By Pepe Escobar
No one ever lost money betting on the ability of the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder to construct a “coalition of the willing” whenever faced with a geopolitical quandary.
In every case, duly covered by the reigning “rules-based international order”, “willing” applies to vassals seduced by carrots or sticks to follow to the letter the Empire’s whims.
Cue to the latest chapter: Coalition Genocide Prosperity, whose official – heroic – denomination, a trademark of the Pentagon’s P.R. wizards, is “Operation Prosperity Guardian”, allegedly engaged in “ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.”
Translation: this is Washington all but declaring war on Yemen’s Ansarullah. An extra US destroyer has already been dispatched to the Red Sea.
Ansarullah sticks to its guns and is by no means intimidated. The Houthi military have already stressed that any attack on Yemeni assets or Ansarullah missile launch sites would color the entire Red Sea literally Red.
The Houthi military not only reaffirmed it has “weapons to sink your aircraft carriers and destroyers” but made a stunning call to both Sunnis and Shi’ites in Bahrain to revolt and overthrow their King, Hamad al-Khalifa.
As of Monday, even before the start of the operation, the Eisenhower aircraft carrier was around 280 km off the closest Ansarullah controlled latitudes. Houthis have Zoheir and Khalij-e-Fars anti-ship ballistic missiles with a range of 300 to 500 km.
Ansarullah Supreme Political Council member Muhammad al-Bukhaiti felt compelled to re-stress the obvious: “Even if America succeeds in mobilizing the entire world, our operations in the Red Sea will not stop unless the massacre in Gaza stops. We will not give up the responsibility of defending the Moustazafeen (oppressed ones) of the Earth.”
The world better get ready: “Aircraft carrier sunk” may become the new 9/11.
Shipping in the Red Sea Remains Open
Weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, in his current revolving door position as head of the Pentagon, is visiting West Asia – mostly Israel, Qatar and Bahrain – to promote this new “international initiative” for patrolling the Red Sea, the Bab al-Mandeb strait (which links the Arabian Sea to the Red Sea) and the Gulf of Aden.
As al-Bukhaiti remarked, Ansarullah’s strategy is to target any ship navigating the Red Sea linked to Israeli companies or supplying Israel – something that for the Yemenis demonstrates their complicity with the Gaza genocide. That will only stop when the genocide stops.
With a single move – a de facto maritime blockade – Ansarullah proved that the King is Naked: Yemen has done more in practice to defend the Palestinian cause than most of the key regional players put together. Incidentally, they were all ordered by Netanyahu in public to shut up. And they did.
It’s quite instructive to once again follow the money. Israel has been hit very hard. The port of Eilat is virtually closed, and its income fell by 80%.
For instance, Taiwanese shipping giant Yang-Ming Marine Transport Corporation originally planned to re-route its Israel-bound cargo to the port of Ashdod. Then it cut off any shipments to any Israeli destination.
It’s no wonder Yoram Sebba, President of the Israel Chamber of Shipping, revealed himself to be puzzled by Ansarullah’s “complex” tactics and “unrevealed” criteria that have imposed “total uncertainty”. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have also been caught in the Yemeni net.
It’s crucial to keep in perspective that Ansarullah only blocks ships that are going to Israel. The bulk of maritime shipping in the Red Sea remains wide open.
So shipping giant Maersk’s decision not to use the Red Sea, alongside other global shipping behemoths, may be pushing the envelope too fast – as in nearly begging for a US-led patrol to be in effect.
Enter CTF 153
So far, on one side we have Yemen virtually ruling the Red Sea. On the other side, we find UAE-Saudi-Jordan tandem, in the form of an – alternative – cargo land corridor set up from the port of Jebel Ali in the Persian Gulf across Saudi Arabia to Jordan and then Israel.
The corridor uses logistical tech from Trucknet: that’s truck-based overland connectivity in practice, reducing transport time from 14 days via the Red Sea to a maximum of 4 days on the road, 300 trucks a day, everyday.
Jordan of course is in, operating the trans-shipment from the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The overarching framework for all this is the
One Israel plan, enthusiastically promoted by Netanyahu, whose key aim is a link with the Arabian peninsula and most of all the NEOM tech metropolis to be built theoretically up to 2039 in the northwestern Tabuk province in Saudi Arabia, north of the Red Sea, east of Egypt across the Gulf of Aqaba, and south of Jordan.
NEOM is MbS’s project to modernize the country, which is incidentally bound to feature Israel-operated AI cities.
This is what Riyadh is really betting on, much more than developing closer relations with Iran under the framework of BRICS+. Or to care about the future of Palestine.
