What Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas couldn’t do the Houthis have done successfully: challenge the growing aggression of Israel and its principal supporter the US in a highly meaningful manner. In the case of the US in particular, the Houthis seem to have created panic in the forces deployed on the Red Sea and beyond. It was a week ago that two US Navy pilots were shot down over the Red Sea.
According to media reports, both pilots were recovered alive but “initial assessments indicate that one of the crew members sustained minor injuries,” the United States Central Command said, adding that “This incident was not the result of hostile fire, and a full investigation is underway.
”CENTCOM has said the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg “mistakenly fired on and hit the F/A-18” fighter aircraft, which was flown by the Navy pilots off another ship, the USS Harry S. Truman. No doubt, as pointed out by global media, ‘’the potentially disastrous mistake underscores the dangers of a mission the United States has been involved in for more than a year as Yemen’s Houthi rebels have repeatedly targeted merchant vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden that they say are Israeli-linked’’.
A day ago, the US had struck targets in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, hours after a Houthi rebel missile wounded people in Israel’s commercial hub Tel Aviv. Therefore, it increasingly appears that the shooting of two US navy pilots was not the result of ‘’friendly fire’’; it appears to be the work of the Houthis whose ship attacks in particular are posing a longer-term challenge as the US and Israel have failed to deter them so far.
Naheed Rahman Khan, Karachi
Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
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