The US Navy is currently fighting its most intense war since WWII. Iran's proxies in Yemen, the so-called Houthis, are firing weapons at ships passing through the Red Sea, one of the entry/exit routes of the Suez Canal. This would have enormous ramifications for global maritime commerce if the Navy sat back and did nothing. In the process, however, it's expending its limited arsenal of state-of-the-art missiles, weapons which we could need against China.
The Houthis, presumably, could do this forever, since they're being armed by Iran. We don't have that luxury. Hence, this post.
See this map?
The Houthis control the green, and it's obvious how they're able to keep getting away with this. I propose a limited military intervention, not to pacify this whole country, but to seize the green up to 35 miles inland. This would be a relatively small US-occupied zone, but one which would accomplish the following objectives:
1. The Red Sea would be outside the range of the Houthis' cheapest and most plentiful munitions. For each strike, they would have to expend the resources they have less of.
2. They would have no line-of-sight of their targets, since they'd be 35 miles away. Assuming they could use drones to find targets, these would need to have a minimum radius of 35 miles or else they either couldn't reach the Red Sea in the first place or they couldn't make it back afterward, meaning they'd be one-time tools. Assuming the Houthis do have drones of a longer range than this, drones move slowly and the US could have enough time to detect them before they completed their missions.
3. Having at least 35 miles from launch to target would give the Navy, or even the Army, time to intercept.
4. Even assuming none of the above stopped the Houthis, they would become a landlocked group surrounded on all sides by hostile actors. It would be extremely difficult for them to bring in supplies under these conditions, so they'd eventually run out of whatever weapons they had.
5. The US could use its airbases as a launchpad to conveniently strike Houthi targets further inland as need be.
6. The Army would do most of the fighting instead of the Navy.
This zone would be large enough for a sizable chunk of Yemen's population to take refuge in it. They would enjoy immediate humanitarian relief from the Saudi-led blockade, and the US could impose its own law over the area, offering protection from Sharia or human rights abuses by the dysfunctional other Yemeni government. At the same time, it's a small piece of the country overall so reactionaries who didn't like it (or anybody who didn't want to live under the thumb of the United States) could easily migrate elsewhere.
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