The war on terror is back the Houthis in Yemen have just opened a new front

In his Commons statement yesterday, Rishi Sunak was right to characterise last Thursday's strike on Houthi rebels in Yemen as "limited, not escalatory" and a necessary act of self-defense after the unconscionable attacks on civilian and military shipping in the Red Sea.

- Matthew d’Ancona

In addition to the human cost of these assaults, the Islamists' campaign has threatened one of the world's most important shipping lanes and forced many vessels to take detours of 5,000 miles. The moral, military and economic case for the action taken by the US, UK and its allies was irreproachable; and, given the attack yesterday on a US-owned ship in the Gulf of Aden it seems regrettably likely that further air strikes will be necessary to degrade the Houthis' military infrastructure.

The PM was also wise to resist what he called the "malign narrative" pursued by a number of Left-wing MPS - connecting retaliation against the Houthis directly to the conflict in Gaza. Though the militants themselves have opportunistically insisted upon such a linkage, their attacks on shipping have been wholly indiscriminate. The predicament of Palestinian civilians has not been alleviated even slightly by Houthi maritime violence.

That said, yesterday's two-hour debate did draw necessary attention to another geopolitical connection: namely, Iran's so-called "axis of resistance" and the nexus of proxy forces that has its global headquarters in Tehran and is overseen by the Quds Force, an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.