On Monday night, Israel struck back. Twenty fighter jets, accompanied by intelligence-gathering aircraft and refueling tankers, flew 1,800 kilometers to Yemen and dropped 50 bombs on a range of Houthi targets, including the Hodeidah Port.
The operation was a direct response to the missile the Houthis launched from Yemen a day earlier, which struck near Ben-Gurion International Airport – prompting foreign airlines, once again, to suspend flights to Israel.
Will the Israeli operation stop the missiles? Unlikely. Just last week, the United States revealed that it had carried out over 1,000 strikes on Houthi targets since launching Operation Prosperity Guardian in mid-March. And still, the Houthis – an Iranian proxy – retain the ability to strike at Israel and threaten maritime shipping in the Red Sea.
This threat reveals a truth that we all should have internalised long ago: success in war cannot be measured solely by the number of rockets remaining in an enemy’s arsenal or its ability to launch them. That would turn the war into a search for needles in a haystack.
Hamas occasionally still fires rockets from Gaza. Hezbollah, even after the recent war, remains heavily armed. The metric cannot be quantities of weapons and inventory. The true measure of victory is whether the enemy believes it is no longer in its interest to keep attacking because the cost is simply too high.
In Yemen, however, this equation doesn’t seem to apply. Like Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis – ideologically driven, externally backed, and internally insulated – are willing to see their people suffer, their infrastructure destroyed, and still press ahead with attacks so long as they possess the capability to do so. This is the core challenge of confronting terror armies that do not fear consequences because their survival doesn’t depend on public welfare.
Which leads to the only viable conclusion: to stop the threat, Israel and the West must go after the source – Iran.
Iran is the architect of the Houthis’ capabilities. It has armed, trained, and directed the group’s aggression. And yet, for now, it acts with near-total impunity. Tehran has learned a crucial lesson over the last year and a half of war in the region: it can project power, destabilise the Middle East, and orchestrate attacks against Israel without bearing the brunt of direct retaliation.
The one exception was when Iran crossed a line – first last April and then again in October – by launching direct attacks on Israel. In both instances, Israel responded by striking Iranian military assets, including advanced surface-to-air missile systems. But these were limited responses. And they haven’t altered the broader strategic perception in Tehran: that while the proxies are fair game, the head of the octopus remains untouched.
Instead, Iranian leaders watch as the US pounds targets in Yemen, as Israel periodically bombs Hodeidah, and they note with satisfaction that none of these operations reach their soil. The world, it seems, is waging a war on terror while carefully avoiding the terror state behind it.
Worse, from Tehran’s perspective, the pressure isn’t even consistent. What they see today is a Trump administration keen to revive nuclear talks. Even as former President Donald Trump threatens military action against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, it is clear that the priority is a deal and not a confrontation.
Israel does not necessarily oppose diplomacy. In fact, Jerusalem would prefer a deal – assuming it is a good one. But the concern in Israel’s defence and intelligence communities is that by being so eager to reach an agreement, the Trump team may be willing to compromise on issues that Jerusalem views as existential: uranium enrichment, weaponisation capabilities, and the development of long-range ballistic missiles.
That concern is serious. Netanyahu continues to publicly demand the “Libya model” – a complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. But Israeli officials also know that if Trump makes a deal that is perceived in Jerusalem as weak or dangerous, their ability to publicly oppose it will be far more limited than it was in 2015.
Back then, Netanyahu went to Congress and warned against the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) pushed by President Barack Obama. He knew Obama would be upset, but he also knew there were boundaries. Obama wasn’t going to cut military aid or suspend strategic cooperation. In fact, just a few years later, Obama signed a new ten-year Memorandum of Understanding, providing Israel with $3.8 billion annually in military assistance.
That MOU is now nearing renewal and negotiations are quietly underway. And so the question is: what happens if Netanyahu tries the same play again – criticises Trump in Congress and opposes his nuclear deal? Does anyone seriously think Trump will then turn around and sign another aid package with a smile?
This is the political minefield Israel must now navigate. And it all circles back to Yemen.
The current escalation presents not just a challenge, but an opportunity. It is a chance for the US and Israel to send a message to Tehran: that the rules have changed and that attacks – whether direct or by proxy – will not be tolerated.
It is a chance to show that the threats from the Oval Office are not just rhetorical but are real and come with Tomahawks, F-35s, and aircraft carriers.
We now know that the Houthis will not stop on their own. But the real question is whether the West will continue fighting this war on the margins or if it will finally turn its attention to the real challenge – Iran.
