In this episode, Daniel J. Levy speaks with Edmund Fitton-Brown, former UK Ambassador to Yemen, about the evolving Houthi threat and its implications for Israel, the Gulf states, and the broader regional balance of power. They explore the role of the Houthis in Iran’s attempts to project power in the region and in ongoing talks about the Iranian nuclear programme.
Edmund Fitton-Brown is a veteran British diplomat who served as the UK’s Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017 and later coordinated UN expert panels on ISIL, Al-Qaeda, and the Taliban. He holds advisory or fellowship positions with the Counter Extremism Project, the Middle East Institute, The Soufan Center and New America.
Transcript
(This transcript has been automatically generated by AI — please excuse any potential errors.)
Daniel J. Leavy:
Hello and welcome to the BICOM’s Podcast. I’m Daniel J. Leavy, programs manager at the think tank. And today is 4th of June, 2025. My guest is Edmund Fitton-Brown, formerly the UK’s Ambassador to Yemen from 2015 to 2017. He is a career civil servant and Foreign Office official who subsequently served as coordinator of United Nations Sanctions and Threat Assessment regarding ISIL, Al-Qaeda and the Taliban before joining the kind of extremist project where he now works as a senior advisor.
And today, we’ll be discussing the escalating tensions between Israel and the Houthis. So, Edmund, thank you for joining me. Thanks, Daniel. It’s great to be here. So probably just a good to sort of set up a base before we jump into the conversation here, the Houthis, and how do they get to where they were on sixth October 23rd?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
Who? The Houthis. It sounds. It sounds almost like a private eye headline, doesn’t it? Yeah. I think it’s important to go into this because Yemen is that little bit further away from, the West than some other countries that people are more familiar with. They’ll be more familiar with Iraq or Syria. And, people don’t know so much about the, the, the history of Yemen, even the recent history.
Some people don’t even know that Yemen used to be, two countries, and not not that long ago, up until up until just over 30 years ago. The Houthis are a Zaydi revivalist cult. And if I can quickly unpack that, Yemen, in terms of its population, is divided between Sunnis, the majority, and it’s a particular branch of, Sunni Islam that they are known as Qataris.
And they, they, they make up about 70% of the population, approximately. And then there is, a much smaller section of the population, which is not exactly Shia, but sometimes described as Shia adjacent. And those are the Zaydis. And the Saudis were the historic, leaders in Yemen. The Saudis tend to be in the north of the country, and the Qataris in the south.
And, so the further north, you know, the further north, you go up to Sana’a and the north of Sana’a. It’s going to be more Zaydi and Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was the president of Yemen for a very long time, he was a Zaydi himself. And yet the Houthis, when they, emerged in the 1990s as this sort of Zaydi revivalist cult, they were not particularly keen on Ali Abdullah Saleh.
I think they saw him as somebody who made compromises with the West, compromises, to remain in power in Yemen and after the after 911, after the Cole incident and when we were into the, into the aughts and the era of, intense counterterrorism that followed 911. The Houthis particularly disliked the fact that Ali Abdullah Saleh, was, a counterterrorism partner for the Americans.
Not a very reliable one. But still, you know, he was working with the Americans and his security services working with the Americans and the Houthis, who were very much influenced by Lebanese Hezbollah. They, regarded that as a betrayal, and they became very anti Saleh. And during that decade and into the beginning of the next decade, a series of what were called the Houthi wars were fought where Saleh tried to send Yemeni troops to put down what he perceived as a sort of a, Houthi subversion or a who’s the uprising in the far north of the country.
But, they were unable to do that. The houses were very resilient. They were good fighters. And the, they were able to hold out against, these successive, attempts to crush them. Then, in about, 2011, 2012, the era of the Arab Spring, Yemen was one of the, Arab countries that was affected. And, Ali Abdullah Saleh fell from power and he was replaced as president of Yemen by his deputy, who was a southern Shafi’i, the first time that a Southerner had ruled over the united Yemen.
And that obviously created a certain amount of discontentment amongst the Saudis. And the Houthis didn’t like it at all. And, Ali Abdullah Saleh, once he had decided that he actually wasn’t happy with being deposed and he would like to try and make another bid for power. He, he patched over his dispute with the Houthis, and they formed a sort of an alliance of convenience to move against President Hadi.