On the planned naval blockade of Yemen though, the Saudis were way more circumspect. Even as Tel Aviv directly asked the White House to do something, anything, Riyadh “advised” Washington to exercise some restraint.
Yet as few things matter most for the Straussian neocon psychos who currently direct US policy than to protect the trade interests in the Red Sea of its aircraft-carrier in West Asia, the decision to set up a “coalition” was all but inevitable.
Enter the latest – actually fourth – incarnation of the Combined Maritime Force (CMF): a multinational coalition from 39 nations established in 2002 and led by the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain.
The task force already exists: it’s CTF 153, focusing on “international maritime security and capacity building efforts in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden”. That’s the basis for Coalition Genocide Prosperity.
Members of CTF 153 include, apart from the usual suspects US, UK, France and Canada, Europeans such as Norway, Italy, Netherlands and Spain, superpower Seychelles and Bahrain (the Fifth Fleet element).
Saudi Arabia and UAE, crucially, are not members. They know, after a seven-year war, when they were part of another “coalition” (the US was sort of “leading from behind”) what it means to fight Ansarullah.
All Aboard the Northern Sea Route
If the Red Sea situation turns really red, it will instantly shatter the Riyadh-Sanaa ceasefire. The White House and the US Deep State simply do not want a peace deal. They want Saudi Arabia at war with Yemen.
The Red Sea turned red will also send the global energy crisis into a tailspin. After all at least four million barrels of oil and 12% of total global seaborne-trade to the West transits the Bab al-Mandeb every single day.
So once again we have graphic confirmation that the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder only calls for ceasefires when it’s losing badly: see the Ukraine case.
Yet no ceasefire in Gaza – supported by the overwhelming majority if UN member-states – runs the risk of metastasizing into an expansion of the war in West Asia.
That may fit into the clumsy imperial rationale of setting West Asia on fire to disturb China’s commercial BRI drive and the entry of Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE into the expanded BRICS next month. Simultaneously, and in tune with the absence of real strategic planning in Washington, that does not take into consideration an array of appalling, unintended consequences.
So according to imperial optics, the only path ahead is further militarization – from the Mediterranean to the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Aqaba, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. That fits exactly into the framework of the War of Economic Corridors.
An axiom should be set in stone: Washington would rather bet on a possible, deep global recession than simply allowing a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The recession may well turbo-charge a widespread economic collapse of the collective West, and an even more rapid rise of multipolarity.
To offer much needed relief of so much insanity: almost casually, President Putin recently remarked that the Northern Sea Route is now becoming a more efficient maritime trade corridor than the Suez Canal.
Pepe Escobar is a Brazilian journalist and geopolitical analyst.
Comments
25 responses to “Pepe Escobar: Yemen Ready to Stare Down a New Imperial Coalition”
NOT,usa business.repeat until it sinks in.
At least one nation on this planet has the balls to stand up to evil! I’m not talking about the USA or Israel either!
Yes Yemen has courage but it also a perfect situation for Israel’s Ben Gurion Canal project.
I doubt that countries will take up Putin’s offer, not in the long term anyway, as US will for sure compose sanctions on those countries.
Yeah, Yemen and the Houris, the moral leadership the world really needs. Sarcasm BTW.
If Ansarulla believes it’s possible for a 3rd world participant to sink a U.S. carrier, the tooth fairy is probably the best option upon which to rely. The entire specious premise of this article is laughable.
The US can’t even sink a carrier. They tried before building the Ford class.
Plus, the cruisers and destroyers are protective. They’ll shoot down anything approaching. Then, the carrier has her own defensive armament.
This article is laughable.
Unless:
The said sinking furthers the end plans of the embedded DS/Cabal to bring in an emergency in the which a one world government looks delicious to the masses.
Pepe, your writing is, as always, most illuminating. Would that the Booboeoise read you and understood the callous ruthlessness and stupidity of Empire, the blind groping of a parasitical Amerikan political class, whose only raison d’et is ” mo money” 💩💣. Is this the year we discover that aircraft battlegroups have gone the way of Westphalian Sovereignty? 🙏
Try to compare what the Yemeni are doing with the empty and rather coward rhetoric of Turkey, Iran and the collective Arab regimes. Shameful. What a coward gang of dictators who have no place in Islam. It took a well-armed World Alliance to defeat Nazi Germany. It will take a well armed-alliance to defeat Nazi Israel and stop the ongoing Palestinian Holocaust and put Israeli Jewish leaders on a Nuremberg-like trial. The barbaric and annihilatory evil of the Nazis pale in comparison to the Jewish-Israeli evil that exists today.
