Houthi attack on British tanker is an act of war pure and simple | Express Comment | Comment

It’s an act of war against the United Kingdom, there is nothing more certain.

Today a bunch of Houthi terrorists, who often act as a de-facto government in that fabulously unstable state Yemen, launched a successful drone and missile attack against a British oil tanker in the Red Sea.

Just to reiterate, that is a military attack against Britain.

My go-to expert on all things concerning international law did not wish to be named today, such is the heightened tension, but she said unequivocally: “A vessel is a piece of floating sovereign territory of whichever flag it is flying. In this case, this is a floating piece of the UK which a hostile group have just attacked with no justification. It is nothing less than an act of war.”

Admittedly, at the time of writing there were no casualties and the vessel, the Cordelia Moon, is still afloat. But the impotence of the attack in no way diminishes the warlike act.

Indeed the ineffectualness of Israel‘s enemies has been a striking factor of the last 12 months of conflict.

But again military inadequacy does not get genocidal aggressors off the hook.

And genocidal aggressors is of course what the group we journalists far-too-glamourously call “Houthi rebels” are. Horrible, fundamentalist, xenophobic power-mad nutters.

Oh, did I mention this was about Israel?

Well of course it’s about Israel.

And for the hand-wringers getting all upset about these poor little pro-Palestinian “rebel groups” who totally aren’t antisemitic at all…. the Houthi’s actual slogan is “Death to Israel, Curse Upon the Jews.”

Not a lot of wiggle room there is there?

Not original in the slightest though – as it’s nicked wholesale from their lords and paymasters in Iran.

Ah, Iran.

Everybody’s favourite pariah state – and quite right too, a nation run for almost half a century by a psychopathic theocracy, opposed to peace, opposed to women, opposed to minorities, opposed to democracy and most of all opposed (bewilderingly to most Westerners) to Jews.

Now then. What today’s attack has done is give Keir Starmer, and hopefully Joe Biden (if he can remember where Iran is) another open goal to fully back Israel‘s clear, if audacious, plan to end these rebel groups once and for all.

(Unfathomably the Houthis are not even a proscribed terror group in the UK. Even more bewilderingly Donald Trump did designate them as a terror group in the US, only for Joe Biden to reverse that designation.)

Our politicians have, for generations, attempted to appease the Ayatollahs, largely to stabilise oil markets but also in some insane hope that democracy will somehow appear in Tehran by process of osmosis.

It won’t.

Iran was scared of Donald Trump‘s hardline. It was a language they understood.

When Biden was elected he scrapped that tough line and attempted to chummy up to the Mullahs. They of course laughed in his face knowing they now had breathing space and time to achieve their ultimate goal – a functioning nuclear device.

Which will of course change the world forever and, the pessimists/realists suggest, light the fuse for the Third World War.

A war which, we have assumed for almost 80 years, would of course be the last world war.

There are three main proxies in the war on Israel – the Houthis, Hezbollah and of course Hamas. But all are the puppets of Iran, funded, armed and given orders by Tehran.

And Iran remember (through it’s proxies or directly if it could) would think nothing of attacking any and all British and American interests wherever they may be.

We are already at war people.

Politicians like to think wars can be fought neatly, without anyone getting hurt, which is why they drag them out for years and years ensuring many more thousands of deaths than would be the case if the military were allowed to do their thing without one arm tied behind their back.

This is not what we should do now.

There is absolute moral clarity here: Israel was attacked – Iran/Hamas/Hezbollah/Houthis did the attacking.

Israel has every right in law and ethics to defend itself.

And if that means an all guns blazing to end this filthy 50-year conflict with extinction-level attacks on Iran’s proxies, then Britain and the US should stand shoulder to shoulder.