The United States confirmed on Thursday that one of its long range stealth bombers, B-2, carried out an attack on Houthi targets in Yemen last night, in the area controlled by the Iran-aligned group.
This is the first time the US used $1-billion aircraft against the Houthis; the US used these bombers against the Shia rebels in Iraq a few months ago, when one of its bases in Iraq was attacked that resulted in the death five of its soldiers.
The news about the attack broke out before the announcement of the death of Yahya Sinwar, the former head of Hamas who masterminded the worst attack on the Jews since the Holocaust, on Thursday.
The Houthis have been increasing the attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea in the recent weeks. As a result, some shipping companies have been forced to take a longer route along the Horn of Africa to avoid the familiar route, despite the high cost due to longer distance that needs to be covered. Otherwise, they have to deal with high insurance premiums due to ever-increasing risks while sailing through the Red Sea.
The well-known shipping companies are not the only losers in this conflict: the number of ships that usually sail through the Suez Canal has fallen precipitously, denying Egypt of more than 55% of revenue from the waterway; higher premium costs suffered by the shipping companies, meanwhile, are ultimately passed on to the consumers across the globe, when they are already at the mercy of rampant inflation.
In this context, the timing of the attacks against the Houthis by the US implies secondary goals on the part of the US military planners.
Just after the attack, Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defence, for instance, said that the military actions showed that there was no place Washington cannot reach in the world. “This was a unique demonstration of the United States’s ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened or fortified,” said Mr Austin at the NATO summit, while commenting on the strike.
It's, indeed. No country in the world can fly $1 billion planes with tons of warheads, including those of nuclear, covering almost half of the globe starting from US soil; that too, without being detected on radar; of course, there are refueling aircrafts that fly simultaneously in assisting the flights, yet the military achievements are impressive and without a parallel.
Moreover, it is only the US that is in possession the kind of bunker buster ammunition that are capable of penetrating deep underground, such as GBU-57, also known as Massive Ordnance Penetrator.
The time of the attack against the Houthis by the US, in this context, appears to be an implicit threat to Iran that anticipates a retaliation from Israel in response to the ballistic missile attack against the Jewish state by Iran.
Although the US says its role in the conflict is purely defensive in nature, judging my Mr Austin's comments, the US may extend the role to cover offensive areas too, if the ground realities demand it.
With the elimination of Hamas as a formidable military force and Hezbollah taking a similar hammering with the loss of its entire high command, Iran is not in a position to rely on these two proxies to divert the attention of the enemies, in the event of a military conflict. In short, Iran, more or less, has to fight on its own, when Israel chooses to attack Iran in the coming days.
Iran and Israel have never fought before in a direct military conflict and both countries are in uncharted waters, in this context.
Recently, Iran demonstrated that if they wanted to attack Israel using missiles or drones, they could. Israel's skills in this realm is about pulling off a surprise, when the rest of the world least expects something of that nature. The pager-attack is a case in point.
That's why the world awaits a direct military confrontation between the two Middle Eastern powers to see how the unprecedented conflict is going to unfold in the coming days.
