Saturday's strikes against Iran-aligned Houthi fighters from Yemen over the group's attacks against shipping targets in the Red Sea came after a "very wrong policy by the Biden administration," Newsmax foreign policy analyst Walid Phares said on Newsmax Saturday.
"When they took over in 2021, they delisted the Houthis" as a global terrorist organization, said Phares, who appeared on Newsmax's "The Count" with foreign policy expert Harley Lippman and retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Darin Gaub.
Once the terrorist designation was removed, Phares said, the Houthis could receive weapons, including ballistic missiles and strategic weaponry.
"The Houthis were capable of lobbing those missiles on international waterway ships and that affected the international economy," said Phares. "Unfortunately, the Biden administration kept it that way, kept the status quo that way for three more years until the Trump administration came in."
And now, with President Donald Trump's order for strikes and his threats against Iran if it does not quit backing the Houthis, that marks a "change of policy" that is not merely an "overnight operation," he said.
The immediate target is to take care of anti-aircraft missiles and ballistic weapons, "and the rest is open to see what will happen on the ground," Phares added.
Lippman said that the "real issue" is understanding what the Biden administration did about the Houthis compared to Trump.
"The Biden administration would shoot down the arrows that were coming," said Lippman. "What the Trump administration is doing is shooting the archers, and that's the difference. So the Trump administration, by going after the archers, will stop this."
He also said that he hopes that the Trump administration "goes after the factories that make those arrows in Iran."
Trump, he added, is not a "hawk" or militaristic, like many of his critics claim.
"He's using force to preserve peace, because if you stop these countries, Iran in particular, and Yemen from attacking commercial vessels, the ships that are going through the Red Sea, innocent people, you will then have the best chance for peace," said Lippman.
Gaub, meanwhile, said that the issues with Yemen go back several years.
"This is a thread that if you were to plant it in Yemen and you snapped ti, it would reverberate to multiple nations around the world back to the United States," he said.
Gaub said he refers the problems with Yemen back to 1994 and watching Yassar Arafat sign a deal with then-President Bill Clinton and all that it meant.
"It's the same thing continuing forward," he said. "We're finally seeing what we wanted to have, which is a display of strength that leads to peace."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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