Biden, the reluctant escalationist, seeks calm after Yemen strikes

WASHINGTON, United States — President Joe Biden took office vowing to negotiate an end to a bloody war in Yemen and to remove US troops from harm's way.

He enters his reelection year by launching strikes on the country instead, but his administration hopes calm can return.

Experts say the Biden administration and Yemen's Huthi insurgents, as well as the group's backers in Iran, have tacitly entered a delicate and dangerous understanding -- they both feel the need to use force, while presuming the other side does not want to escalate.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on four tours of the Middle East since Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, unleashing massive retaliation on Gaza, has put a priority on containing the conflict.

US officials privately believe that Lebanon's Hezbollah, also backed by Iran's clerical state, has heard the message.

The Huthis, by contrast, have defied US warnings by persistently firing on international ships in avowed solidarity with the Palestinians, disrupting global commerce in the Red Sea and forcing lengthy detours around Africa.

Blinken on his latest tour briefed regional partners on Friday's US and British strikes against the Huthis -- which took place as he was on his plane back to Washington -- and made clear that the United States saw the strikes as defensive, and not a new salvo in a regional war.

"I don't think the conflict is escalating. There are lots of danger points; we're trying to deal with each of them," Blinken told reporters Thursday in Cairo, his last stop.

Biden, in a statement announcing the strikes, notably did not mention Iran -- despite earlier accusations by the United States that Tehran provided the capacity for the Huthi attacks. The omission likely signals that the regional power is not in direct US crosshairs.

The Biden administration also insisted it was retaliating, not escalating, after strikes on Iranian-linked Shiite militias in Iraq, following more than 100 attacks on US forces there and in neighboring Syria since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.

After extensive US and UN diplomacy, a truce has held since April 2022 in Yemen between the Huthis and the Saudi-backed, internationally