Love is in the air,

Every time I look around.

Love is in the air,

Every sight and every sound.

~ sung by John Paul Young

Something's definitely in the air, but it is most assuredly not the chest-thumping, Death to America, sabre-rattling we've been hearing for the past four years out of the querulous clerics and ill-humored Houthi shootie Iranian-backed type proxies.

Two years ago, Iraqi militias, armed and financed by their terrorist enablers in the Islamic regime ruling Iran, were causing all sorts of unsnwered hate and discontent with drone attacks on some of the roughly 2500  troops and 6500 contractors we still had in country.

Two military bases that house U.S. troops in Iraq were targeted with drone attacks on Wednesday. The Islamic Resistance, a group of Iranian-backed militias claimed responsibility for the attacks and threatened more to come. There were minor injuries to U.S. troops reported at the… pic.twitter.com/LOoayeqGOt

— CBS Evening News (@CBSEveningNews) October 18, 2023

With giddy sorts of threats of further vengeance should the US continue to support Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza. A week later, whoever was playing president that day told Joe Biden to say this:

BIDEN: "We have had troops in the region since 9/11 to go after ISIS and prevent its reassu— reemergence in, in both, anyway, in the region." pic.twitter.com/PbdYv60eOU

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 25, 2023

Two months later, in December of 2023, the Iranian-backed Houthis began shutting down shipping in the Red Sea. They felt froggy enough to send their first swarm of drones against a US Navy warship, the Carney, who successfully fended them off.

But it was the start of the big shipping companies like Maersk and Evergreen, along with oil exporters like BP, who announced they were first suspending shipping, and then they all started taking the long way home.

A US-led coalition fell apart for lack of participation and interest, and the Houthis - and, by extension, Iran - controlled both the Bab al Mandab, the chokepoint strait between Djibouti and Yemen, and the free flow of international shipping. 

Biden smacked Houthi missile sites occasionally, as well as some Syrian targets, especially after another drone attack killed three US Army soldiers in a tower on the Jordan-Syria border in January of 2024.

On Sunday, an aerial drone strike killed three United States service members and injured at least 34 others. The strike happened at a support base known as Tower 22 in northeast Jordan near the Syrian border and likely hit a barracks.

"We had a tough day last night in the Middle East. We lost three brave souls," President Biden said on Monday. "And we shall respond."

...An Iran-backed umbrella group of militias called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it was behind the attack, but Iran denied involvement. The group called it revenge for America's military presence in the region and the Palestinian deaths in Gaza. More than 26,000 people have been killed since the beginning of Israel's war on Hamas, according to the health ministry in Gaza.

John Kirby, Pentagon senior spokesweasel, said the administration was going to choose a response 'calibrated to hopefully have a better effect on the decision-making of these groups.'

Now that we know Biden had no part in any 'decision making,' I'm assuming that meant the cabal running the White House stayed for a couple of extra minutes after morning coffee and donuts to figure out a way to make a boom-boom splash with the least amount of impact to the Islamic killers they'd worked so hard to placate and cultivate.

Especially the virulently anti-American Iranian mothership.

So it turns out the Biden admin reversing a Trump policy and removing the Houthis from the terror list was a bad idea. They’re now backtracking.

A story in 3 parts! pic.twitter.com/jD9dOCrJrE

— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) January 17, 2024

One year later, one fresh breath of Spring and election later, and my - how everyone's tune has changed.

No one is politely asking the Houthis to behave any more, nor impatiently swatting drones away from our ships as we wait for them to come to civilized senses they never had to begin with.

The Houthis & Iran learn the hard way that Biden may have been their friend, but Trump is definitely not. https://t.co/jYy8wEB8zq

— Tara Servatius (@TaraServatius) April 5, 2025

Rumor has it they may have to try fighting on the ground in a short while instead of terrorizing shipping from the air.

Yemeni pro-government forces are reportedly preparing to launch a ground offensive aimed at retaking the strategic port city of Hodeidah, according to officials speaking to CNN. The planned operation is expected to be backed by coordinated Saudi and U.S. air and naval support.… pic.twitter.com/jSAtq0PU2r

— GMI (@Global_Mil_Info) April 6, 2025

Thanks to Trump authorizing a week's worth of relentless pounding vice pin pricks, the Houthis may be too busy and too weakened to bother anyone for a while.

The Iranians had their own frisson of loss with the recent US raids, too when rumors surfaced that their state-of-the-art spy boat, the Zagros, had been sunk in a mid-March US attack.

