ANDREW NEIL: As Iran-backed Houthi terror in the Red Sea forces Britain and America into military action, this is how the ayatollahs are fomenting atrocities and instability everywhere - and threatening conflagration across the globe

Britain and America have responded at last to relentless Houthi terrorist attacks on merchant ships in the Red Sea, which threaten to close the Suez Canal, a vital artery of world trade.

British-American forces launched more than 60 air and sea strikes on 16 Houthi military and logistical sites in Yemen on Thursday.

More will follow if, in the words of President Biden, 'hostile actors [continue] to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world's most critical commercial routes'.

Not before time. Western inaction has merely emboldened the Houthis, who are acting in support of Hamas in Gaza, to be even more of a nuisance to world shipping. But though Houthi rebels, who won control of the Yemeni coastline that borders the Red Sea during that country's civil war, were the immediate target for allied military action, let us be in no doubt who the real enemy is here: Iran.

Indeed, everywhere there is trouble in the Middle East (and sometimes even beyond that region) these days you can be pretty sure Iran is a pivotal player in encouraging violence, instability and unrest, either doing so directly or through its many nasty regional proxies.

The Houthi rebels are armed and financed by Tehran. Iran has supplied them with the drones and missiles to attack unarmed vessels, cutting container ship activity in the Suez Canal by 90 per cent, thereby threatening a commercial lifeline vital to Europe's prosperity. An Iranian spy ship was placed at the entrance to the Red Sea to help guide the Houthis to their targets.

Iran even offers Yemenis £79 a month to join the Houthi militia, which might not sound like much for a very risky occupation but in a country torn apart by civil strife, resulting in 80 per cent living below the poverty line in what was already a very poor country, it's no surprise that thousands of young Yemenis have flocked to the Houthi flag.

But bankrolling the Houthis is only a small part of the poison Iran constantly injects into the Middle East.

Tehran was clearly behind Hamas's brutal invasion of Israel on October 7, which has plunged the region into chaos. It has financed, armed and trained Hamas for years.

We know there was a secret meeting of Hamas leaders and senior Iranian regime officials in Beirut in the run up to the attack. We also know that Tehran was increasingly worried that Saudi Arabia was close to signing up to the Abraham Accords, agreements brokered between Israel and several Gulf states by the Trump administration, which normalised relations between previously hostile countries.

The Saudis were the big prize in this process and they were coming round to participating. But when Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump in the Oval Office three years ago the whole process was stalled for the rather childish reason that it had been a Trump initiative, so neither Biden nor his somewhat pro-Palestinian State Department wanted to know about it.

By last year, however, even Biden could see the advantages of involving the Saudis. The show was back on the road. The Iranians were alarmed at the prospect. They had made tentative moves to have their own better relations with the Saudis. This risked disrupting that slow-burn diplomatic initiative. It had to be stopped.

It was — by October 7. Iran knew if the Hamas attack was done with sufficient brutality, engendering a savage Israeli response, it would scupper any moves to add the Saudis to the Accords. And so it has proved. Chalk that up as another success for Iran's bid to become the dominant regional superpower. But the meddling didn't stop there.

In the weeks after October 7 Hezbollah, a far more powerful Iranian proxy force than Hamas based in southern Lebanon, was encouraged to launch more than 1,000 rockets on northern Israeli communities. The attacks were carefully calibrated by Tehran not to risk a full-scale conflagration with Israel (much to the chagrin of Hamas). But they kept Israel pinned down, worrying and wondering about what might be next.

Iran's appetite for mayhem is insatiable. Not content with triggering October 7, unleashing the Houthis on the Red Sea and firing up Hezbollah, it also encouraged pro-Iranian militias in Syria and Iraq to attack U.S. bases in the region. There have been around 130 since Hamas attacked Israel, more pinpricks than serious attacks and, thankfully, no U.S. fatalities to date (though some have suffered life-changing injuries).

But the Biden administration's proclivity merely to look the other way has only emboldened these Iranian proxies to increase the intensity of their attacks which, in turn, has caused despair in moderate Arab capitals at the lack of a robust U.S. response.

Indeed, far from showing Iran an iron fist, Biden (at least until very recently) was more inclined to put a friendly arm around the regime in Tehran.

The attempt to bring Iran in from the cold started under President Obama, was frozen under Trump and started again under Biden (whose foreign policy cadre largely cut their teeth in the Obama administration, hence the continuity).

America has almost nothing to show for its olive branches over the years. Obama returned shedloads of cash which had been been frozen by sanctions, only to see the money fed to Iran's proxies across the region by its sinister Quds Force, which fosters and finances various foreign Islamist militia. It was the Quds Force which was given an extra $250 million by the Iranian regime in 2022 to arm the Houthis with long-range missiles and state-of-the-art drone technology which it's been using to such effect on the Red Sea.

