The lightning Houthi advance down Yemen's Red Sea coast this week came with direct guidance from Iran's Revolutionary Guards seeking to open a new front in Iran's war with the U.S., according to Yemeni government, Iranian and regional sources. By seizing the southwestern port city of Mocha, the Houthis have strengthened their chokehold on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a key waterway whose disruption further constricts global energy supplies after Iran blockades the Strait of Hormuz. Six months into the wider regional conflict between the Houthis' Iranian allies and the United States, the group now looks focused on consolidating that grip on the strait even as opposing government forces backed by Saudi Arabia focus on an offensive in the north. Two Iranian sources claimed that Iran told the Houthis last week to escalate their attacks on Saudi Arabia and promised more funding, weapons and senior officers to help them...
When US President Donald Trump campaigned for a second term in the White House, he promised to be a “president of peace” who would stop foreign wars, not start them. Now, a quarter-century after the September 11, 2001, attacks that triggered America’s global “war on terror,” he is entangled in an unpopular conflict of his own making that analysts say risks becoming his version of a “forever war." With the 9/11 anniversary at hand, Trump’s war against Iran is drawing comparisons in foreign policy circles to the long, divisive conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq that preceded it. It is also prompting questions about whether the US has again failed to learn the lessons of past conflicts or prepare a clear exit strategy. “Trump has broken an important post-Iraq and Afghanistan constraint in Washington against launching another major, open-ended war in the Middle East,” said Sina Toossi of the Centre for International Po...