These are the first US fatalities since the crisis began in October 2023. Only a few hours later, the spokesperson of the Yemen-based Houthi rebels (officially known as Ansarallah), Yahya Sare’e, announced the launching of a missile attack against the US naval warship USS Lewis B Puller. Sare’e reiterated the Houthis’ commitment to target commercial shipping in support of the Palestinian cause not just in the contested Red Sea, but the wider Arabian Sea as well.
The attack on the USS Lewis B Puller was not random as it comes at a moment when militias in the region, many of whom are emboldened by Iran as part of its wider “Axis of Resistance” design in support of the Palestinians as Israel continues its military operations in Gaza. The Puller was also previously engaged in special operations by US Navy Seals to intercept shipments of components of Iranian-made ballistic missiles. Two US Navy Seals were reported killed recently after going missing during an operation to take over a vessel near the coast of Somalia. Iran-linked groups such as the Houthis, Hezbollah, and others across Syria and Iraq have benefitted from access to Tehran’s decision to liberalise ballistic missile tech along with drones and other such asymmetric warfare capacities.
Since the 7 October attack against Israel by Hamas, regional security has been shunted off-course from big-ticket announcements such as the Abraham Accords, IMEEC, I2U2, and potential Saudi–Israel normalisation to back to a core area of contestation, Palestine. However, Iran’s strategy of creating and supporting buffer groups peppered across the geography, in effect creating large buffer zones for itself and its own tactical aims, has not only brought upfront a new challenge for regional states and the US alike but added to a worrying trend of non-state armed (militant) actors gaining more power, legitimacy, and strategic equity in a fast-unravelling global order. These newfound geopolitical equities by non-state militant actors will be critical to understand and navigate as political and strategic vacuums become common and ‘superpower’ management of these crisis points erodes.
