Israel expects a major attack by the Houthi rebels in Yemen soon, in response to the successful Israeli airstrike on the Yemeni port city of Hudaydah. About 25 warplanes bombed the heart of Yemen, 1,800 km from the Israeli border. The port of Hudaydah is the Houthis’ very lifeline for supplies. Will the Houthis drag Israel and Iran even further into a multi-front war? All this is happening during the week that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the US. That is why Netanyahu has postponed his flight.
The Houthis could use everything they have, and that is not a small amount: the Iranians have equipped them with hundreds of suicide drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. They have turned Yemen into their weapons testing ground, and Israel is therefore expecting a swarm attack to be launched towards Israel.
The Israeli air defense system is on high alert. With the help of Israel’s allies – the US, the UK and possibly Saudi Arabia – a large scale defensive is being made to repel any attack from Yemen and possibly simultaneously from the Shiite militias in Iraq that are synchronized with the Houthis. If the Houthis launch hundreds of missiles and drones, this defensive operation could be reminiscent of the April 13 defensive operation in which Israel and its allies repelled an Iranian attack with a 99 percent success rate. That time, it was a retaliatory strike for the killing of an Iranian general in the Iranian consulate in Damascus.
Why has Israel decided to react now, after nine months of putting up with attacks from Yemen and hoping the Americans would do the job? There are several explanations for this.
The first and most important is the Houthis’ “success” in the recent drone attack on Friday morning in Tel Aviv, which killed a 50-year-old Israeli and injured eight others. Israel cannot ignore an attack on the symbolic city of Tel Aviv. In a way, this was the last straw. So far, the Houthis had fired 200 drones and missiles at Israel, none of which actually hit a target. All of them were successfully repelled. But this time they succeeded due to a glitch in the air force’s control system, which interpreted the Houthis’ drone as a friendly aircraft.
The Air Force has tightened procedures and, starting today, will protect the country’s skies 360 degrees against drones, UAVs, ballistic missiles and any other cruise missiles coming east from the Mediterranean, just like the route of the deadly Houthi drone in Tel Aviv.
In addition, there are sources in Israel who fear that the Houthis could use Iranian hypersonic missiles to attack Israel. If this is the case, Israel does not have an effective missile defense system, which would change the entire formula for war in the Middle East. However, it is not certain whether the Houthis actually have these missiles.
Another reason for the Israeli attack on Yemen: Israel has come to the conclusion that exercising restraint with the Houthis, signals weakness and severely compromises Israel’s deterrence capability. Giving in, they concluded, has practically invited the Houthis’ attacks.
The Israeli security establishment is now bracing for a massive Houthi airstrike and expects it to come soon. Israel is already preparing for a counterstrike and has prepared an approved target list in Yemen should Israel be forced to act.
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