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.”
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.
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