Lucas: Come on Biden, hit the Houthis hard!
Joe Biden ought to put Kamala Harris in charge of standing up to Yemen.
It will show that he is not going to be pushed around by the Houthis anymore.
And we are not talking about Hootie and the Blowfish, either.
We are talking about real ragtag Houthis in Yemen who, backed and trained by Iran, are bombarding commercial ships in the Red Sea that are bound for Israel. Iran supplies the missiles and drones they are firing.
Joe Biden looks at the event, confused and helpless.
Were he to give the assignment to Harris, the vice president would deal with the Houthis the way she demolished the Mexican cartels after Biden named her border czar. (Yeah. Right.)
Still, she could not do worse than all the other government officials Biden has sent to the Mideast to cope with the fallout from the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and National Security advisor Jake Sullivan have met with everybody in the region — Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, officials in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar Bahrain — looking for peace in all the wrong places.
The man they should be meeting with — and threatening — is Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the terrorist leader who is exporting terrorism in the Mideast and beyond through proxies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis.
But Khamenei is not on the list.
If Biden and the U.S. cannot or will not shut Khamenei down now, just imagine what the world will look like when Iran finally gets the nuclear weapon it is developing.
They will drop the first one on Israel and the second on Washington.
The situation has gotten so bad in the Red Sea that major shipping giants like Maersk and BP are prohibiting their ships from entering the Red Sea en route to the Suez Canal and Israel.
Which then means sailing around the entire African continent to the Mediterranean Sea and Israel, a long and much more costly voyage.
U.S. warships in the Red Sea region have shot down dozens of Yemeni drones and missiles but have been restricted from attacking the launching sites in Yemen.
Were the U.S. Navy given instructions to fire back, it could wipe out all the launching sites in Yemen in about 10 minutes.
But just as Biden refuses to retaliate against Iranian-backed terrorist groups firing on U.S. forces based in Syria and Iraq, he has, in deference to the mullahs in Iran, also declined to go after the Houthis.
It is only a matter of time before U.S. personnel serving in the region are killed.
And it is not that Biden is facing a World War III showdown with the million-man Communist Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
The Houthis are an Iranian-financed proxy Islamic rebel group that took control of most of Yemen, a desert country, and its capital, Sanaa, in 2014. The Houthis got their name from Hussein al-Houthi, a rebel commander, who was killed 20 years ago.
Like the Iranians in Tehran, their favorite chant in Sanaa is “Death to America, Death to Israel.”
Instead of eliminating the problem up front by wrecking the rebels’ ability to fire its drones and missiles, Biden has gone the process route, appointing a committee and giving it a catchy name — Operation Prosperity Guardian.
Rather than launching a couple of air strikes into Yemen and be done with it, Defense Secretary Austin named a “new multi-national security initiative” task force to deal with the Houthis.
It will be made up of the U.S., the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the Seychelles, which is an island state off the coast of Africa.
“This is an international challenge that demands collective action,” Austin said.
We should be grateful we have the Seychelles on our side. That will show the Houthis we mean business.
Khomeini has Joe Biden’s number. He knows a blowfish when he sees one.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
File – In this photo provided by the Royal Navy on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023, an image shows the HMS Diamond firing its Sea Viper missile to engage and shoot down an aerial drone over the Red Sea. A Royal Navy warship has shot down a suspected attack drone targeting commercial ships in the Red Sea, Britain’s defense secretary said Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023. The attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have scared off some of the world’s top shipping companies and oil giants. (Royal Navy/Ministry of Defence via AP, File)