It is 1200 miles from Houthi controlled Yemen to Eilat.
So a terrorist group now has 1000+ mile force projection in the Red Sea ?
Where Operation Prosperity Guardian ?
Take Iran out of the oil business and all of this will go away.
Yeah, well, like usual you are ignorant of the important details, or more likely, deliberately leaving them out.
At any one moment we only have 3 of our anti-missile destroyers to cover an area way too big for 3 destroyers to cover. The Ford can help some, but if a cargo ship can be reached by a missile faster than the Ford can get a plane in position to intercept, that’s not much help. That’s probably 80+% of the area in question. (Notably, the US has shot down a lot of drones. One USN pilot (in a Harrier with old radar) shot down 7 himself B4 his ship, the Bataan, went back to the Red Sea.
Virtually all sea traffic to Eilat goes through the Bab-el-Mandeb. Ships in the Med would go to Israeli ports in the Med — shorter, and you don’t have to pay half a million dollars or so to go through the Suez canal. Be able to hit one ship out of 100 in the strait, and, yeah, you pretty well shut off Eilat. Any ship bound there goes around Africa and to the Med ports. It’s cheaper than the insurance, and any shortages created drive up the prices of the goods you carry.
Also, missiles with 1k+ mile ranges are no big deal to make these days. The Iranians certainly do.