Middle East and North Africa

To date, the US has lost at least three Reaper drones over Yemen, each costing $30m.

Estimates of the total cost of the operation range between $260m and $573m per month – that is, between $1.8bn and $4bn so far.

None of the US and its allies’ actions in the Red Sea have stopped the disruption of shipping lanes. Shipping and insurance costs have soared.

President Biden himself has admitted that the strikes against Houthis do not work. Yet, he has refused to stop them even as experts are suggesting that “strategic inaction” may in fact be more effective. He has also refused to use the most effective way to stop the Houthis: to press Israel into putting an end to the genocide in Gaza. The Houthis have repeatedly made clear that their attacks will stop as soon as there is a ceasefire.

Yet that's exactly what happened and the US public are not only okay with it, but eager to repeat it again.

So now I am taking bets on how much time and money do you think the US will lose in the Middle East to achieve nothing except looking foolish in the eyes of the world.

The Arab Peace Initiative (Arabic: مبادرة السلام العربية; Hebrew: יוזמת השלום הערבית), also known as the Saudi Initiative (Arabic: مبادرة السعودية; Hebrew: היוזמה הסעודית), is a 10 sentence proposal for an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict that was endorsed by the Arab League in 2002 at the Beirut Summit and re-endorsed at the 2007 and at the 2017 Arab League summits.[1] The initiative offers normalisation of relations by the Arab world with Israel, in return for a full withdrawal by Israel from the occupied territories (including the West Bank, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and Lebanon), with the possibility of comparable and mutual agreed minor swaps of the land between Israel and Palestine, a "just settlement" of the Palestinian refugee problem based on UN Resolution 194, and the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.[2]

The Palestinian Authority led by Yasser Arafat immediately embraced the initiative.[4] His successor Mahmoud Abbas also supported the plan and officially asked U.S. President Barack Obama to adopt it as part of his Middle East policy.[5] Initial reports indicate that Islamist political party Hamas, the elected government of the Gaza Strip, was deeply divided,[6] while later reports indicate that Hamas accepted the peace initiative.[7][8] The Israeli government under Ariel Sharon rejected the initiative as a "non-starter"[9] because it required Israel to withdraw to pre-June 1967 borders.[10] In 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed tentative support for the Initiative,[11] but in 2018, he rejected it as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians.[12]