Biden almost repeated Obama's mistake by planning to hand over another $6 billion to Tehran, until the events of October 7 made that politically impossible.

Even so, the more Iran unleashes its proxies, the more it seems the Biden administration loosens its sanctions.

Iranian oil production reached 3.4 million barrels per day last year, a five-year high, much of it exported. Given the price of oil these days, it doesn't really need America to return its frozen assets.

President Biden — or more accurately his State Department — has tried to breathe new life into stalled attempts to get Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. Tehran has played along with these diplomatic overtures while tripling its ability to produce near weapons-grade uranium, which the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed it was doing at two facilities only last November.

Experts think this could be converted into weapons-grade uranium within a few days and that Iran will soon have enough for three bombs. At least until this week, almost nothing Iran does has kindled the ire of America or its allies.

It's even been able to cosy up to the Kremlin offering missiles and drones for President Putin's beleaguered forces in Ukraine.

Last month a Russian delegation visited an Iranian training facility to watch the testing of ballistic missiles and related equipment by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, including its short-range Ababeel missile.

Russia has already acquired a large number of drones from Iran to use against Ukraine. Now a Russian-Iranian joint venture is building a new factory in Russia to make thousands of drones to be deployed there. In return Russia is offering Tehran 'unprecedented defence cooperation' on missiles, military electronics, satellites and air defence systems.

A grim axis of evil in the making if ever there was one. Yet America and its allies sit idly by, twiddling their thumbs.

Even the systemic and brutal repression of its own people barely raises a response from the West these days. Every so often brave Iranians — especially Iranian women — rise up in protest at the absurd strictures of living under a medieval theocratic regime, only to be brutally put down.

Just over a year ago 22-year old Mahsa Amini was detained by the so-called morality police for displaying a few locks of hair — a violation of Iran's mandatory hijab laws. She died after three days in custody from blows to her head and limbs.

Many others have suffered a similar fate but her tragic death (state murder really) provoked great public anger and protest, which was also brutally put down. Hanging is a regular tool of regime repression, over 800 last year, including many women. One was executed for murdering her husband. She'd been a child bride forced into marrying an older man, who constantly raped and beat her. She was given the death penalty nevertheless.

Iran is no place for women — and despite the supposed religiosity of the Iranian regime has no time for compassion.

There is, however, coherence in Iran's strategy for regional domination. It wants to become the superpower of an Islamist Middle East. It knows it suffers from two drawbacks: it's a Shiite state in a largely Sunni region; and the region is Arab, which Iranians are not (bar a small minority).

It overcomes both disadvantages by supporting and encouraging some of the region's more extremist Islamist groups. So even Hamas, which unlike Shiite Hezbollah, is Sunni, enjoys its largesse. Because support for what are effectively a series of terrorist groups incurs the wrath of the West and moderate Arab states, it uses this supposed external threat to clamp down on any internal dissension.

It is a fair bet that if anything bad or evil is happening in the Middle East or areas around it these days, then Iran is probably behind it. Its tentacles grow ever longer.

Even British security services admit they cannot be sure of protecting Iranian dissidents in our country from regime hitmen.

The tragedy is that, without the medieval mullahs in charge of Iran, it could be one of the most prosperous countries in the world.

Its people are hard working and entrepreneurial, its young have a deep thirst for education and advance, it has an ancient and sophisticated culture and, despite the malign hand of the mullahs these past 40 years or so, a vibrant middle class has somehow survived.

They also have a desire to be free and they often look longingly at the West. Iran is the only country in the region where a young female protester is more likely to be burning her headscarf than the U.S. flag.

America and its allies need to find their backbone when dealing with Iran. Appeasement has only encouraged the Tehran regime to be ever more bold in its quest for regional domination.

As long as it represses its own people and encourages its proxies to spread violence and misery throughout the Middle East it should face the toughest sanctions and, where necessary, a military response, such as taking out its drone-making facilities.

This is not a call to war. The Soviet Union was not defeated by war. But it means a far more robust response from America and its allies to force Iran to rein in its troublesome proxies — and to give hope to the majority of Iranians who want to see the back of the mullahs.

Cyber attacks on Iranian infrastructure, from the power grid to its oil installations to its ports, would be a reminder that waging war through proxies is not without cost. A few anti-regime messages inserted into Iranian TV and radio would not go amiss either. Iranian viewers would love them.

Iranian inflation is running at over 40 per cent, young folks are unhappy at the prospects before them, the currency is down 25 per cent on the year. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is 84 and a messy succession beckons when he dies.

It should not be beyond the wit of the West to give the forces of change in Iran a bit of a boost.

The sad truth is that Iran under the mullahs has been the crucible of many of the Middle East's recurring problems and the source of much terror and suffering in the region and beyond.

It has been given too easy a ride by America and its allies, with consequences sadly now all too plain to see. Time to learn lessons and stiffen our resolve to confront its malign presence.