Senators grill officials: Are your attacks on Houthis even working?
Rare bipartisan back-and-forth on legal authority for strikes and link to Israel-Gaza war
A bipartisan group of senators expressed, in the words of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), “grave skepticism” over President Joe Biden’s approach to trying to de-escalate tensions with the Houthis in the Red Sea, grilling administration officials about the legal authority and strategic effectiveness of their policy during a hearing on Tuesday.
Sens. Kaine, Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), and Todd Young (R-Ind.) led the way in questioning witnesses Timothy Lenderking, the State Department’s special envoy for Yemen, and Daniel Shapiro, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, during testimony in front of the subcommittee on the Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterrorism.
The witnesses spoke out against ongoing Houthi attacks saying that it was causing major disruptions to the global economy, jeopardizing diplomacy between Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and risking further regional escalation in the Middle East.
“These attacks which affect the entire region cannot go unchallenged,” said Shapiro.
That response, according to Shapiro, has included striking over 230 Houthi targets, which, he claimed “likely destroyed hundreds of Houthi weapons.”
Kaine, Murphy, and Young, who, along with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) sent a letter to the White House in late January pressing the administration on its strategy, took the opportunity to ask its representatives the questions directly.
All three Senators pushed the witnesses on the legal authority and historical precedent the administration was operating under as it carries out a series of airstrikes. The administration officials maintained that the President’s article II authorities served as justification.
“Article II self-defense means you can defend U.S. personnel, you can defend U.S. military assets, you probably can defend U.S. commercial ships. But the defense of other nations' commercial ships? In no way and it's not even close,” said Kaine. “It is, in my view, laughable to call that self-defense.”
Young also focused his line of questioning on the administration’s theory of deterrence. As Biden himself has admitted, strikes against Houthi targets have not stopped the group’s actions in the Red Sea. When pushed by Young, Shapiro said “until they stop, we are not done” with airstrikes. Shapiro effectively declined to answer Young’s follow-up question over what level of military activity the administration thought necessary to deter the Houthis, and what level of military activity they would be willing to pursue to reach that endpoint. As Murphy later noted, 23,000 Saudi airstrikes in Yemen between 2015 and 2022 — some of which had hit the same places that U.S. strikes were now targeting — failed to alter the Houthis' calculus, and there was little evidence that more limited airstrikes from Washington today would have a different result.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/congress-red-sea-houthi-attacks/