Biden-Harris administration needs ‘more aggressive’ plan to fight Iran-backed Houthis, experts warn

Military commanders have publicly expressed their dissent over the Pentagon's approach to the US military's response to the Houthis' threat in the Red Sea and called for a tougher response.

“The U.S. clearly needs to be more aggressive against Iran because it is supplying and supporting the Houthis. Unless the U.S. imposes punishment on Iran, these Houthi attacks will continue,” retired RADM Mark Montgomery, senior director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracy's Center on Cyber ​​and Tech Innovation, told Fox News Digital.

“The Biden administration is failing to pursue an effective deterrence strategy against the Iranians and, more broadly, the Houthis because the administration is overly concerned with provoking Iran and not enough with influencing Iranian behavior,” Montgomery said.

“If you allow a tyrant to go unchecked for too long, it becomes increasingly difficult to finally stand up to the tyrant.”

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According to the Wall Street Journal, CENTCOM commander General Michael Kurilla wrote in a letter to US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that current policies are “not” having the desired effect on Houthi attacks in the Red Sea.

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Kurilla called for the government to take a holistic approach to the problem. This would include increased military pressure as well as economic and diplomatic pressure to dissuade the terrorist group from its campaign against ships in the region.

The tone of the letter shocked some members of the Defense Ministry, an official told the Journal, particularly Kurilla's claim that “US soldiers will die if we continue like this.”

The Pentagon told Fox News Digital it had no further comment in response to a request for comment.

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The Houthis launched attacks on ships in the Red Sea following Israel's invasion of the Gaza Strip in response to the October 7 Hamas attack.

The Houthis claimed they only attacked ships that had commercial relations with Israel. In fact, their attacks hit ships from dozens of countries, causing significant disruption and endangering the lives of hundreds of crew members.

US National Security Council (NSC) spokesman Sean Savett told Fox News Digital that the US has “aggressively pursued a whole-of-government approach” in response to the Houthis, including sanctions, designating the group as a global terrorist organisation and disrupting its supply lines.

“As we have said before, we will continue to make clear to the Houthis that they will face the consequences if they do not stop their illegal attacks that are damaging the regional economy, causing environmental damage and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid to Yemen and other countries,” Savett said.

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Earlier this summer, officials described the back-and-forth with the Houthis over a six-month period as “the most intense naval battle,” according to The Associated Press. One commander told the newspaper that the Houthis were launching missiles, drones or “some other type of attack” almost daily.

“I think people don't really understand how deadly serious what we're doing is and how much of a threat the ships continue to be,” Commander Eric Blomberg of the USS Laboon told AP during a visit to his warship in the Red Sea.

“We only have to get it wrong once,” he said. “The Houthis only have to get through once.”

Most recently, on August 21, the group attacked a Greek-flagged oil tanker in the Red Sea, which was left ablaze “without command.” While the Houthis did not directly claim responsibility for the attack, the British military blamed the group for the attack.

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CENTCOM announced over the weekend that it had destroyed at least one Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle and one unmanned surface vessel near Yemen after concluding that both posed a “clear and imminent threat” to U.S. and coalition forces.

Rear Admiral Marc Miguez of the U.S. Navy said in an interview with YouTube star and retired naval aviator Ward Carroll that more aggressive strategies had been proposed, but the command rejected them for fear of an Iranian response.

“Concrete strategies have been proposed, but our national command authority has decided that we do not want to question these – I would call them more aggressive postures and more aggressive attacks,” Miguez said in the interview, which was published in late August.

“We all know that this threat comes from Iranian groups like the Houthis,” Miguez said. “And that is the calculation that is being made at level zero at the National Command Authority with the NSA and everyone else.”

“We will continue to have to deal with this in the future,” he added. “It will be up to our national command authority to be more aggressive with our battle groups and all our assets, not just the Navy.”

The U.S. Navy did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment by press time, but an NSC spokesperson stressed that “the claim that the administration decided against a more aggressive policy because of concerns about Iran's response is false.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source of the original article: Biden-Harris administration needs ‘more aggressive’ plan to fight Iran-backed Houthis, experts warn