The worst fears of Israel’s Gaza war spilling over to the Middle-East region – voiced in this column too – are unfortunately coming true. Israel’s continued decimation of Gaza and its Palestinian residents, has been sending shock waves through the Muslim and Arab world; and it now seems just a step before a full-blown regional conflict breaks out.
Despite US warnings to the Iran-backed Houthi regime in Yemen, the rebel forces have been pummelling western shipping passing through the Red Sea. Videos of the Houthis boarding ships and even dancing on the deck have helped freeze the waterways, driving up freight costs, as shipping lines re-route their vessels.
Over the last week, the US’ Biden administration has made good their threat to retaliate and have let loose four waves of bombings of Houthi targets. On their part, the battle-hardened Houthis have made it clear the US attacks will not deter them from continuing their blockade of Israel-linked shipping.
“We will continue targeting ships linked to Israel and the bombing of occupied Palestine until the aggression and blockade on Gaza ends,” leader of the Yemen’s Houthi militia, Abdul Malik Al-Houthi, said on Thursday. Despite persistent US bombardment, the Houthis struck a U.S.-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden on Monday and a Malta-flagged bulk carrier in the Red Sea on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Iran too seems to have been drawn into the regional skirmish carrying out multiple missile launches against targets in Syria, Iraq and Pakistan. Some of these targets – like Irbil in Kurdish region of Iraq - it claims are Israeli Mossad command headquarters.
US boots on the ground may not be too far off, either. US Navy Seals boarding a vessel bound for a Yemen port carrying weapons for the Houthis, suffered their first casualties as 2 of them went missing in the choppy seas.
US falls for Houthi bait?
What has amazed war analysts is Iran’s attack on Pakistan’s Baluchistan province. Iran says it was targeting the militant group Jaish al-Adl; but Pakistani government spokesmen said the missiles only managed to kill a few innocent village children. Pakistan has predictably retaliated with airstrikes inside Iran on ‘militant hideouts’.
While the official version from Teheran says it is retaliating against attacks by Israeli and US forces on its soil, the long-term goal of an aggressive Iran seems to be to strengthen Iran-backed militias – Hamas in Gaza, the Hezbollah in Lebanon and the heavily armed Shiite militias in Iraq called the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).
One can see India too being sucked into the conflict as it announced support for the Iranian version of events in Baluchistan. This has run parallel to an Indian warship INS Visakhapatnam answering a distress call of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship being attacked by a drone off the Gulf of Aden.
As the US increases its military presence in the Red Sea area, it appears the superpower has fallen for the Houthi bait. The Iranian axis wants the US sucked into multiple local conflicts. This, it hopes, would cement a stronger pan-Arab alliance, and help the Houthis and other Iranian allies like Hezbollah to consolidate their local power.
On the other side, Israel’s far-right government has ignored US calls to wind up the fighting, and have girded their loins for a long war. In this case too, local politics has prevailed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his friends, certain that a ceasefire and elections would see them voted out of office, want to continue the Gaza war for as long as possible.
World Bank warning
Alarm bells on the impact of two continuing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the danger of further conflagration in the Middle-East and a slowing Chinese economy on the world economy are sounding louder. The growth in world output
will slow further in 2024, declining to 2.4% from 2.6%, the World Bank’s biannual Global Economic Prospects report has warned.
This has put the world economy on track for the weakest half-decade in 30 years. “Without a major course correction, the 2020s will go down as a decade of wasted opportunity,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank Group’s chief economist.China’s growth is expected to slow to 4.5% this year from 5.2% in 2023, China’s slowest expansion in 30 years outside the pandemic-induced downturn. Growth in the United States too is expected to slow to 1.6% this year, down from 2.5% in 2023 because of high interest rates and cutbacks in government spending.
The fallout of the widening fighting could see a spike in the cost of both oil and food, and reignite inflation. The Houthi standoff in the Red Sea, because of the rerouting of shipping via the much longer Cape of Good Hope, will push up oil prices, and freight and insurance rates.
For India, the scenario is not rosy as investments in a slowing world economy will take a hit, and oil – a huge import factor for India – is likely to climb, even as discounted Russian oil disappears.
In a word, it is in everybody’s interest to diffuse this manmade crisis. And the starting point will have to be getting the US to withdraw support for Israel’s unjust war and force a ceasefire on the Gaza strip.