An American defense official denied a report that the United States military sunk an Iranian spy ship in the Red Sea, the Washington Examiner reported Tuesday.

Saudi Arabian media outlet Al-Hadath reported that the U.S. had sunk the Iranian reconnaissance ship Zagros, which specializes in signal intelligence, in a coordinated attack with Israel's bombing of Hamas terrorists in Gaza.

Not so, said the U.S. defense official, adding, Zagros "is pier side in Bandar Abbas" in Iran, the Examiner reported.

The Zagros is Iran's first and most advanced reconnaissance ship, according to Eurasian Times.

After years of operating with impunity, it was probably extremely uncomfortable for the Iranians to listen to a DoD official tell the world the US knew exactly where the boat was and had left it alone.

YOICKS

As Ed posted this morning, the mullah mothership seems to have left orbit watching over that particular clutch of chicks and is trying to gussy herself up a bit as far as 'more approachable' goes.

Remember the Signal chat 'scandal'? Well, Iran doesn't these days, as both the New York Times and the Economic Times acknowledged over the weekend. The use of Signal for sensitive discussions was a mistake, but the policy and strategy employed by Donald Trump and his administration have already begun to pay dividends in Yemen -- and in Iran.

In less than three months, Trump has turned the situation in the Red Sea entirely around, the Economic Times reported on Saturday. The deadly strikes on the Houthis in Yemen -- and Trump's public pledge to hold Iran directly responsible for Houthi attacks -- has Tehran rapidly restrategizing. They may be cutting off aid to their last proxy in the region in an attempt to deal with the threat of direct action from the US:

Is Iran ready to coyly bat long eyelashes at The Donald, trying to get him to forget the harsh language in the letter he wrote to the Ayatollah?

Or is this simply a strategic recoil of tentacles for a retrenchment and reassessment?

Probably a little of both.

But you know who isn't waiting around for some Houthi shootie Trump treatment and signaling 'We read you loud and CLEAR, Washington'?

The Iranian backed militias in Iraq.

WE DON'T WANT NONE OF THAT - NO, SIR 

They're fine with calling it a day and hoping Trump is, too.

Several powerful Iranian-backed militia groups in Iraq are prepared to disarm for the first time to avert the threat of an escalating conflict with the U.S. Trump administration, 10 senior commanders and Iraqi officials told Reuters.

The move to defuse tensions follows repeated warnings issued privately by U.S. officials to the Iraqi government since Trump took power in January, according to the sources who include six local commanders of four major militias.

'No argument from any of us, Mr. President.'

...The officials told Baghdad that unless it acted to disband the militias operating on its soil, America could target the groups with airstrikes, the people added.

Izzat al-Shahbndar, a senior Shi'ite Muslim politician close to Iraq's governing alliance, told Reuters that discussions between Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and several militia leaders were "very advanced", and the groups were inclined to comply with U.S. calls for disarmament.

"The factions are not acting stubbornly or insisting on continuing in their current form," he said, adding that the groups were "fully aware" they could be targeted by the U.S.

They even got the 'okay' from headquarters.

..."Trump is ready to take the war with us to worse levels, we know that, and we want to avoid such a bad scenario," said a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, the most powerful Shi'ite militia, who spoke from behind a black face mask and sunglasses.

The commanders said their main ally and patron, Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) military force, had given them its blessing to take whatever decisions they deemed necessary to avoid being drawn into a potentially ruinous conflict with the United States and Israel.

And, of course, anyone familiar with treacherous Islamic dealings has his cynical hat firmly in place - no doubt they are biding time, as ever - but the backoff and stand down is remarkable in its nature.

...While the fate of any disarmament process remains uncertain, the discussions nonetheless mark the first time the militias have been prepared to give ground to longstanding Western pressure to demilitarize.

The shift comes at a precarious time for Tehran's regional "Axis of Resistance" which it has established at great cost over decades to oppose Israel and U.S. influence but has seen severely weakened since Palestinian group Hamas' attack on Israel on October 7 2023 tipped the Middle East into conflict.

What a difference a president makes.

...Ibrahim al-Sumaidaie, a former political adviser to Sudani, told Iraqi state TV that the United States had long pressed Iraq's leadership to dismantle Shi'ite militias, but this time Washington might not take no for an answer.

"If we do not voluntarily comply, it may be forced upon us from the outside, and by force."

Something's in the air, and for once, maybe it's not a drone.

Just backbone.