It was rather tragic because at that time, Yemen was the poster child of the Arab Spring. They had, convened something called the National Dialog Conference, and the Yemeni National Dialog was quite sophisticated. It involved all sections of the Yemeni population, including the Houthis. It it involved a lot of women. It was it was very progressive and very forward looking in that respect.
And it was, making a serious study of what kind of political disposition would best serve Yemen for the future and would actually, you know, would would represent all of Yemen’s diverse stakeholders. And then unfortunate Atlee, with, Saleh’s encouragement and his facilitation, because he was still very influential in the Yemeni army, the Houthis swept south and in 2014, they occupied Sanaa and they arrested President Hadi.
And he was then able to flee to Aden in the far south. And then the Houthis followed him south, and they got to Aden. They didn’t ever occupy Aden. That was in early 2015, because at that point, first of all, Hadi himself fled. He left Aden and ended up in Saudi Arabia. But he remained the legitimate president of Yemen.
And at his request, Saudi Arabia got involved in, fighting on the side of the internationally recognized government against the Houthis. And that is the Yemeni civil war, as we’ve come to understand it, in the West, which is the Houthis on one side, fighting against the government backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE and some other, Arab allies.
And of course, that was when I came in as ambassador. I just managed to present my credentials to President Hadi in Aden just before he fled from Aden and moved to Saudi Arabia. We of course, had to evacuate our own embassy, as did the Americans. And we ended up opening our embassies in Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
And so, for my period as ambassador, I would often see President Hadi, in Riyadh or sometimes in Jeddah. And the civil war was sort of balanced at that point because with the Saudis assistance, the internationally recognized government was able to push the Houthis back. And the battle lines sort of stabilized across the middle of Yemen, around just south of the port of Hodeidah, around the city of Taiz, around the city of Marib.
And really those battle lines have not moved a great deal in the following decade. But the last thing I’ll say on this point is that after I finished as ambassador, we had been through various rounds of peace talks, and the peace talks had been unsuccessful and the Civil War continued. And, one of the key moments in the Civil War happened in at the end of 2018.
And this was when the Saudi backed government forces were on the, they were absolutely on the, suburbs in the suburbs of Hodeidah port. And they were about to take Hodeidah. And you will remember that at that time, Jamal Khashoggi, a US based, Saudi journalist, was, assassinated by the Saudi government, in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
And the reason I mentioned that, dreadful incident is that it had an effect on the Yemeni civil War because the Saudi backing for the, internationally recognized government of Yemen was internationally controversial. It wasn’t very popular. It was particularly unpopular with a lot of the sort of, what we might now see is what we now talk about as the sort of progressive community, human rights lobby, humanitarian lobby in the West, who were just not very keen on Saudi Arabia in general, in the same way that they’re not very keen on Israel.
And they, suddenly, of course, they had this moment with the killing of Khashoggi, where this generated international outrage against Saudi Arabia. And Saudi was very dependent at the time for on the support of Donald Trump’s administration, his first administration in the United States. But the Khashoggi killing really pulled the rug out from under American support for the Saudis.
It sort of it really sort of was a gut punch, effectively, to the pro Saudi lobby in the United States. And all of a sudden the Saudis felt very internationally exposed. So when they came under pressure from the United Nations and from the wider international community to sign the Stockholm Agreement at the end of 2018, by which they agreed not to take Hodeidah.
They felt that they had no choice but to sign up to that. And of course, the big question that we ask ourselves from the perspective of 2025 and 2024 is if the Saudis and the government of Yemen had been allowed to take Hodeidah and then to, push the the Houthis away from the Red Sea coast, would we even be in the situation that we are in now, where the Houthis are able to hold international shipping hostage?
Daniel J. Leavy:
Pretty interesting to get that context. But one of the things we hear a lot of nowadays is that these are an Iranian proxy or the Iranian client. Could you maybe elaborate on that? And, what’s the timeline for involvement with the Houthis?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
Definitely, yes. Well, I already mentioned that they were very much influenced by Lebanese Hezbollah. And as you know, Lebanese Hezbollah has always been, a proxy of Iran, a really very close ally of Iran.
Both Fadel Allah and Nasrallah, great figures in Lebanese Hezbollah were both directly involved in, mentoring the Houthis. And the Houthis are more, formally known as Ansar Allah, which means Partizans of God. And of course, this is a kind of a, you know, more or less, synonym for Hezbollah, which means party of God.
