National Review | By LUTHER RAY ABEL | February 18, 2024
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the deputy commander of U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, was remarkably blunt when asked by Norah O’Donnell of CBS News the extent of Iran’s aid rendered to the Houthi rebels who’ve fired upon international-shipping vessels in the region. In what has been a difficult few months for the U.S. Navy as it waits for the Biden White House to respond to the attacks, the commanders are becoming more and more vocal about their frustrations and the long-standing conditions that allow the Houthis to molest any vessel operating near Yemen.
Norah O’Donnell reports for CBS:
Norah O’Donnell: Could the Houthis do this without Iranian support?
Admiral Brad Cooper: No. For a decade, the Iranians have been supplying the Houthis. They’ve been resupplying them. They’re resupplying them as we sit here right now, at sea. We know this is happening. They’re advising them, and they’re providing targeting information. This is crystal clear.
Norah O’Donnell: Are there members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps that are actually on the ground in Yemen providing intelligence and targeting?
Admiral Brad Cooper: The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is inside Yemen, and they are serving side by side — with the Houthis, advising them and providing targeting information.
Note that Admiral Cooper provides a solid time line — ten years — and that he reconfirms that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been actively providing the materials and intelligence necessary for the Houthis to launch missiles at American vessels. These points of emphasis are, for the politically sensitive upper echelons of leadership, a blatant condemnation of the Obama and Biden administration’s (singular possessive) unwillingness to give up on the dream of friendly relations with Tehran. The administration’s delayed and underwhelming strikes against Houthi facilities offer American forces overseas no hope that adequately proportional strikes will occur until many Americans are dead.
Despite a bad 2015 Iran deal perpetuated by the current administration and an unwillingness in 2021 to support Saudi efforts in Yemen that would have weakened the Houthis, Biden remains deep in a self-made myth about Iran’s goodness that — even with missiles coming within a mile of a U.S. destroyer — he won’t do more than ask for a cyberattack on the IRGC’s main intel ship.
Computers don’t work for long when consumed by seawater. Biden should consider this alternative, especially effective means of hacking.