Did intel failure hinder America’s campaign against Houthi rebels?

On March 7, 2024, a Houthi ballistic missile struck a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden, killing three and injuring four others. This marked the first fatal attack by the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group based in Yemen, in its ongoing assaults in the Red Sea.

The US Central Command said in a statement on Friday that a Barbados-flagged, Liberian-owned bulk carrier was attacked and has since been abandoned. Two US officials told CNN that coalition warships are now in the area assessing the situation.

Notably, the deadly strike by the Houthis is a significant escalation of the Houthi-US conflict in the region, which began in October, 2023, as a result of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

An intel failure?

A CNN report notes that “the US has been struggling to stop the attacks, and the rebel group has continued to fortify its weapons stockpile in Yemen”.

“Multiple officials told CNN the US still does not have a denominator that would allow them to assess the percentage of Houthi equipment the US and the UK have actually destroyed in airstrikes, and it is not clear whether the US will shift its military approach further,” the report says.

Dan Shapiro, the Pentagon’s top official on the Middle East, told a congressional hearing on February 27, 2024, that while the US military had “a good sense” of what it had destroyed, it did not “fully know the denominator” – meaning the original make-up of the Houthis’ arsenal before the start of the US military campaign in January.

What US officials say on intel gap

Timothy A. Lenderking, the State Department’s special envoy for Yemen, and Daniel E. Shapiro, the Defense Department’s Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, testified at a Senate Subcommittee hearing on security issues in Yemen and the Red Sea.

The rise in these assaults, which have now become deadly, underscores the ineffectiveness of US President Joe Biden’s military response. Clearly, the March 7 attack also shows how elusive the goal for ending the war in Yemen may be.

Despite a strong display of power by the US and its coalition forces in the Red Sea, with the deployment of USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier and several US destroyers, the attacks have not only increased, but have also caused a massive drop in merchant vessels travelling through the Suez Canal.