So first of all, this sort of, Iranian orientation is baked into the Houthis. Then a lot of the Houthis studied in Iran. And, of course, that’s one of the ways in which the Iranians have, increased their influence over a lot of the Shia proxy groups that they have, spread around the Middle East. And then, the more pressure that the Houthis came under, the more they relied on foreign support.
And when I say foreign support, I mean primarily Iranian support and to some degree, Lebanese Hezbollah support. And also a certain amount of support from people like, Iran, Iran’s allies in Syria and Iraq. And so during the Houthi wars with, President Saleh, there was a very clear sort of, orientation here. Saleh was sort of on the American side in the in the Great War on terror, or the global war on terror.
And, the Houthis weren’t placing themselves very much on the Iranian side, which was a much more sceptical, and anti-American position, even when they were, also opposed to people like ISIS. And then, of course, during the real sort of, if you like, the most intensive period of the Yemeni civil War, from 2015 onwards, the Houthis were more and more dependent on Iranian resupply.
Iranian, weaponry, Iranian technical support, Iranian training, and it of course, Iranian political support. And other support that the Iranians were able to provide. And the Lebanese Hezbollah, again, was involved in this. But Iran is always the linchpin of these things. Iran is the, is the leader of the so-called axis of resistance.
Now, I would say that there was a time when the Houthis were the most independent minded of all of the, Shia or Shia adjacent militias that supported Iran. There was a time where if the Iranians, really pushed their luck with the Houthis, if they sort of were, let’s say overbearing or discourteous in demanding things from the Houthis, the Houthis would push back in quite aggressive terms.
But of course, as time passed and the Houthis became more and more dependent on the Iranian lifeline, that independence then faded away. And, when the Houthis launched their campaign in the Red Sea against shipping in the Red Sea at the end of 2023, beginning of 2024, it was a Houthi initiative. They didn’t do it on Iranian instructions, but they were doing something that they considered would be good for them, good for their reputation.
It was a very sort of showy statement of solidarity with Hamas and the Palestinians, but it was also seen as something that was, providing, a capability for the Iranians to, twist the arm of the international community. This whole idea of asymmetric warfare, which the West finds so hard to deal with. And it was, the Iranians looked at it and they liked it and started to support it, including with, intelligence to help the, Houthis with their targeting that still not to say that the Houthis take instructions from Tehran.
I think that would be pushing the, the axis of resistance, level of command and control too far. But the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which is, of course, Iranian, essentially, is the most influential, foreign body, in Yemen.
Daniel J. Leavy:
And if we circle back to seventh October 23rd, on that morning, Hamas invades southern Israel, killing close to, 1200 people up, taking 250 odd hostages.
The following day, Hezbollah begins shooting from the north. And then what is happening in Yemen? What’s the process for the Houthis to begin their attacks on international shipping in and around the Red Sea, and the subsequent drone and missile attacks on Israel itself?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
Well, as you know, there was a short delay. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a sort of an overnight reaction.
You had, reactions from Lebanese Hezbollah. More quickly. In terms of I mean, Hamas, I think was always disappointed, probably remains disappointed that Lebanese Hezbollah did not, enter the war against Israel more wholeheartedly and instantaneously. And indeed, it’s interesting to speculate either how things might have developed differently if, Lebanese Hezbollah had been less cautious than they were because, of course, Israel was able effectively to defeat Hamas, before they turned their attention to the instability on their northern border.
And then they were able to defeat Lebanese Hezbollah. It might have been harder for them if they’d been facing a simultaneous barrage from both sides. But, all that said, Lebanese Hezbollah were always, actively, attacking Israel and supporting, Hamas. Pretty much from the outset. The Houthis took a couple of months to react, but when they did react, they hit on this tactic, which was that they would, attack Israeli associated shipping in the Red Sea.
Now, as you will know, that was always a rather approximate, sort of calculation by the Houthis. They didn’t really manage to discriminate much between what kind of shipping they were attacking. And of course, the Israelis didn’t really suffer much by what, in terms of, their, difficulty in using the Red Sea waterway because although they have a lot on the Red Sea, they also have more important ports on the Mediterranean Sea.
And so, as it turned out, the Houthi disruption of shipping was much more generalized. It was a much more generalized disruption of international shipping in the Red Sea. And really, this is the thing to remember with the Houthis is that they have disrupted shipping in the Red Sea before. To some degree, this is them flexing their muscles and showing that they can blackmail the international community by using this, access that they have to the Red Sea.
