# Should the U.S. Military Invade Yemen? || Peter Zeihan

Source: [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY)

## The question: A new war in Yemen?

**Speaker 1:** [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=0s) Hey everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from a warm Colorado autumn afternoon. Today we're taking a question from the Patreon crowd: specifically, is the United States about to get sucked into a fresh war in the Middle East, in Yemen? And if so, is that something we want?

## Yemen's geography and history of rebellion

**Speaker 1:** [0:17.280](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=17.28s) Yemen is a mountainous country in the southwestern extremity of the Arabian Peninsula. Like all mountainous areas that get enough rain to have a population, that population tends to be a little ornery. So basically, think of it as Chechnya or Scotland or West Virginia, just warmer.

**UNKNOWN:** [0:34.760](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=34.76s) Uh.

**Speaker 1:** [0:35.280](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=35.28s) And it has rebelled against whatever the order has happened to be in the region, at least since the time of the late Egyptian pharaoh, so at least 3,000 years ago. It's been a problem for everyone who's been the major power in that area, and so this is no surprise. That also gives you an idea of how durable the rebellion can be.

Let's talk about the strategic picture in Yemen, and then we'll talk about what we're up against now.

## Water, Houthi territory, and missile reach

**Speaker 1:** [1:05.360](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=65.36s) The strategic picture is that these people live in the mountains. They've got—well, so they have enough water for what they need to do, and they have a cash crop in something called kat, which is water-intensive and is drying the country out. It's basically a mild narcotic, so everyone in Yemen is stoned a lot.

But the people who are in charge, the ones that are problematic, the Houthis, have enough territory that even if you have a collapse of the water table, it's really not a problem. What we've seen in recent weeks is they've taken over a lot of the coastal territory, which a lot of people are like, “Oh no, this is bad because they could threaten the strait.” But they were threatening the strait before.

They're using primarily missiles and drones that are wholly provided by the Iranians. Yemen has no indigenous manufacturing capacity itself, so it's basically just assembling kits under Iranian direction. That means you're talking about weapon systems that have a range of over a hundred miles. They don't need the coast to fire.

Yes, they could have people that can go and see, but you don't actually have to have physical control of the entire coast to do that. You just need one guy with a pair of binoculars, and then maybe look at the satellite feed. So if you went in and kicked the Houthis out of the coast, it really doesn't change the picture.

## What an invasion would require

**Speaker 1:** [2:16.880](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=136.88s) You would actually have to go into the interior, into the mountains, and fight. Which means that if your goal is to root out this specific problem, you have to invade a country with 30 million people, I believe it has, and occupy enough of it that it can't be used as a base of operations for forces like this.

That means you're combining kind of the worst-case scenarios of Afghanistan and Iraq into a single fun fight. Now, raise your hand if you want to go back into those two countries.

**UNKNOWN:** [2:50.520](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=170.52s) It's

**Speaker 1:** [2:50.960](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=170.96s) basically what we're looking at here. It's just that Yemen, unlike Iraq, doesn't even have decent infrastructure that U.S. forces could operate from, and it has all of the twisting and turning supply chain problems because of mountain roads that Afghanistan had. So, no fun at all.

## Threats from Iraq and Iran would remain

**Speaker 1:** [3:09.120](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=189.12s) In addition, Yemen threatening Gulf infrastructure, Gulf shipments, and Saudi Arabia—if you remove it from the equation completely, you haven't solved any of the problem.

Keep in mind that these weapon systems that the Iranians are sharing have a range of about 600 miles, and they're pretty basic. You could see that expanded in the future, but 600 is plenty. And if you look at the attacks that have happened elsewhere in the region, as we know from the war with the United States in February, March, April, and May, the Iranians can already hit everything in the region.

And as was underlined just last month, the Iranians still have influence in southern Iraq. So recently there was a drone and missile attack on what's called the East-West Pipeline, which takes Saudi Arabian crude from the Persian Gulf across Arabia and into the Red Sea. Anyway, an attack from Iraq is the one that damaged it and took it offline for a couple weeks.

So even if you take Yemen out of the equation, you would then, if you really want to secure the area, have to go and do the same thing for Iraq again. And even that wouldn't fix things, because these weapons have more than enough range that can be operated from Iran direct. During the war, on multiple occasions, the Iranians hit sites on the Saudi coast of the Red Sea. So all of this is in range from multiple places.

So you're really talking about doing something that's significantly more involved than what we did on the global war on terror, and having to physically occupy Yemen and Iraq and Iran all at the same time. So no, I can't say that is something that I would recommend.

## The alternatives for Persian Gulf energy

**Speaker 1:** [4:52.840](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrdx5RsbmOY&t=292.84s) The flip side, of course, is if the U.S. doesn't do something like this, then there is no military solution whatsoever to secure Persian Gulf energy. You basically have a really ugly choice to make.

You make a political deal with Iran that allows the oil to flow. And that means giving Iran a whole lot of things that it wants that the United States has been fighting to not give it since the revolution back in 1979.

Or you walk away and just realize that the Middle East, you can't do anything with it. You can't control it. You can barely influence it. And the crude isn't going to flow unless the Iranians cut deals then with individual powers in the area.

So it's an ugly, ugly, ugly situation. And Yemen just underlines just how ugly.