Official US abandonment of the Red Sea as Yemeni forces assume the task of securing its straits

For the first time since last January, the US confirms its official abandonment of the Red Sea, or what it has always described as the protection of maritime navigation. What are the implications of this American move?

Exclusive – Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:

In a statement commenting on recent Yemeni operations, the U.S. Department of Defense attempted to evade responsibility, although everything that happened there was due to its escalation and mobilization. It claimed in its statement that the actions of what they termed “the Houthis” in the Red Sea endangered the international trade system, thereby indicating that it is no longer its mission as it claimed, but rather an international problem. Not only that, but it also tried to justify its absence from the Red Sea by talking about its preoccupation with supporting the protection of “Israel” and US forces and what it described as preventing escalation in the region.

This statement came as a comment on the recent Yemeni operations, most notably the burning of the ship “Sunioun” in the Red Sea. The statement confirmed that Yemeni forces prevented what the statement referred to as a “third party” from intervening to rescue the ship, alluding to a Western intervention attempt that was met with an attack by an unmanned boat.

The latest statement from the U.S. Department of Defense coincided with the absence of updates published by the U.S. Central Command on social media regarding the situation in the Red Sea, despite the fact that it deployed about two fleets in the region, one led by Roosevelt and the other by the aircraft carrier “Lincoln.” It also aligned with desperate American attempts to defend their failure in the Red Sea, as mentioned by the Secretary of the Navy in American media reports, stating that the Biden administration did not grant permission for a major strike on Yemen, despite US forces carrying out hundreds of raids and missile strikes across the country.

This tone was not present in the history of contemporary America, which mobilized its fleets from the first moment of the Al-Aqsa flood and deployed dozens of battleships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with Yemen entering the flood line last November, and America would not have called the problem it created by escalating against Yemen an international one at all and not included in its dictionary. So, what has changed?

Over the past eight months, U.S. forces have fought battles, admitted by their top leaders as the first of their kind since World War II. This experience has strained the U.S. Navy and exposed many of its battleships to danger, in addition to the failure of its system to deal with Yemeni forces’ new tactics, especially with the introduction of new weapons to the battlefield, from explosive boats and ballistic missiles to drones and the deployment of naval patrols.

Effectively, the U.S. Navy has suffered its greatest defeat in history, not only according to American and British reports but also according to the admission of American officials, not to mention the facts on the ground that prove the withdrawal of American forces from the Red Sea equation with Yemen deploying patrols along the length and breadth of the sea. However, America, whose prestige has long been associated with displays of strength, is reluctant to acknowledge this, fearing its fleets may become easy targets for its adversaries after decades of voluntary submission by regimes in their own favor.