And that predated the, the Hamas attack on, Israel. And therefore, cannot really be said to be directly related to Houthi solidarity with the Palestinians. Anyway, as time passed and the Biden administration, supported by, the British government, deployed, a naval task force to the Red Sea, the Houthis took a certain amount of casualties, not very many, but a lot of, destruction of their, military installations.
And although people criticized the initial U.S response as having been overcautious, and I think it was overcautious, nevertheless, it did have some effect, and it was a very strong statement of intent. And I think the Houthis then, understood that in order to be credible in saying that they were really, you know, the champions of the Palestinian cause against Israel.
They needed to do more about, attacking Israel directly. And so increasingly over time, they, started to, use drones and missiles to try to penetrate Israeli defenses and to land a hit on the Israeli homeland. Now, they’ve done that already in the past. They had experience of doing this against Saudi Arabia during the civil war, and they had experience of doing it against the United Arab Emirates.
And so, this was not that big a stretch to say, well, let’s see if we can hit Israel. Obviously, Israel is very well defended. And very few of these attacks have got through. But when they do, they’re obviously very disruptive. And the Israelis, when they take any kind of casualty or serious disruption, they then feel the need to retaliate.
And we’ve seen several rounds of, Israeli retaliation against the Houthis after, Houthi attacks have got through against Israel. So where we are now, of course, is that this sort of to back and forth, if you like, between the international community and the Houthis, between the Israelis and the Houthis, was suddenly overshadowed by the seven week US campaign against the Houthis earlier this year, which lasted from March into May.
And that was Donald Trump coming in and saying that the previous rules of engagement had been inadequate and that the United States was not to be trifled with, and that, the Houthis would be destroyed if they didn’t, stop doing what they were doing to, threaten international shipping in international waters. And also, he said explicitly that he would hold Iran responsible for everything that the Houthis did, so that the Iranians also, could expect to be, militarily attacked if they continued to, facilitate and support Houthi attacks on the international community.
And that was a different order of magnitude. That seven week campaign was intensive and brought to bear a lot of American firepower. It was expensive, too, and some people in the United States were concerned about the amount of, ammunition and military supplies that were being expended on the campaign. But it was quite effective. They also, definitely changed the rules of engagement.
They were not any longer at all concerned to avoid Houthi casualties, which had been a feature of the, 2024 campaign, where both Britain and America had occasionally, made a point of saying that they had been able to take out installations, but without, human casualties. The Trump campaign was much more aggressive. It was also deliberately aimed at decapitation.
One of the senior Houthis who was killed in that campaign was actually the head of personal security for Abdulmalik al-Houthi, who is the leader of the Houthi movement. And so, one can assume, I think, that that was a strike that, was designed, albeit unsuccessfully, to kill the leader of the Houthis, which is obviously a very big escalation from what the US was doing in 2024.
And then I think the most important thing that the US campaign achieved, which people have not spoken about very much, but it was the fact that it prevented the Houthis from massing troops to make progress in the civil war, because of course, the civil war continues in Yemen and the current Houthi, top priority target is to take the city of Marib and the city of Marib is strategically very important.
It’s a very large city, and it will also open the gateway for the Houthis to advance, eastwards, to the oil fields of Yemen and southwards to the Gulf of Aden or Indian Ocean coast of Yemen. And so it’s really important for the sake of, preventing the Houthis from winning the civil war. It’s really important that they don’t succeed in taking Marib.
And, of course, when the Americans adopted this very extensive and very aggressive air campaign, the Houthis realized that their troops that were massing to take Marib were extremely vulnerable. They could be absolutely shredded from the sky. And so they had to abandon the siege of Marib and abandon the engineering works that they were undertaking, in support of that siege.
And so that was quite an important, impact that the Americans had. But then they stopped and this was this very interesting announcement that we had from the Omani foreign minister. The Omanis mediated, between the American and the Houthis and then announced in early May that, a truce was now in place and that the Americans and the Houthis would no longer be attacking each other.
Now, the Omani foreign minister went further than that and said that that meant that shipping in the Red Sea was now safe. And again. And I don’t think the media made enough of this at the time. But that’s obviously not true, because, the threat to shipping in the Red Sea predated the involvement of the Americans. And the Houthis have explicitly said that they will continue to attack any ship that they regard, that they regard as in any way Israeli associated in the Red Sea.
