The Americans hit all four power plants. In fact, electricity production in Yemen is now a local network of solar panels and generators, around which a supply chain is being built.
Chicken is cut up in the morning, turned into shawarma at lunchtime, and sold to the poor at a reduced price in the evening - no refrigerators or other refrigeration, except for these islands.
The bombed-out Sana'a airport - fuel tanks, planes, a ploughed-up runway.
A cotton factory, a cement plant, steel mills - a campaign against dual-use industry.
And what do we see?
The Houthis have launched several waves of anti-ship missiles at aircraft carriers - so far, they have not been able to break through the air defences, but the Americans have not been able to remotely take Iran's long arm out of the game either.
Since Saddam, launchers in the Middle East have not been the easiest target for the detection, targeting, and destruction chain.
Torn apart by a long-running civil war (ongoing since 2011), the country, which is supplied only by sea (with hostile Saudi Arabia and the desert to the north) and air, struck Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport on 4 May with an Iranian ballistic missile after months of bombing.
The ceasefire agreement with the United States does not include a clause on Israel, although the crisis in the Red Sea began with Houthi attacks on Israeli ships in response to the Gaza operation.
Dozens of ships were damaged, two were seized by the Houthis, and the port of Eilat is almost bankrupt (half of its employees were laid off, and there were months when transshipment dropped by 90%) - this is no joke.
The status quo of global trade is an important element of the dollar system, which makes the US a superpower, an arbiter of global processes.
As a result, Yemen has retained the ability to hit Iranian hypersonics from 2000 km away. Israel is retaliating - after months of attacks, Yemen still has a bank of targets, which says a lot.
Yemen also retained aviation and maritime supplies through a network of primitive airstrips and piers.
So warheads, engines, electronics, and missile bodies are delivered via various routes and assembled with a screwdriver inside the country.
The most surprising thing about this story, of course, is the degradation of Western society's attitude to losses.
Seven to nine MQ-9 Reaper drones were shot down by Iranian missiles, and the Block 5 versions cost the Netherlands $151 million.
However, the control station, spare parts, radar in the container and a supply of missiles remained on the ground, and the operator survived. This is the job of such drones - to crash instead of planes with people on board.
At one time, the US lost over 1,000 UAVs over China and Vietnam.
Oh, my God! We lost two F-18 carrier-based aircraft - we'll write about it with a touch of hysteria in all the media.
During the bombing of Vietnam, the Americans suffered such losses in a week.
Of the 31 lost B-52 “flying fortresses,” 12 were destroyed in crashes and incidents.
But that's it... Iranian air defence systems even targeted the F-35, so an order was given to wind down the operation in order not to suffer image losses.
And stockpiles of precision weapons are needed in the Pacific region, and bombing with cast iron means losing people and equipment.
However, these are the basics - you can shoot, they can shoot at you.
The best aircraft on the planet at the time, the F-117, was shot down in Yugoslavia. This did not mean that the aircraft was ineffective: the Yugoslavs had to ambush it, using the optical channel of the previous generation of launchers. The aircraft worked like an invisible man: it was spotted by a camera, the C-125's metre-range radar was switched on, its approximate altitude was measured, and the missile was detonated remotely.
The loss was an unpleasant blow to the image, but that’s how war works. The bombing of Yugoslavia continued — and they were forced to halt operations in Kosovo.
But we must admit that time has passed.
In the age of X (Twitter), any loss of this type means a month of figuring out who was better, Biden or Trump, and when America will be great again. Ratings, blogs, bespoke campaigns.
This also means that a single effective operation against such tribal entities supporting the ‘axis of evil’ as Yemen is impossible.
It requires a naval blockade with light boat forces, the destruction of fishing boats and dhows that deliver anti-ship missiles and drones. Minefields should be laid, inspected, and destroyed on the spot in case of breakthrough attempts.
All of this must be done in conjunction with drone pressure, which must stop any attempts by the air defence to assemble into a single unit - to pick at communication nodes, radar, stores, and control. Despite the losses.
We lost ten — we ordered the next ten. We don’t comment on losses or terrorist claims at all. It’s AI, it’s a deepfake, we’ll report after the investigation is complete.
Plus carpet bombing of assembly shops, runways and concrete piers.
Thousands of tonnes of cast iron, like Germany in the Second World War. If they managed to stop the bombing of London only by knocking out the factory gates with tanks, why should it be different here?
Plus special forces raids targeting field commanders and logisticians — including landings, urban operations, kidnappings, and eliminations.
Naturally, there’s espionage involved. Naturally, it’s a shadow war: kinetic strikes guided by Reapers, assassinations, parcel bombs, poisons.
Yes, it will lead to losses — from mines, accidents, firefights with boat groups, and during special operations missions. It's even possible that an anti-ship missile will hit a dock landing ship used by those very boat groups.
That’s what a military operation means: inflicting damage that cripples the enemy’s ability to fight — not just bombing shacks and fuel tanks at an airstrip.
The main objective should have been a blockade. If a 39-million-strong entity wants to stick to quoting the Quran and assembling drones and missiles with screwdrivers, then they don’t need ports. Let the UN feed them rice and beans from orange ration boxes.
You want rations? Then sign an agreement, remove the naval mines, and agree on a shipping schedule.
Another strike on Israel - again, carpet bombing of workshops smeared across the building.
But this is not even close. Mostly for political reasons. If Trump had decided on such a war, he would not have been able to continue to claim that Biden was worse, and now Americans are not at war, because such a war involves mud, blood, prisoners and coffins with the American flag.
So now Trump has scored another victory. Israel is still being attacked with hypersonics and drones. And the Houthis say that the US has retreated.
Where they started before the attacks on Israel, they ended up.
Lessons for Ukraine?
Once again, the coalition of rogue states has made sure that the West is not ready to conduct months-long campaigns, strain the economy, and suffer human losses. Because even the loss of a couple of planes causes hysteria. This is not good.
Nuclear negotiations with Iran are likely to reach a dead end.
A country stuck in the Middle Ages broke through Israel’s missile defense and hit the area near the main airport.
We need to scale up production of long-range drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. In addition, all these engines and warheads should be ordered from third countries and assembled just before launch.
Neither Russia nor we can reach all strategic targets from afar, but in a war of attrition, we have a bonus: the European part of Russia is under fire, while our rear in the EU remains safe.
The hegemon country lacked enough precision weapons to remotely knock Iran’s proxy—far from the strongest regional player—out of the war.
Moscow won’t have enough drones and missiles either. Especially since we’re not Yemen, dependent on three ports, and behind us isn’t Tehran.