> They've done this several times now, has there been any significant retaliatory strikes?

Against who? Some guys in the the Yemeni desert? Saudis have been trying that for years.

They are targeting ships with an Israeli link. I think people (countries) have just accepted that and moved on. Why retaliate and make your ships a target?

It is a big deal, but what do we do in return? Iran is using their Houthi proxies to carry out these attacks. So do we attack Iran? Attack the Houthis who are pretty much living in similar circumstances to people in Afghanistan?

Without turning this into a regional, all-out war, how do we respond? Now if something like the USS Cole attack happens it will be out of our hands, we'll have to respond and damn the consequences, but until then we'll probably do things covertly.

Iran is in no state to launch a regional all out war. They barely have control of their millennial and genZ populace.

That's very true, but you're assuming that they're rational, especially with their "supreme spiritual leader" rumored to be so old he needs a stand-in.

USA is not capable of lunching another regional war. Let’s see how long Israel and Ukraine last if USA has to repel a serious threat.

> USA is not capable of lunching another regional war.

"Another"? The US has neither launched nor is it fighting a major regional war now.

Probably a reference to Afghanistan or Iraq? "Another" works in this context, I think, even though those are in the past.

I'm not sure what you're basing this on? The US' overarching military strategy for decades now has been to prepare for a two-front war with both China and Russia. I'm not seeing how a rounding error on the US defense budget, mostly in the form of mothballed munitions, is materially reducing readiness. Never mind the capacity of the US to switch to wartime munition production.

If you have some sources talking about how how the US can't launch a regional conflict I'd love to see them.

> The US' overarching military strategy for decades now has been to prepare for a two-front war with both China and Russia.

The two major regional contingency capability (which was not a strategy, but a principal notionally underlying national security strategies for a couple decades) was concocted in 1993 as, basically, political cover for massive defense cuts -- that is, it was saying "despite the cuts, we will retain this capacity" -- and was very quickly recognized as a largely fictitious capability [0] especially as the US fought major regional contingencies after that point and it was clear that it could at most prosecute one effectively and be prepared to engage in a holding action elsewhere [1], even when "major" was much smaller scale than war with Russia or China, and was formally abandoned in 2012.

[0] Part of why this recognition was because the formal documents outlining the concept and how the capacity would be met had caveats which indicated that it wasn't really a capacity to fight two MRCs effectively and simultaneously.

[1] "Win one, hold one" was described as the likely best-case actual capacity years before the overlap of Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts concretely demonstrated the lack of genuine two-MRC capability against much less capable foes than Russia/China.

Considering how well Afghanistan went, somehow I don’t think it’s working very well.

Have you forgotten about the US backed saudi bombings of yemen?

Maybe this is just their retaliation. This self rightousnes ... as if the us main land was bombed.

In Yemen Saudi-Arabia leads - with help from the US - an intervention supporting the internationally recognized government against a terrorist group backed by Iran. So, who should retaliate here? The government that asked for help?

Terrorists can not retaliate, at least not rightfully. They can gtfo of Yemen though.

I don’t know if this is a joke or not. But let’s assume you were serious. Was it Houthi who bombed weddings/funerals?

There is no proof that Iran ever coordinated anything with the Houthis. Most scholars in this area say that the "Iran-backed" label is completely misleading. Iran sees that the actions of the Houthis are aligned with their own and so they may send them low-tech weapons as well as design blueprints, but the Iranians don't tell the Houthis what to do.