And the effect of that continuing uncertainty is that neither shipping companies nor insurance companies will entertain resuming full use of the Red Sea until there is a far more stable ceasefire.
Daniel J. Leavy:
So, given that America has made its decision to cease attacking the Houthis, where does that leave Israel, given that the attacks on Israel itself, both with missiles and drones, have escalated since, and Israel has responded with more of its own counter strikes against the Houthis and Yemen?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
Yeah, I think that’s a great question. And, to some degree, we will be speculating here. I think, of course, it’s important to say that originally the Israeli attacks on the Houthis last year were entirely independent of the Americans. They you know, it was the Israelis, responding to Houthi attacks for their own reasons and on their own initiative and their own authority.
And, then in March, when the Americans launched this very intense campaign against the Houthis, the Israelis backed off. They stood away from it. You know, they could have continued to be involved or to try to coordinate and involvement with the Americans. But it was quite clear that the Americans had stepped in and they were going to take this issue on, and therefore the Israelis didn’t need to.
And as you say, this rather sudden, slightly unexpected ceasefire that the Omanis brokered has left the Israelis in a, you know, slightly exposed position. It’s similar to the position they were in last year. If the Houthis attack them, they will attack back. They’re seeking to inflict sufficient pain on the Houthis to deter the who sees from continuing to attack Israel.
But I can see no great likelihood that that will be enough to stop the Houthis, given that the Houthis have staked their prestige, their whole international reputation on continuing this campaign for as long as the Israelis are still at war with Hamas. So I think we’re in a way, we’re back to the position that we were in in 2024.
But there are other implications that we need to factor in here. And the most important one is to what extent, is Iran conjoined with the Houthis as a belligerent in this, in this conflict? Because whilst the Americans were waging their campaign against the Who says they were not attacking Iran, even though Donald Trump had explicitly said that he would hold Iran responsible for whatever the whatever the Houthis did, the Americans did not attack the Iranians, and the Iranians did not get involved on the side of the Houthis, particularly the Iranians, were you know, they’ve they’re worried about Donald Trump.
They’re worried about the possibility that he will at some point launch an attack on Iran. And, so they’re being very cautious. So as not to provoke that. But of course, the Israelis will not feel any such constraint. And indeed, they have already, gone to the brink of war with Iran, on two occasions last year and the most recent Israeli hostilities against Iran limited, though they were, were extremely effective and have left the Iranians in a very much weakened state.
And the Iranians, of course, can no longer rely on either Lebanese Hezbollah or, the former Assad regime in Syria to, support them against Israel. So the Israelis are conscious that they have a moment of opportunity where they could do what Donald Trump threatened to do. They could hold Iran responsible for what those who these are doing, and they could escalate their response, not just against the Houthis and Yemeni targets, but also against Iran.
And, this is a matter of great concern to the Gulf states, because the Gulf states are worried about escalation. They don’t want to see generalized escalation occur because that escalation could affect their interests. And the Iranians have often threatened in the past that they would, include the Gulf states, in, in an escalation, if they considered the Gulf states to be in any way complicit, sit in aggression against Iran.
And so that, I think, is the great uncertainty that exists, that the Houthis will do something that will not just invite an Israeli attack, resumed Israeli attacks on, Yemeni targets, on Houthi targets. But that at some point the Israelis will finish the job that they started last year and make a serious attack on mainland Iran.
And that could be an attack on the Iranian nuclear program, or it could be an attack on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. And one of the most interesting questions is the extent to which the Americans are restraining the Israelis from doing that, or whether they are doing so. And of course, if they are doing so, then, well, what are the Israelis saying in return of the Israelis then saying to the Americans, well, that’s fine for you to say that, but the Houthis are attacking us and you’re not doing anything about it.
So, I don’t think that this ceasefire or truce is stable, and I’m expecting that we will see some form of escalation again this year.
Daniel J. Leavy:
And why do you think these ratings have been so restrained from their first attack on Yemen in July last year, through to their recent, attacks in the past few weeks?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
I think it’s partly and there are a number of things in play with Israel. First of all, you know, if ever there was an example of the crocodile nearest the canoe, Israel is the perfect example of that canoe, isn’t it? It has a lot of crocodiles to worry about. And, really right up until the first half of last year, the Houthi crocodile was the least of their concerns.
