“It’s not possible for us not to respond to these operations.”

That accidentally (and tragically) hilarious assessment came from Mohammed Abdul Salam. If you’re unfamiliar, or inclined to confuse him with any other Mohammed (“Fogell, have you actually ever met anyone named Mohammed?”), he’s a representative for the Houthis. And he spoke to Al Jazeera on Friday.

“These operations” were, of course, US-led strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen, retaliation for incessant mischief in the Red Sea, where the group shot at, menaced and otherwise harassed ships on 26 separate occasions since November 19.

The White House gave the group an ultimatum last week. The Houthis mulled it over for a day or two, then launched their most complex attack yet. That incident, detailed here, was a bridge too far. So, the US put on a fireworks show in Yemen to make a point, and the concern is that everyone’s now precommited to additional escalations.

As I wrote in the minutes after the US-UK strikes, “the Pentagon will presumably need to respond to additional attacks on shipping lanes with more airstrikes,” and because Abdel-Malek al-Houthi preemptively pledged to respond to any airstrikes with more attacks, it isn’t obvious there’s a way out of this. Everyone’s thinking the same thing as Mohammed: “It’s not possible for us not to respond to these operations.”

Apparently, the US wasn’t trying to kill anyone in the attacks (not even any Houthis necessarily, although a half dozen were collateral damage), but rather to degrade the group’s capacity to target ships. I can’t imagine one round of airstrikes was sufficient to accomplish that goal.

David Cameron told the BBC that if the Houthis don’t heed warnings, more “consequences” will follow. Much as I’d like to criticize a US-UK joint foreign military intervention, I’m not sure what choice the Biden administration actually had in this particular case, other than instructing Benjamin Netanyahu to cease combat operations in Gaza. That’d be nice (particularly for the 99% of the enclave’s population that’s still among the living), but it’s not going to happen. And the Houthis insist their actions are a legitimate form of protest.

As far as Mideast imbroglios go, this one, viewed in isolation (i.e., decontextualized from the war in Gaza) is pretty straightforward: The armed forces of a proto-state are firing indiscriminately on random commercial vessels in one of the world’s most important shipping lanes. And they won’t stop.

The figure above, which is quite poignant, illustrates the result of the ongoing attacks.

As BofA’s Michael Hartnett reminded market participants while editorializing around the visual, these are waters which facilitate nearly a third of global container traffic. It’s ludicrous to allow a militia to shut that down entirely.

I suppose you could argue that as a de facto state actor, the Houthis have some kind of — I don’t know — “right” to project projectiles off their own coast, and you might argue that the cause (to put pressure on the world to end the siege of Gaza) has some merit. But let’s not be obtuse: There’s something manifestly (almost comically) absurd about a group of militants lobbing missiles and rockets willy-nilly into a crucial shipping lane with no accountability.

Did the US hand the Houthis a propaganda coup? Maybe. The group now has the distinction of being targeted directly by the Pentagon twice (America bombed strategic targets in 2016 after the group got too excited and tried to sink a US destroyer). But it’s not obvious what that actually accomplishes.

One argument says they’re angling to raise the temperature in pursuit of a wider regional conflict — fortune and glory, or at least glory. Another says they’re just so damn used to war that they’re fine with it, particularly if it serves to legitimize them in some way. Still another says they’re better at fighting than governing, so why not fight? And then there’s the always popular “Death to America!” rallying cry, which can be leveraged to distract locals from the lack of public services, and so on. The simplest argument is just that Iran told them to target ships and hasn’t asked them to stop yet.

Whatever the case, there were no good options for The White House. As the figure below, again from BofA, shows, shipping rates more than doubled in less than two months.

Is that a good reason to bomb a country? Not normally, no. In this case, probably, yes. Because, again, there’s no real method to this madness. It’s mischief for the sake of it, and also for the sake of proving something about Iran’s capacity to project and sow chaos.

The Houthis are giddy. One official declared that the US and the UK just made “the biggest mistake in their history.” That official may not be a historian. The US and the UK have made a lot of mistakes, some of them quite large. “Biggest mistake” is a very high bar in the context of American and British foreign policy.

The same official said the Houthis aren’t “an easy military opponent that can be subdued quickly.” That, at least, is certainly true. Just ask the royals next door and their Mohammed.

In the Houthis’ minds, this’ll be a “long-term battle that will change the direction of the region and the world,” as the group put it.

Maybe. Probably not, though. “We’re not interested in a war with Yemen,” John Kirby said Friday.

At the end of the day, the question is this: Do you trust the Houthis to be even-handed and reliable when it comes to presiding over 12% of global trade?