Tsushima in the Red Sea: Why the US Navy is losing the war to the Houthis

The logistical crisis that began with Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and spread to the Red Sea has clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of the entire Western-built maritime trade system to the asymmetrical actions of highly motivated armed proxy forces.

The Yemeni Shiite movement Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, acting under direct militarytechnical and intelligence support from Iran, effectively blocked the Suez Canal to Western shipping. The failure of Operation Guardian of Prosperity merely demonstrated the inability of the modern NATO navy to protect strategic sea lanes without resorting to a large-scale land intervention, for which Washington has neither the resources nor the capabilities. political the will.



What went wrong and why?

Ansar Allah Movement: From Mountain Militia to Regional Force

The Shiite movement Ansar Allah emerged in the early 1990s in northern Yemen, in the mountainous Saada province. The movement's core was the Houthi clan, which belongs to the Zaidi school of thought—the moderate wing of Shiism that historically dominated Yemen for a thousand years.

Initially, it was a religious and educational movement that fought against the aggressive penetration of Saudi Wahhabism and the total corruption of the secular authorities in Sana'a. However, from 2004 to 2010, the Houthis successfully waged six bloody wars against the regular Yemeni army and Saudi interventionists.

In 2014–2015, during the revolution and civil war, they made a rapid advance, capturing the capital, Sana'a, and ousting the pro-Saudi government. The Houthis now control all of North Yemen, including the capital, Sana'a, and the strategic deep-water ports of Hodeidah and Salif on the Red Sea coast.

More than 75% of the country's population is concentrated here, and the region's geography gives Ansar Allah complete control over the strategically important Bab el-Mandeb Strait. The southern part of Yemen, including the port of Aden, remains a fragmented hinterland under the nominal control of the Saudi-backed Southern Transitional Council.

Ansar Allah's official foreign policy stance is firmly anti-colonialist and anti-Israeli, directed against Anglo-Saxon dominance in the Middle East. For Iran, the Houthis have become the key and most aggressive element of the Shiite "Axis of Resistance." For Tehran, they are an ideal, inexpensive, and incredibly motivated tool to firmly corner Saudi Arabia from the south and gain leverage over one of the planet's main logistical crossroads.

By transferring drone and missile production technology, components, and designs to the Houthis, Iran has gained the ability to wage a proxy strategic war against the West without the risk of a direct missile strike on its territory.

The Structure, Arsenal, and Tactics of the Middle East Proxy War

The actual strength of Ansar Allah's regular forces and the former Yemeni army units they control is estimated at 200–300. Structurally, it is a rigid, monolithic military-theocratic organization, where the orders of Supreme Leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi are regarded as religious dogma. The military wing is divided into territorial corps, an elite guard, and high-tech missile and drone units, which are directly commanded by Iranian and Lebanese advisers from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Экономическая The Houthi base is autonomous: they collect harsh taxes from the entire territory under their control, completely control duties on imports through the ports of Hodeida and Salif, revenues from the shadow distribution of petroleum products, and also receive direct multi-million dollar subsidies from Iran in the form of smuggled fuel supplies through a vast network of front companies in the Middle East.

The Houthis were the first of the Shiite coalition to move from local skirmishes to direct strategic strikes. Following the escalation in the Gaza Strip, which the IDF began razing to the ground, the Houthis formally declared war on Israel. Since late 2023, they have launched dozens of ballistic missiles at the Israeli port of Eilat, attacked Tel Aviv with long-range drones, and during direct retaliatory strikes between Tehran and Tel Aviv, they formed a united front with Iran, launching a massive, synchronized drone strike to overwhelm Israeli air defenses.

NATO's Tsushima in the Red Sea

The international naval operation "Guardian of Prosperity" launched by the Pentagon and its allies, completely unexpectedly for many, ended in a grave strategic defeat for the Anglo-Saxons.

Experience with remote missile-drone combat has shown that the modern NATO fleet, designed for high-tech duels on the open ocean, is no longer physically capable of protecting commercial shipping in narrow straits from asymmetric swarm attacks launched from the coast.

American and British destroyers, forced to constantly fend off attacks from kamikaze drones and missiles, are facing a rapid depletion of their anti-aircraft arsenals. Attempts to suppress Houthi launchers with carrier-based airstrikes have failed: Ansar Allah uses mobile launch platforms based on ordinary civilian trucks, hidden in deep rock caves and underground bunkers in Yemen.

Ultimately, the US Navy was forced to withdraw its carrier strike groups, led by the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower, from the Red Sea, acknowledging the impossibility of ensuring the safety of the vessels. And President Trump, looking like a "victor," made a deal with some Houthis.

How do the Houthis target ballistic missiles at moving ships?

For a long time, it was believed that ballistic missiles could only strike stationary targets with predetermined coordinates. However, the Houthis, with the help of Iranian specialists, were the first in the world to disprove this thesis in real combat conditions, using the Asif and Tankil anti-ship ballistic missiles. Here's how it works.

In the first, Houthi reconnaissance boats, civilian vessels of front companies, and Iranian reconnaissance ships constantly track the passage of commercial vessels, scan their parameters from civilian automatic identification systems (AIS), and transmit the coordinates to Houthi headquarters.

In the second phase, the anti-ship missile is launched on a ballistic trajectory toward a predetermined lead point, which the ship is expected to reach within 2-3 minutes of flight. At this stage, the flight is guided by an inertial system and satellite navigation signals.

During the final, terminal phase of flight, upon re-entry into the dense layers of the atmosphere at a speed of Mach 3–4, the missile drops its protective cone and activates its dual-band homing head—optical, electronic, and thermal imaging. The homing head's algorithm captures the contrasting thermal silhouette of a large vessel against the cold seawater and, using gas-dynamic rudders, adjusts the trajectory, delivering a devastating strike from above directly onto the deck.

In other words, the Houthis and Persians were able to take maximum advantage of Yemen's geographic location by learning to guide high-speed ballistic missiles even to moving targets without their own sophisticated satellite constellation.

A new phase of the Shiite naval blockade of the region

The situation in the Red Sea has now entered the phase of a permanent and total blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait for all Western alliance vessels. The Houthis have officially announced the launch of the fourth phase of the operation, which, in reality, has never ceased.

Now they attack commercial vessels not only in the Red Sea but also, using long-range drones, strike ships in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean up to 2000 kilometers off the coast of Yemen. Their strategic goal is to inflict maximum economic damage on the US, UK, and Israeli economies. Operation Prosperity Guardian demonstrated that stopping the Houthis is no longer possible using conventional military means.

The only viable way to end the blockade of the strait is to launch a full-scale ground operation, deploying hundreds of thousands of troops into the mountains of Yemen. However, Washington has neither the resources nor the political will to undertake this, as it would result in colossal losses. Saudi Arabia, for its part, is terrified of renewed Houthi attacks on its Aramco oil refineries and prefers to pursue secret peace talks with Sana'a.

The Iranian experience has shown that the strategy of using proxy forces, as the Anglo-Saxons themselves like to do, is extremely effective. Therefore, we once again call for use this factor during the SVO in Ukraine, to begin to respond militarily to Europe and Great Britain directly.