WORLD WORLDWIDE ITALY News Journal Update - (en) Italy, FDCA, il Cantiere #23: YEMEN - The escalation of the war - Anarchist Hyenas (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On the night of January 12, the United States and the United Kingdom

launched a massive offensive on Yemeni territory as a response against
Houthi attacks on Israeli merchant ships - or those headed towards that
State - transiting between the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea . U.S. Air
Force Commander Alex Grinkiewicz said more than 60 military targets in
16 locations were hit. ---- Several Houthi military bases and airfields
have come under British-US fire - including a military base near the
airport in Sanaa, Yemen's capital. As CNN reported, (1) a senior US
military official said the strikes destroyed a significant portion of
the Houthis' military facilities.

The offensive was conducted by aircraft, ships and submarines; in total
more than 100 precision munitions were used, including Tomahawk cruise
missiles.

After the missile attacks against the Houthis, the price of Brent crude
oil increased by 4.1%, reaching $78 per barrel. According to Saul
Kavonich, (2) analyst at MST Marquee, a possible interruption of oil
supplies near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait could " be three times greater
than that of the oil crisis of the 1970s and more than double that of
the war in Ukraine on gas markets, with consequences for already fragile
supply chains and stock levels."

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) estimates (3)      that up
to a quarter of global maritime traffic passes along this route -
equivalent to several billion tonnes of goods every year -, while
according to the US Energy Information Administration, in that part of
About 4.5 million barrels of oil pass through the sea every day (coming
from the countries of the Persian Gulf and Asia).

The Houthi attacks, which have intensified in recent months, have pushed
the largest transporters of containerized goods by sea, including the
world leader "Maersk", to abandon this route and move to the
circumnavigation of Africa - spending ten days longer than Before.

According to Jonathan Panikoff, a former US intelligence officer and
analyst at the Atlantic Council Center, it is unlikely     (4) that the
offensive on Houthi military facilities will lead to an immediate
cessation of attacks on merchant ships.

Wars between capitalists

Since the massacre in Palestine began, the United States and its NATO
allies have regained strength in the Middle East and parts of the Red Sea.

US President Joe Biden said      (5) that the missile strikes were "
defensive " and " a direct response to the unprecedented Houthi
attacks,"      while White House spokesman Kirby said the US was not
interested " in a conflict with Yemen ".

The thirty-year war being fought in Yemen has seen the USA, Saudi Arabia
and the United Kingdom take to the field against these rebels and, more
generally, against the Yemeni population - carrying out countless
massacres and destruction.

On a global level, however, the attacks in Yemen, together with the
death of Abu Taqwa al Said in Baghdad and the repeated clashes in Syria
and Iraq between US troops and armed groups supplied by Iran, are part
of an ever-increasing clash between the allies of USA-EU-NATO and those
of the Russia-China duo.

The US strategy is to eliminate Iran's military allies throughout the
Middle East and, de facto, isolate it from this geographical context and
push it to depend solely on China and Russia. The agreements reached in
April between Iran and Saudi Arabia last year     (6)      will probably
fall through.

The Chinese leadership, for its part, invited the USA and the United
Kingdom to respect the territorial sovereignty of the states bordering
the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, while Russia, however, accused London
and Washington of having violated the UN charter following these attacks
in Yemen.

The fear of the governments of Moscow and Beijing is the loss of
political-economic-military influence in that part of the world - in
favor of the USA-NATO-EU. This translates into the following: Russia,
after almost two years of war in Ukraine, finds itself having to trade
under embargo with China and its allies (including Iran); China,
however, fears that a possible escalation between the Red Sea and the
Gulf of Aden could endanger its trade and economic-financial agreements
with al-Sisi's Egypt.

It appears clear how war and the fake opposition to it by governments
and their bourgeois allies are measures aimed at reproducing and
renewing capitalist material conditions - through the destruction
(through massacres and genocides) and the exploitation of territories
considered geographically strategic (such as the Red Sea-Gulf of Aden in
our case).

In the world of commodities there is no room for feelings of global
peace and prosperity. On the contrary. Only a part of this population
will be able to benefit from this. And when this is threatened, as
happens in our case, then the intervention will be ruthless and radical.

Those who will pay the price for this entire state of affairs will be
that human population that will put up with the media propaganda and/or,
in the worst case scenario, the bullets and missiles of this systemic
state-capitalist aberration.

Note

1)
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/11/politics/us-strikes-houthis-yemen/index.html

2)
https://www.oedigital.com/news/510735-oil-prices-rise-over-2-5-after-us-uk-strikes-in-yemen

3)
https://www.nationalgeographic.it/perche-lo-stretto-di-bab-elmandeb-e-cosi-important-per-l-economia-mondiale

4)
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/fastthinking/will-us-uk-strikes-against-the-houthis-halt-their-red-sea-aggression/

5)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/12/us-uk-air-strikes-yemen-houthi-rebels-red-sea-crisis

6) See the paragraph "Changing Saudi foreign policy strategy" in
"Normalizing the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria, the Arab League and
the counter-revolutionary process", 15 June 2023.            Normalizing
the regime of Bashar al-Assad. Syria, the Arab League and the
counter-revolutionary process | Galatea Anarchist Group (noblogs.org)

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