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This time the US Navy has moved to confront the puppet master, not the puppets

Meanwhile an abandoned tanker burns in the Red Sea, threatening environmental disaster

Decoding US strategic intentions in the Middle East through the movement of major ships is difficult these days. 
Right now there are two US nuclear-powered aircraft carriers – the Lincoln and the Roosevelt – on station in the Gulf of Oman in company with eight US destroyers, most likely two nuclear attack submarines not far away and many, many aircraft aboard. In the Eastern Mediterranean, America has a single Amphibious Ready Group – a force of Marines carried aboard lightly-armed amphibious ships – protected by a single Royal Navy destroyer, HMS Duncan.
In the Red Sea, where the Houthi militia continues to attack international shipping and where there is an abandoned oil tanker that has been on fire for nearly two weeks now, there are no US warships at all.
This tells us quite a few things some of which are obvious, some of which are worrying and baffling in equal measure.
The first is that facing down Iran is clearly the overwhelming US priority right now. Many would argue that it always has been and always will be, but having two carriers right there brings this to the here and now.
Iran is the sole priority to the extent that these major warships have been ‘poached’ from the Pacific Command, leaving the Western Pacific without a carrier for the first time since 2001. I have written before how the US Navy is an eleven-carrier Navy in a 15-carrier world, and this makes the point.
China hawks are currently spitting mad at this absence. The Chinese coastguard is ramming Filipino ships like it’s happy hour and Chinese planes are flying into Japanese airspace – they aren’t doing that just because there aren’t any US carriers about, but it doesn’t help.
Pacific Command press releases have since been quick to state that “fleet forces include several warships operating across the Pacific that are working to promote adherence to a rules-based international order.” But take the carriers away and the PR teams always face an uphill battle. 
That both carriers are not in the Persian/Arabian Gulf itself is telling. Iran has thousands of ballistic missiles, drones and fast attack craft it could bring to bear there, and in such relatively confined waters it would be easier to locate a carrier and potentially embarrass it. Iran has been busy since the late 1980s configuring weapons and tactics specifically to be hard for Nato forces to counter.
If there is any sense that this could escalate – and the carriers’ positioning suggests there is – then they are better off at range where they can keep themselves safe, have sufficient time to fend off incoming attacks, but still have over a hundred strike aircraft and missile cells bulging with Tomahawk cruise missiles at immediate notice to conduct strikes inland. The USS Roosevelt is carrying the F35C stealth fighter making her air wing in particular one of the most capable in the world.
Meanwhile the Eastern Mediterranean, not in the Central Command area but clearly connected, has gone quiet recently. This is probably good news. The Gaza aid pier is now packed away and forgotten. The USS Wasp and the rest of her Group stand ready to evacuate non-combatants from the area should things escalate further in Lebanon.
So we have two giant ships pointing straight at Iran ready for a shooting war if that’s what comes – hoping for deterrent effect no doubt. Then, a group in the Eastern Mediterranean ready to respond if that fails. So far, so logical.
It’s in the Red Sea where things make little sense. Looking at the arc of this since last October, I’m not sure it ever has. Initial attacks were met with an inflow of US warships there and eventually an aircraft carrier, the USS Dwight D Eisenhower. The defensive US-led Operation Prosperity Guardian to reassure shipping came into being in December. However, this was too late for some of the major shipping companies who had already decided by then that they would route around the Cape of Good Hope rather than risk running the increasingly indiscriminate Houthi missile gauntlet.  
US efforts to corral other navies were only partially successful with EU mission Aspides splintering off at around the same time for largely political reasons. Operationally this was sub-optimal and in terms of providing a unified front to reassure shipping, optically poor as well. 
But multiple groups operating side by side is not that uncommon. What was uncommon, and had many of us scratching our heads at the time was how long it took for the US to shoot back. Operation Poseidon Archer didn’t start until January 11, two and a half months after US ships had been shot at either directly or in defence of merchant vessels. When the Houthis fired at the USS Mason back in 2016, the USS Nitze was sending Tomahawks back down the bearing within four days.
There seem to be three reasons for this hesitance. The first was fear of escalating with Iran. Hit the Houthis too hard and before you know it you’re in another ‘far away’ war. There are millions of US voters who want to avoid this, not unreasonably. The second is that the Houthis have learned a great deal from Iran since 2016 in terms of displacement and concealment and are therefore hard to hit decisively without a huge, expensive and aggressive effort – see point one. The final reason, and another one that gives long-term US Navy watchers a headache, was the notion that America just doesn’t care about freedom of navigation there as much as it used to, at least not in a chokepoint that doesn’t directly influence the US that much. 