And so that has a number of implications. It has implications in terms of intelligence gathering, and it has implications in terms of military planning. And the Israelis simply haven’t gathered the intelligence or done the military planning that would have enabled them to, land really painful blows on the Houthis a year ago from now. And, since then, of course, they’ve had a year in which to up their game, and they’re very good at that sort of thing, as you know.
I mean, the if you think about the contrast between the sort of the ghastly intelligence failure that was the 7th of October 2023 and then the spectacular defeat of Hezbollah of Lebanese Hezbollah one year later. You can see that the Israeli, intelligence and defense establishment is, incredibly agile and responsive and very, very good once it focuses on a challenge.
So I think we can assume that the Israelis are in a better position now than they were a year ago. And, certainly if I were Abdulmalik al-Houthi or any other senior who’s senior Houthi leader, I would be concerned about the, likelihood of that Israeli decapitation policy against the group. Also, you’ll have seen that they have put some airport completely out of action now, destroyed the runways and, also destroyed the last remaining Yemeni, airplane.
They’re more than willing to, destroy, Houthi infrastructure, even though doing so is not something that the UK would ever have been willing to do. Or the Biden administration, because of the potential impact on the Yemeni economy and on trade and on humanitarian delivery. So I think that the Israelis are, probably ready to up their game, but they will also recognize that the Houthis are.
And I’m going to use that word again, that I used earlier on. The Houthis are resilient. They can take a lot of pain. And so deterring a group like that from continuing to, attack you is not easy. And so the Israelis will have to give strategic thought to what would actually make for a more stable, ceasefire with the Houthis.
And obviously, one potential option is to, put Iran at so much threat that Iran would say to the Houthis, you have to stop this because you are exposing us to existential risk.
And so I think the Israelis will have that in mind, and they’ll be having that conversation with the Americans all the time. And as I said, I guess the I’ll just reiterate that point and then I’ll stop.
The Israeli US relationship is unbelievably close, both at the diplomatic level, at the, lobbying level, at the party to party level, and, at the military and intelligence levels. And so it would be it’s important to remember that that continues. And the Israelis have to recognize that the Americans have other equities and they have equities with Saudi Arabia, they have equities with Oman, they have equities with Qatar and equities with the United Arab Emirates.
And so the Israelis have to be respectful of those equities. And of course, if they want the Abraham Accords to succeed and if they want to, eventually include Saudi Arabia in the Abraham Accords, they also need to be respectful of those, American equities and of Saudi equities and others. And that will mean that the Israelis can’t get everything that they want, but they will nevertheless, as long as the Houthis keep attacking them, they will feel that they have to respond.
Daniel J. Leavy:
Thank you. I’ve really enjoyed that. This interview, and this edition, I think that’s probably a good point to wrap up. But before we do, do you have anything else to add?
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
No, I think we’ve covered that really well. I mean, I, I guess I would, I would say that, you know, I live in the United States and, I spend a certain amount of my time giving advice to, American policymakers and I think one of the things that the Americans are going to need to figure out quite quickly is what is the bottom line of their Iranian policy, because the Americans implemented a housing policy at a time when their Iran policy was still in flux.
And in a way that that that is a fundamentally flawed approach, because you can’t really you run the risk of the tail wagging the dog if you like, because, how you deal with Iran is the fundamental issue here. Are you looking for some kind of diplomatic agreement? Are you looking for something like the old, JCPOA understanding with the Iranians, but maybe, a sort of a Trump version of that and enhanced version of it, where you effectively delay the Iranian nuclear program and, satisfy yourself with that and you avoid military conflict, or are you making demands of the Iranians that they will refuse to meet and are you willing to back those demands then, with military force? And the reason I stake out those positions so starkly is that your attitude to the who sees needs then to be harmonized with that fundamental Iran policy and the six week military campaign against the Houthis. As I say, it delivered some results. It certainly showed the Houthis that there was a new level of pain they could be exposed to, that neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel was capable of inflicting on them.
But in a way, that sort of very aggressive approach to the Houthis and the threat to hold the Iranians responsible for whatever the Houthis did, that needs to have happened after the United States was absolutely clear on what its bottom line was with Iran, and that we are still waiting to find out.
Daniel J. Leavy:
Edmund, thank you so much.
Edmund Fitton-Brown:
Most welcome.