The Iran-aligned Yemeni rebel group waging an ongoing campaign of attacks against commercial vessels in the Red Sea over Israel’s war in Gaza has told Newsweek that it would respond forcefully to the U.S. bombing Yemen.
“Any strike against us will be responded to, absolutely, without the slightest doubt, with all force and determination, and the region will be on the verge of escalation, the end of which no one knows,” Nasreddin Amer, deputy information secretary for Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, told Newsweek on Thursday as reports first emerged of up to a dozen strikes being conducted by the United States and the United Kingdom in Yemen.
“Any strike against us has no justification,” Amer added, “as it is only support for Israel to continue killing the oppressed Palestinian people.”
U.S. President Joe Biden later confirmed the operation in a statement issued by the White House, saying that the U.S. and the U.K. jointly operated “with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands” to conduct “strikes against a number of targets in Yemen used by Houthi rebels to endanger freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most vital waterways.”
“These strikes are in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea—including the use of anti-ship ballistic missiles for the first time in history,” the U.S. leader added. “These attacks have endangered U.S. personnel, civilian mariners, and our partners, jeopardized trade, and threatened freedom of navigation.”
Biden referred to the strikes as “a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most critical commercial routes,” and warned he “will not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
Yemeni protesters loyal to Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthi movement, lift their rifles as they participate in a protest against Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza and threats by the United States and United Kingdom amid U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s warning of a military response to rebel attacks in the Red Sea on Thursday in Sanaa, Yemen.
Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
In the aftermath of the strikes, a U.S. defense official told Newsweek that “manned aircraft from the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force were used” in the operation and that “this strike occurred from air, surface, and subsurface platforms.”
“This multilateral action included suppressing air defense by targeting radar systems, UAS [unmanned aerial system] storage and launch sites, cruise missile storage and launch sites, as well as ballistic missile storage and launch sites,” the U.S. defense official said. “Degrading these capabilities hinders the Houthi’s ability to continue their malign behavior in the future.”
A senior U.S. military official speaking to reporters on Thursday evening said that “the aim of these strikes was very clear from the beginning and from the president, and it was to remove the capability for the Houthis to target maritime vessels, whether they be commercial or military, in the Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb and Gulf of Aden.” The U.K. was said to have provided fighter jets that participated in the operation.
A senior Biden administration official also speaking with reporters Thursday evening said that targets of the joint U.S.-U.K. strikes focused “specifically on Houthi missile, radar and UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] capabilities, the capabilities that are essential to the Houthis’ campaign against commercial shipping in international waters.”
The senior administration official said that the U.S. was preparing for potential retaliation by the group.
“While we fully expect this action to diminish the Houthis’ capability and, certainly, over time, to reduce their capacity and propensity to conduct these attacks,” the senior administration official said, “we will not be surprised to see some sort of response.”
The senior administration official also dismissed Ansar Allah’s connection between its maritime campaign and the war in Gaza as “completely baseless and illegitimate.”
“The Houthis also claim to be targeting specifically Israeli-owned ships or ships bound for Israel. That is simply not true,” the senior administration official said. “They are firing indiscriminately on vessels with global ties. Most of the ships that have come under attack have nothing whatsoever to do with Israel and even if that were not the case, it is no justification for these illegal attacks in international waterways.”
As the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution Wednesday demanding an immediate end to Ansar Allah’s campaign in the Red Sea, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that “there will be consequences” in response to the largest missile and drone attack to date conducted by Ansar Allah, widely known as the Houthis, against merchant vessels in the Red Sea on Tuesday.
U.S. and U.K. warships deployed to the region responded to the attack, firing down a number of projectiles in line with a mission established last month alongside 10 other coalition partners.
White House National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby repeated Blinken’s prior to the strikes on Thursday, asserting that “we’re going to do what we have to do to counter and defeat these threats that the Houthis keep throwing up on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.”
Later that same day, reports emerged across news outlets and social media of airstrikes conducted by the U.S. and U.K. in Yemen. Footage that Newsweek was unable to verify appeared to show fires raging at Al-Dilaimi airbase in Sanaa corresponding with reports of airstrikes.
Ansar Allah has long contended with enemy aerial action, mostly from a U.S.-backed, Saudi-led coalition established in March 2015 after the group took control of Sanaa amid a civil war that continues to divide Yemen to this day. While a ceasefire first brokered by the United Nations in April 2022 has managed to halt most hostilities, parties to the conflict and international supporters have so far failed to come up with a lasting peace plan.
Iran has long denied U.S. accusations that it directly provided Ansar Allah with military aid, though the group has managed to amass a sizable arsenal of missiles and drones. These platforms have been directed against both commercial vessels, as well as southern Israel since the war in Gaza began in October with an unprecedented surprise attack led by the Palestinian Hamas movement.
U.S. troops have also come under near-daily attack in Iraq and Syria by militias also aligned with a broader pro-Iran “Axis of Resistance” proclaiming solidarity with Hamas and other Palestinian factions in Gaza.
Hamas issued a statement on Thursday night condemning the U.S.-led strikes in Yemen, calling them “a crime and a blatant aggression against Yemeni sovereignty, and a threat to the security of the region, which is witnessing American and British militarization that came to protect the Nazi-Zionist occupation and to cover up its crimes against the Palestinian people and the entire region.”
“As we highly value the position of brotherly Yemen and its heroic people in standing with our Palestinian people in the Battle of Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas said, “we affirm that the brutal aggression against Yemen is an uncalculated act of terrorism, under the influence of the will of the Zionist occupation and its extremist Nazi leadership, and will only increase the stoke the fire and increase the tension in the region. Washington and London bear responsibility for its repercussions.”
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
