LARRY KUDLOW: This is a very bad state of affairs

The Houthis are humiliating us, hat tip to a National Review headline. This is a very bad state of affairs and we can see once again from the John Kirby press briefing today that the Bidens are afraid of their own shadow. Anybody can intimidate them, including Houthis. 

Once upon a time the Houthis were declared terrorists.That shouldn't be too hard to understand, because they are terrorists. They were designated as such at the end of the Trump administration and then for some mistaken reason, the Biden administration moved the terrorist designation. No satisfactory explanation has ever been provided. One reason for removing the terrorist label could have been a Biden attempt to pour more humanitarian aid into Yemen, which is another stupid move.

Now, despite the fact that the Iran-backed Houthi terrorists that control Yemen are threatening to close the Red Sea, the best Kirby and the Bidens could come up with is that they're conducting a review right now with no decisions made. Take your time, folks. No problem. Mind you, the Houthi leaders have announced that they will attack Israel-bound or Israel-owned ships in the waters around Yemen indefinitely, but the Houthis are hitting them anyway, so essentially the Houthis are trying to disrupt roughly 12% of global trade that passes through the Red Sea. 

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So far, oil prices have increased only 5% or so, but a worse price spike is of course possible. 12 shipping companies have redirected their vessels to avoid the Houthi waters including oil giant BP and shipping giant Maersk. Be that as it may, our stock market has been unaffected and in fact keeps rallying to new highs. So, there's no economic crisis, yet. 

There's no economic or financial crisis yet. However, the Biden administration is trying to put a coalition together to do something about the Houthi problem, nobody knows exactly what the Bidens have in mind, but not a single large Middle Eastern country is part of this coalition and the question is, why hasn't the U.S. responded to these Houthi attacks? 

Does this lack of response make us look weak? I would venture yes, but, wait a minute, appeasing the Houthis is the same thing as appeasing the Houthi's pay master, Iran. 

Over 100 attacks against U.S. military assets in the region have occurred without a single serious U.S. response. Just a couple of pin pricks somewhere in Syria. This amounts to a feckless foreign policy. 

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Of course, it goes back to the Bidens' terrible miscalculation that a nuclear deal with Iran is possible and that Iran could be a civilized member of the Middle Eastern nations, or that Iran would give up its goal of destroying Israel and destroying the U.S. None of that ever had any merit in the first place. It was a naive policy of the worst kind and part of that policy included the relaxation of banking, energy and economy sanctions on Iran. 

That relaxation has financed Iran's monetary comeback, which in turn has given them even more resources as the paymaster to all the terrorist groups in the Middle East. 

Literally every decision Joe Biden has made concerning the Middle East has turned cold as stone and don't forget, even today, U.S. lodges no complaints with communist China, which through its large-scale purchases of imported Russian and Iranian oil has helped to finance two wars against the United States. So, now even the Houthis are humiliating us. 

What a sad state of affairs.