Yemen: the Hard Way and the Easy Way

The way to stop the Houthis cold is by taking out the regime in Iran.

We’re doing it the hard way, by bombing the Houthis. This never gets us an enduring victory. The Saudis tried it for many years and we’re still stuck with the problem.

But take away Iran and we deprive the Houthis of their support structure, their military supply structure, and their method of replenishment. They will have no way to continue their fight. Nor to resume it years down the road.

We need to get rid of the Islamist regime in Iran anyway.

We need to get rid of the Islamist regime in Iran anyway. It’s the only way to stop it from getting a nuclear weapon. And make sure of stopping it.

This is the right time to do it.

We have the good fortune that the overwhelming majority of the Iranian people want the Islamist regime gone. This contrasts with Yemen and with the rest of the Arab Middle East, where the Islamists still have a lot of popular support.

It may surprise some people, but taking out the Tehran regime, and then cleaning up the Houthis, will actually be easier than taking out the Houthis alone.

Further: once we topple the regime in Tehran, we will be in a position to completely destroy its nuclear weapons program, not just set it back a few years the way we’ve been talking about doing. And we will get a relatively friendly Iran out of it – unlike the regime changes in the Arab world. The Iranians themselves will take care of that.

What will remain for us will be cleanup around the region. A cleanup that will be far easier, compared to fighting off all the regional problems that the Tehran regime keeps creating for us as long as it is allowed to survive.

By taking out the Tehran regime, we solve, in one fell swoop, all our really dangerous problems in the Mideast.

Trump’s instinct is to solve the problem whole and take out the Iranian regime, not just take another half-measure.

It is the right instinct.