The most important factor imho is that the Muslims and the 'College Left' in Western countries are already extremely agitated and enraged over the Gaza war, so we really don't want to produce even more pictures of dead brown people right now.

Yes, that's exactly what I'm insinuating. America has already spent billions on prosperity guardian, billions on sm missiles and billions on bombing runs. All that was achieved was bombing empty huts and pockets of sand.

If the West had the balls to put boots on the ground in Yemen and open up the red sea, we would have on day 1. The reason why a bunch of goat herders upstaged uncle sam is because they had the balls to Yolo and they called our bluff.

And now that the houthis have all these new fancy ahsm missiles, a landing operation would be disastrous for the marines. This isn't 2003 anymore, if America got into another forever war it would implode from within. Obviously America has the ability to wipe them off the map in theory but in reality the Red Sea will remain closed until Israel drags the US into confrontation.

The climate is not the same in the US as it was during Iraq or even 5 years ago. Going into another forever war is a losing political proposition, especially when our economy is slowing, unemployment slated to increase, and people want issues at home addressed . Foreign policy is already a really weak point for Biden with constantly publicly spammed multi billion dollar Ukraine packages every other month and the Gaza debacle. You can’t signal aggression/war footing going into an election when the issue is so unpopular and has been for years now.

https://www.reuters.com/world/putin-arrives-kazakhstan-russia-china-dominated-sco-summit-2024-07-03/

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have arrived in Astana Kazakhstan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, with the SCO now expanded to include India, Iran and Pakistan, and this year the first for Belarus. It will include Erdogan, though Modi is sending his FM. Last year they issued a very nonspecific statement indirectly criticizing western powers shipping missiles to Ukraine, but this year we'll see

The houthis just blew up an oil tanker.
I think this might be bad.

https://twitter.com/NGrossman81/status/1813291849320149430

How many F-35s the Houthis operating?

How many hypersonics uncle sam operating?
Cause the houthis got em.

The daily bombing runs by the f35s did nothing
And now Iran had time to arm the houthis with AShM's

So, no jets?

Yet the West is in your words 'impotent' ?

to think the executive branch laughed these nations off in 2012 to score political points

Biden's decision to cozy up to the Mullahs in Teheran and throw away the inroads Trump had made with the Saudis looks worse and worse by the day.
This is the end result of Biden's "peace through weakness"-approach to foreign policy. Needless to say that it's an unmitigated disaster.