Fretting over an all-out Mideast war, President Biden shies away from confronting Iran’s proxies, even as they increasingly threaten American interests. Sensing weakness, the Islamic Republic is urging full surrender.

The Yemeni Houthis increasingly threaten international shipping. While claiming they only attack Israel, Egypt too is suffering as ships avoid the Suez Canal. Europe’s economy is threatened, along with Asian and African countries. 

On Friday the Houthis struck three cargo ships in waters near the Bab El Mandeb strait, including a German-owned, Liberian-flagged container ship, the Al Jasrah, which was hit by a drone while sailing from Greece to Singapore. A Liberian-flagged ship caught fire after it was hit by a missile from a Houthi-held area in Yemen. 

“Any ship that has dealings with Israel constitutes a legitimate target,” the Houthi Minister of Information, Dayfallah Al-Shami, said Friday. “Even if it is a ship that belongs to a Yemeni businessman who does business with the Zionist ports, it will be treated in the exact same way that Israeli and other ships are treated.”

Dozens of vessels have been attacked by the Houthis in the Red Sea since October 7. Most had loose, or no, connections to Israel. On Friday, one of the world’s largest shipping companies, the Danish-owned Maersk, announced a pause in all container shipments in the Red Sea, sailing around Africa instead. Economic consequences from higher imported products are expected to be felt far beyond Israel. 

As indicated in the first line of the Marines’s hymn — “from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli” — America has considered threats to free navigation anywhere as a threat to its interests. The “shores of Tripoli” refers to the 1805 battle of Derna, which freed the Barbary coast from piracy that had plagued it. 

To deter such modern activity, America has dispatched several warships to the Red Sea. Since the Houthis started targeting ships at the narrow Bab el Mandeb strait, the Navy has intercepted missiles and assisted several damaged ships under attack. Yet, it has largely refrained from attacking the source. 

“They only understand one thing in that part of the world, and that’s force,” the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, told Fox News this week. While praising the Navy’s presence in the Red Sea, he noted that the Iranians “do question our resolve, and I think our inability to respond to their attacks makes them question it that much more.” 

Indeed, rather than deterred, Iranian officials are demanding American policy changes. They are likely encouraged by Mr. Biden’s concessions as he strived to revive the failed 2015 nuclear deal. 

“America finds itself in a precarious position, having witnessed a decline in its influence and soft power and resorted to hard power and bolstering military presence as a compensatory measure,” Iran’s ambassador at the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravan, told Newsweek this week. 

Since early October, militias that are financed, armed, and trained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps have consistently attacked American targets. 2,500 U.S. troops are stationed in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the war on ISIS. As yet, American bases were attacked nearly 100 times and the response was a handful of pinpoint air strikes on mostly empty warehouses and arms depots. 

Iran sees that timid response as a sign that it could influence American policies to fit its own goals. “Israel has increasingly become a burden for America in terms of material, political, and, notably, moral and reputational costs on the global stage,” Mr. Iravan said. “A new course is necessary.” 

America knows full well who is the Iraqi, Syrian, Yemeni, and Lebanese militias’ puppet master. “Iran has a responsibility to take steps themselves to cease these attacks,” the national security adviser, Jacob Sullivan, said this week during a Mideast swing.   

For its part, the White House is organizing a “broad” multinational coalition to defend against the Red Sea attacks — even as top Western powers are already there: French Navy vessels, for one, have intercepted missiles aimed at ships near Bab el Mandeb. 

Rather than heeding Mr. Sullivan’s plea, Tehran is threatening anyone trying to defend international shipping. An international force in the Red Sea would face an “extraordinary problem,” the Iranian defense minister, Mohammad Reza Ashtiani, said.

Far from deterred, the Islamic Republic acts as it is winning a war against America and its allies. “By order of the President and as a direct result of a nearly 3-year policy of appeasing Iran and its proxies, the United States today utterly failed in a core mission of upholding freedom of navigation,” the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Richard Goldberg writes on X. “Beijing is watching.”