militants aboard, but Roggio said that was little more than a “heat of the moment” defensive action and did not constitute the type of aggression needed to put the Houthis in their place.

“All it takes is for one missile to get through one drone to get through, for there to be American or British or French casualties on a warship, or for an oil tanker or cargo ship to be hit,” Roggio added, noting that an environmental disaster could soon unfold in the Red Sea.

“What this administration has done in terms of deterrence is the exact opposite of what you need to do to achieve deterrence. We’ve exacerbated this situation by signaling that we don’t want to escalate conflict.”