@jolyonThe trap isn't the strike itself. It's that a Saudi-led Gulf coalition is reportedly getting ready to hit the Houthis, possibly as early as next week, and Trump is weighing whether to jump in. From there, U.S. options stop looking like options. Join the operation and you're fighting a second major front before anything with Iran is settled. Sit it out and Riyadh starts wondering what the American security guarantee is even for. "Both options are bad," as the analyst puts it, and the military side may be worse than the political one. Airstrikes by themselves probably won't roll back Houthi gains. The PLC, the Popular Liberation Committee, has already had a rough time on the ground, and actually reversing the Houthis could demand a far bigger Saudi commitment down the line. Bab el-Mandeb sits right in the middle of all of it. "If you open up a front against the Houthis... while we haven't resolved anything with Iran, this is madness." That's the trap. The Iran war didn't fix America's Gulf security problems. It just created a new one in Yemen. Brandon J. Weichert, geopolitical analyst, Substack: the weichert brief, on Mario X Nawfal.

@jolyonThe trap isn't the strike itself. It's that a Saudi-led Gulf coalition is reportedly getting ready to hit the Houthis, possibly as early as next week, and Trump is weighing whether to jump in. From there, U.S. options stop looking like options. Join the operation and you're fighting a second major front before anything with Iran is settled. Sit it out and Riyadh starts wondering what the American security guarantee is even for. "Both options are bad," as the analyst puts it, and the military side may be worse than the political one. Airstrikes by themselves probably won't roll back Houthi gains. The PLC, the Popular Liberation Committee, has already had a rough time on the ground, and actually reversing the Houthis could demand a far bigger Saudi commitment down the line. Bab el-Mandeb sits right in the middle of all of it. "If you open up a front against the Houthis... while we haven't resolved anything with Iran, this is madness." That's the trap. The Iran war didn't fix America's Gulf security problems. It just created a new one in Yemen. Brandon J. Weichert, geopolitical analyst, Substack: the weichert brief, on Mario X Nawfal.