"The Biden administration has displayed understandable and otherwise admirable restraint in the face of these continued Houthi provocations. With the war in Gaza still raging, America doesn’t need to see another front opened up in the Middle East. But the Houthis have kept up their attacks on the freedom of the seas—the Navy destroyer USS Carney shot down 14 attack drones just this past weekend, for instance—and transnational container shipping companies Maersk, Hapag-Lloyd, and MSC have announced they will keep their ships out of the Red Sea. The problem has slowly snowballed into a significant crisis, one that could find the United States and close allies like Britain and France taking direct military action against the Houthis in the near future."Note that bit in bold. A tremendous amount of shipping between Europe and Asia transits the Suez Canal. Twelve percent of all global shipping transits the Red Sea. Remember how jammed up things got when the MV Ever Given blocked the canal a few years back?
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