‘Dangerous’: US attacks on Yemen’s Houthis belie push for de-escalation

US acting as ‘arsonist and firefighter’, experts say, by urging Middle East de-escalation but backing Israel’s Gaza war.

For months, top United States officials have repeatedly said that President Joe Biden does not want to see Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip escalate into a wider conflict in the Middle East.

That was the central message US Secretary of State Antony Blinken conveyed this week as he made his fourth visit to the region since the war began. His trip came in the shadow of Israeli attacks in Lebanon and attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on vessels in the Red Sea.

“The Red Sea — we want to avoid escalation there,” Blinken said in Cairo on Thursday, when asked about his efforts to prevent the conflict from spiralling.

But only hours later, the US confirmed it had collaborated with the United Kingdom to launch “strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels”, in coordination with a handful of other countries.

Experts and rights advocates warn that the attacks clash with the Biden administration’s stated goals of de-escalation and fail to address the root cause of the soaring tensions in the region: Israel’s military assault on Gaza.