Netanyahu Wanted Wider War; Houthis Shatter His Containment Plans

Right, so Israel hit Beirut, Iran answered having warned them against doing just that, and now the Houthis are back on the scene. The Yemeni Armed Forces have claimed missile strikes toward Jaffa and then declared Israeli maritime navigation in the Red Sea banned, with Israeli-linked movement treated as a military target. So not only is the Strait of Hormuz now shut, so is the Bab el Mandeb Strait it seems! [CLIP]That is the cost Netanyahu now has to carry, because the war he has been widening through Lebanon, Iran and Gaza has pulled Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, the Houthis back into the fight, and the price is ships. Israeli-linked ships. Red Sea movement. A route Israel needs to look boring, safe, insured, manageable and open. Yemen has now said that route is tied to the war, tied to Israeli action elsewhere, and no longer something Israel gets to treat as separate from the fire it keeps spreading. So the question is not whether the Houthis have issued another angry statement. The question is why ships are being targeted now, and why Netanyahu’s own escalation has handed Israel one more route it cannot simply assume will stay quiet.