While the ‘smart guys’ dither in Washington, the war goes on in the Middle East 

Smart guys in the White House and Pentagon specialize in devising ways to retaliate against attacks on American troops and bases with limited punitive blasts. The idea is they will scare our enemies into thinking twice before striking again, without actually having to go after them guns blazing. 

These formulations are like medical prescriptions. Give the bad guys an air strike, maybe two or three bombs, and hit another bunch a little harder. Second and third offenders may get an increased dose.  

That’s how the Americans are calibrating their strikes against the Houthis for firing on commercial vessels on one of the world’s busiest links between Asia and Europe. 

What will it take to get the Houthis to conclude they’ve got to let up while they recover and rebuild their forces? That’s the question the Americans assume the Houthis are asking one another as they dig into their fortifications in Yemen, a divided country at the strategic juncture of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.  

Wishful thinkers are pretty sure the terrorists in charge of Hamas are asking similar questions as Israeli President Bibi Netanyahu talks about going after what he would like us to believe are the last of Hamas, stuck in the southern Gaza enclave of Rafah.  

In actuality, the wirepullers of Hamas are mostly far away, safe in the emirate of Qatar, which is in the wonderful position of having close ties to the U.S., which has a large air base right there too.  

There’s no evidence, of course, of what the Hamas and Houthi commanders are really thinking, but we do know the Iranians are funneling the missiles that the Houthis have been firing at vessels traversing one of the world’s most critical shipping routes linking Europe to the Middle East and Asia. They would seem to have the perfect location for ambushing at will.  

Will any carefully targeted acts of vengeance get the Iranians to reconsider the support they’re offering to just about every bunch of bad guys, from Hamas in Gaza to Hezbollah in Lebanon to the Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq?  

A drone attacked and killed three American GIs at a small outpost in northeastern Jordan late last month. Terrorists have staged dozens of attacks against American forces scattered in small numbers throughout the region. The Americans have responded by sending B-1 bombers on scores of bombing runs, blasting away at terrorist hideouts and storage facilities in Iraq and Syria, not to mention Yemen.  

The smart guys think they can modulate the mayhem in Gaza, getting the Israelis to let up, negotiating for release of hostages and dialing down the level of violence — notably that of the Israelis, dependent as they are on American arms. The terrorist attacks, and the American responses, growing larger each time against more targets, with more bombs, are awakening Americans to the reality that we are still very much at war in the region.  

The Israeli air strikes, killing many more civilians than Hamas terrorists, put America in the terrible position of either condoning the killing and starvation of civilians or stopping the Israelis from finishing off their worst enemies. The off-again, on-again war, breaking out here and throughout the region, is a reminder of the presence of thousands of American troops not far from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf (whom most Americans may not have known were still there).  

How many of us realize we still have 2,500 troops in Iraq, advising the Iraqi government forces on how to operate where Iran has asserted the dominant influence? And who knew we had 900 or so troops in Syria purportedly combating the Islamic State of Iraq, widely known simply as ISIS, which was thought to have been pretty well annihilated while former President Trump was in the White House?  

But that’s not all. The biggest concentration is in Kuwait, where the U.S. has had significant numbers ever since driving out the Iraqis in the first Gulf War in 1990 and 1991. About 13,500 U.S. troops are there guarding the northern reaches of the Persian Gulf against the Iranians, while another 9,000 are in Bahrain, headquarters of the Navy’s fifth fleet, defending the Gulf and nearby waters not only from Houthis and Iranians but from pirates too.  

In this cauldron of relatively low-level war, who is America most worried about? It’s widely understood to be Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, which via the Quds Force is mainly responsible for spurring on terrorist attacks and spreading arms and ammunition among terrorists everywhere.   

The conventional wisdom is that Iran doesn’t want a real regional war, but that’s not altogether clear. After a recent round of bombing, terrorists attacked a small American base in Syria, killing half a dozen Kurdish fighters. The weapon was a drone flown from a Syrian government base, supported by Iran.  

Where does the spiraling warfare end? Overwhelming American military might is no guarantee the terrorism will stop. The Americans showed their lack of willpower by withdrawing precipitously from Afghanistan, yielding the country to the Taliban, after having mostly gone home from Iraq, leaving the field open to Iran.  

The smart guys at their desks and briefing rooms in Washington are no doubt mapping out the next carefully measured response. Right now, Secretary Antony Blinken, on his fifth mission to the region since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, talked in Saudi Arabia about a deal for a ceasefire and release of hostages kidnapped by Hamas. 

Then he was off to Cairo and Doha, the capital of Qatar — de facto headquarters of Hamas, the cruelest of all the terrorist groups. No, he didn’t sit down with Hamas leaders and ask them about their barbaric attack on southern Israel four months ago, but he’s hoping Qatari leaders, while glad to host 8,000 or so Americans on a little-known air base, would broker a deal for freeing some of the hostages.  

Still, the war drags on. Hamas won’t give up, and the Israeli Defense Forces will keep trying to destroy them. The Americans haven’t come up with the formula to stop the bloodletting. Iran will sponsor Hamas and every known terrorist group while the smart guys stare at their maps and intel reports, looking for prescriptions short of the “wider war” they are afraid might engulf the whole region. 

Donald Kirk has been a journalist for more than 60 years, focusing much of his career on conflict in Asia and the Middle East, including as a correspondent for the Washington Star and Chicago Tribune. He is currently a freelance correspondent covering North and South Korea, and is the author of several books about Asian affairs.