US-Houthi truce triggers pro-Israel alarm bells
By James M.
Dorsey
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Alarm bells
went off in Jerusalem and pro-Israel circles in Washington when US President
Donald J. Trump this week announced a truce in America’s Red Sea tanker war
with Yemen’s Houthi rebels that failed to take Israeli interests into account.
Mr. Trump’s
announcement of a deal that protects US assets and international shipping but
leaves space for continued Houthi targeting of Israel suggested that the
president and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu differed on multiple issues,
including Yemen, Gaza, and Iran.
Mr. Trump
disclosed the truce as the US Navy provided a security umbrella for Israeli air
strikes in retaliation for a Houthi missile attack on Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion
Airport.
The US and
British militaries have struck Yemeni targets some 800 times in the last two
months to force the Houthis to stop their attacks on international shipping in
the Red Sea.
The
administration’s failure to consult Israel on the Oman-mediated truce fuelled
Israeli and pro-Israeli fears.
Israel and
its allies in the administration were alarmed not only because the truce did
not extend to Houthi missile attacks on Israel but may also not cover Israeli-owned
or Israel-bound vessels in the Red Sea.
Even so, an Omani foreign ministry statement suggested that Israeli shipping may
be part of the truce, although it did not explicitly state that to allow the
Houthis to save face.
The
statement said the United States and the Houthis had agreed that “neither side
will target the other…ensuring freedom of navigation and the free flow of
international commercial shipping.”
In one
reading of the Omani statement, Israeli-related shipping would fall under’
international commercial shipping.’
When asked about future Houthi attacks on
Israeli targets, Mr.
Trump appeared to hedge his bets.
"I will
discuss that if something happens with Israel and the Houthis,” Mr. Trump said.
Similarly, an
Iranian official’s assertion that the Islamic Republic had played a “positive
role in facilitating the agreement” by persuading the Houthis to focus their
hostilities away from maritime routes, or in other words, on targets in Israel, did little to
reassure Israelis.
Neither did
senior Houthi official Mohammad Ali Al-Houthi’s praise of the truce as “a victory that severs American
support for the temporary entity (Israel) and a failure for Netanyahu.”
Israel and
its Washington allies further worried that the truce handed a success to the
administration’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) ideologues in their seesaw
battle with pro-Israeli officials who believe that US and Israeli interests overlap.
Israel’s
concern is informed by the fact that Mr. Trump, unlike his predecessor, Joe
Biden, does not have an ideological or emotive relationship with Israel. As
such, he may be more susceptible to the Make America Great Again crowd’s,
critical, if not anti-Isr attitude.
“Were it not
for that dramatically Israel-supportive first term…you might be forgiven for
wondering whether Trump had taken office (in his second term at strategic odds with Israel,…perhaps in the grip of the personal
anti-Netanyahu animus that was so evident when he declared ‘F--k him’” after
Mr. Netanyahu congratulated Mr. Biden for his 2020 presidential election
victory,” said journalist and author David Horovitz.
If Michael
Scheuer, former head of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden Unit, represents the Make
America Great Again crowd’s thinking, Mr. Horovitz’s worst dreams could become
reality.
“There has
been no greater foreign policy catastrophe for the United States since the
recognition of Israel. It has alienated our ability to deal with everyone on a
fair basis because we don’t deal on a fair basis with them. They take advantage
of it through espionage, through theft, through selling our technology to the
Chinese or the Russians as they please,” Mr. Scheuer said in a podcast discussion with this writer.
“It’s time
to walk away from these people, and, if they live, fine. No one has a right to
exist on this earth. … If you don’t have a cohesive society, if you can’t
defend yourself, if you aren’t a good neighbour, you’re not going to last very
long at all,’ Mr. Scheuer added.
Privately,
Mr. Netanyahu has recently complained that Mr. Trump says the right things on,
for example Iran and Syria, but that his actions don’t reflect that.
The Yemen
truce was not the only time Mr. Trump embraced policies advocated by Make
America Great Again figures in his administration that do not align with
Israel’s perspective.
This week, adding
insult to injury, Mr. Trump turned down an Israeli request to also visit
Jerusalem during his trip to the region next week. Mr. Trump is scheduled to
visit Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The president said he
might travel to Israel later.
Donald and
Melania Trump with Ron Dermer
In doing so,
Mr. Trump pre-empted Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a Netanyahu
confidante and former Israeli ambassador to the US, tasked with coordinating
between Israel and the United States, who was on his way to Washington to lobby for including Israel on next week’s presidential tour as
the president spoke.
Like the
Yemen truce, Mr. Trump’s decision to exclude Israel from his Middle East tour
struck a cord with the Make America Great Again ideologues.
It was not
the first time Mr. Dermer and his administration allies got caught in Make
America Great Again headwinds.
Earlier, Mr.
Dermer and his allies failed to persuade Mr. Trump to demote his special envoy for hostage
response, Adam Boehler, for speaking to Hamas directly.
Mr. Dermer
and his allies failed to halt the removal of National Security Advisor Michael
Waltz, with whom the Israeli official was drafting plans for joint US-Israeli
strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities.
Mr. Waltz’s
coordination with Israel and hawkish stance on Iran persuaded Mr. Trump to
demote him by nominating him as US ambassador to the United Nations and
appointing Secretary of State Marco Rubio as his acting successor.
Moreover,
Mr. Waltz was entangled in Signalgate, the leaking of a group chat among senior
government officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, regarding
details of Yemeni targets in the US bombing campaign.
Like Israel,
Mr. Hegseth, another pro-Israel figure who was intimately involved in the
planning of US strikes against Yemen, was informed about the truce only minutes
before Mr. Trump announced it.
Mr. Demer’s
failures are on a growing list of setbacks suffered by supporters of Israel
within the administration.
In early
April, Mr. Trump fired at least six National Security
Council staffers
critical of Make America Great Again thinking on the advice of far-right
activist, conspiracy theorist, and Islamophobe Laura Loomer.
In February,
Mr. Trump surprised Mr. Netanyahu when he announced the start of nuclear talks
with Iran with the prime minister at his side. Mr. Netanyahu was in the Oval
Office, among other things, to convince the president that military
action was the only way to deal with the Islamic Republic.
“Israel’s
exclusion from prior notification and the (Yemen) agreement’s terms should
serve as a wake-up call, especially as the US engages Iran
on its nuclear program,” said journalist Amichai Stein.
Dr. James M. Dorsey is an
Adjunct Senior Fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, and the author of the syndicated column and
podcast, The
Turbulent World with James M. Dorsey.
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