Also Iran has two items for the Houthis on the agenda there.
1. Fire off what you've got and waste the enemy's ammunition in the process.
2. Allow us to monitor their responses and study how they work.
By holding off, though, and if possible in the meantime actually contacting the Houthis, you can make them feel human and some among them may even see the rest of the world as human like them. Eventually they will have to release the ship that they pirated, but it will have to be in a spirit of willingness and generosity. Do we have any Lawrences these days?
(They will have got some kind of message when they lost those three boats the other day, though. But it would also have given the strident ones an ego boost.)