Eliminate ALL Hamas and ALL Islam. World goal!
Yemen the ant to the boot USA. 3 carriers will delete Yemen. Plus all carriers carry tactical nukes. The USA just needs the backbone of mass death to use them. Will Yemen provide the motivation.
I can see the possibility of a real regional war involving a few nations. It looks like 2024 is going to be an interesting year.
Yes Yemen has courage but it is also the perfect situation for Israel’s Ben Gurion Canal project.
I doubt countries will take up Putin’s offer, not in the long term anyway, as US will for sure impose sanctions on those countries.
CTF 153
a.k.a. Ye o£de global pi££ag€ idiot$ clinging to their $to£€n handbags lest the ill gotten £oot be retrieved by its rightful owners.
Contrary to common perception I can clearly see how Israel and the US Evil Empire by these actions are digging their own graves. And in America’s case accelerating its unavoidable collapse in all fronts. Let it be I say, and encourage their determination to self destruct.
God bless Barack Obama and Joe Biden, for having both work so hard to accelerate America’s demise.
I had planned to copy and paste this essay but didn’t because far too many of the contained herein had drop downs which blocked access with the caveat, to accept the cookies first before the source was exposed which I do not.
Delusional rhetoric will lead to massive slaughter. USA has best military ever. If they fight back, they willwin
Yemen is poking a stick in the eye of a reluctant giant who does not want war, but is not afraid of it either. This is a feeble attempt to not only stir the ever-hot embers of the political and religious hatred of Israel worldwide, but also to be a distraction to US forces from their full support of Israel against the various terrorist factions attacking Israel on multiple fronts. This is, and will continue to be, a failure of the shortsighted.
Israel has a right to exist.
Israel has a right to defend itself.
Israel has the support of America.
America does not want war to escalate, but is willing to do so if required. Like Israel, our goal is to live in peace. But if the only way to secure peace is to once again defend the lives of us and our posterity, then so be it.
Either a nation can survive or it can’t. “Rights” have nothing to do with it.
Israel should nuke Yemen the next time Pepe is there.
Pepe is not wrong about everything. Even a chimp throwing sh*t against the wall, occasionally hits the target. Irregardless, he’s still a lazy journalist and an antisemitic pos.
If you’re going to publish your silly and misguided opinions in English, at least learn proper grammar. This reads like it was written by a 5th grader who just watched a “Free Palestine” video on TikToc and doesn’t yet know how to use Chatgpt properly.
So fascinating to clearly see the tendrils of demonic Antisemitism uncurling across this poorly written piece and the resulting comments. The only Genocide occurring was the barbarism displayed by the filthy Hamas animals on 10/7. There is no desire for a two state solution. There is no desire for coexistence. Only the evil blood lust to kill as many Jews as possible. So stop spewing your humanitarian ceasefire propaganda. It’s laughable. The moronic fools decided to eff around and now they’re finding out.
FYI – what we Americans spend on just our Carriers is more than other world powers spend on their entire military. And guess what sweeties – we have a lot more than just a few carriers. May want to ask Japan how it went for them…. So You go ahead and get lippy and see what happens to your $h1thole country.
P.S. the name Houthis is impossible to take seriously. Sounds like a teeny bopper gang out for some Camel seduction. Maybe they could go with something like the Desert Vipers or Sandal lickers…
The terrorists in Yemen are simply proxies of China, the communist party of China is behind all of this. They are planning to take Taiwan and they need us to be distracted. What they don’t realize is that they will be destroyed, and China will be a world power no longer.
Iran, Yemen operate only as long as the US allows them to do so. And frankly, this administration (and Obama’s a few years ago) projected such weakness that the world shifted, and now shifts again. It’s like musical chairs. As long as this administration is in office, the bad players will play. Once a new administration comes in that is not afraid to use the power it has, the music will stop. There will be a change in atmosphere. The Houthis live by the grace of our good patience and nothing else. That patience will wear out very soon. As for a ‘cease fire’. We had that on October 6. Hamas destroyed that as they have destroyed Gaza and the people living in Gaza. Israel has to destroy Hamas or they (Israel) will never have peace. The US cannot stop it. Hamas can stop it- by releasing the kidnapped and raped people it took, and surrendering. IF Hamas actually cared a whit about Palestinians, none of this would have happened, and it would end today. But…they care only about their own power and killing Jews. You don’t make peace with that. You destroy it.
Houthi, Hamas, Hezbollah = Iran. Iran more likely to be incinerated by Israel than Houthi sink a carrier