There was also the lack of a holistic solution. The anti-piracy years of the 2010s showed once and for all that the solution to these sorts of problems is rarely to be found at sea. If the diplomatic, economic, interdiction and lower-level technological solutions to that issue were in play here, they were hard to spot. In other words, Operation Prosperity Guardian was only ever a sticking plaster. 
Over time, the number of ships shooting down missiles and escorting merchant vessels dwindled. In May the Eisenhower left, taking her group with her and now there are none. This leaves the French and the Italians as the only active contributors there now under Aspides.
But there is a burning issue in the Red Sea that needs to be resolved. Thirteen days ago now, the oil tanker MV Sounion was attacked by the Houthis. A French Aspides ship came to the rescue whilst destroying an approaching surface drone. They put out the initial fires and evacuated the crew to Djibouti. With the ship now abandoned at anchor, the Houthis went back two days later, placed charges and filmed the subsequent explosion for social media.
The ship has been on fire ever since, with the material state of the underdeck gradually worsening. We know from other Houthi missile strikes just how strong merchant vessels are but eventually a fire like this will spread and ultimately compromise the watertight integrity of the hull. The amount of oil onboard, if spilled, would be four times that spilled from the Exxon Valdez. So far, there is ‘just’ a 4km slick coming from the Sounion.
Lloyds List is clear on the damage this could cause:
“Sounion is laden with 150,000 tonnes of heavy crude and if it loses that cargo, the result would be oil pollution on a scale not caused by shipping so far this century…devastating the local fishing industry, a key source of food in a country in which 17m people suffer from high levels of acute food insecurity, on UN estimates”.
That country being Yemen, the populated areas of which are now largely ruled by the Houthis. Many on social media have argued that the problem is the Houthis’ to solve, since they have caused it. However it is pretty clear that they can’t and indeed would be quite likely to attack anyone attempting to salvage the Sounion.
In a world where international law and human decency still count for something, rapid action is required. But there’s no simple solution: action has not been rapid in the past.
The Limburg, struck by Al Qaeda off Yemen in 2002, showed that the international systems in place to provide compensation for an environmental disaster like this quickly fall apart when explosives are involved. Similarly, finding funding to fix this is a problem. The International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund – who would normally step in at this point – have confirmed that they are “constitutionally precluded” from stumping up the cash when spills are caused by acts of war.
As ever with shipping, nothing is simple. 
As of today though, something is finally happening. Presumably following negotiations with Sounion’s owners Delta Tankers, three salvage tugs are en route to the scene: Gladiator and Hercules from the South and Red Bull from the North. Just to add one more complication, the two southerly tugs are under US Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions which need to be lifted for them to be used. 
Delta Tankers are not helping by answering all queries as to what they are doing with “we can’t comment for security reasons”. This is an outdated holding response that creates a vacuum that the Houthis are filling with glee. How many people have bought into the Houthi rhetoric that this entire disruption effort is something to do with Gaza and not their wish to appear powerful is testament to this.
Salvage company Boskalis have also been contacted – they were involved in the salvage of the FSO Safer, a similarly abandoned mobile oil tank off Hodeidah: that took eight years to resolve. Bokskalis have said they are on standby to assist “but first the ship must be brought to a safe location.” 
This is not unreasonable. Yesterday two more tankers, the MV Blue Lagoon and the MV Amjad (with double the oil of the Sounion) were both struck with ballistic missiles and uncrewed air systems. 
All of which brings us back to the US’s increasing reluctance to provide leadership here. Less than two days steaming away there is a carrier group that could provide a bubble around the salvage effort that would guarantee its safety. The US could have done this, unsanctioned the tugs, found a salvage team and had the situation under control 10 days ago if America wanted to. There would be no need for the US to pay the salvagers and tugs: marine salvage is a long-standing business and they would be compensated by the owners of the salvaged ship and cargo. Now it looks as though the protection task will fall to the remaining Aspides ships. They would admit themselves that a carrier nearby would be handy. 
The US could have done all this whilst maintaining the moral high ground and showing the Houthis that they might be over the horizon but they still mean business. It would be win-win, in my view.
It might be unfair to constantly lean on the US for this sort of thing but if they back away, a vacuum is created which will eventually be filled.
China keeps a standing destroyer squadron patrol in the Gulf region nowadays – they’ve not stepped in on this occasion but the future is coming. China, after all, needs the Bab-el-Mandeb open more than the US does.
If China had stepped in, Chinese sailors could even have used their firefighting equipment for putting out fires, just for once.

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