The airstrikes meant to cow Yemen’s Houthi militants are pitting the US and its allies against an Iran-backed movement that senses its moment has arrived after seizing on the Israel-Hamas war three months ago. It’s also a confrontation that Iran has been scripting in the decades spent assembling what’s been called its “axis of resistance” to Israel and the US. But never before did members of Tehran’s arc of influence — stretching from the Houthis to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon to militias in Iraq and Syria — coordinate so well and on such scale. What happens next rests not just on Iran but ... (full story)