CNN
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The US and UK militaries launched strikes against multiple Houthi targets in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen on Thursday, marking a significant response after the Biden administration and its allies warned that the Iran-backed militant group would bear the consequences of repeated drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
President Joe Biden said he ordered the strikes “in direct response to unprecedented Houthi attacks against international maritime vessels in the Red Sea.”
“Today, at my direction, U.S. military forces—together with the United Kingdom and with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, and the Netherlands—successfully conducted 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,” the president said in a statement released by the White House.
Biden added that he will “not hesitate to direct further measures to protect our people and the free flow of international commerce as necessary.”
The strikes were from fighter jets and Tomahawk missiles. More than a dozen Houthi targets were fired upon by missiles fired from air, surface, and sub platforms and were chosen for their ability to degrade the Houthis’ continued attacks on vessels in the Red Sea, a US official told CNN.
They included radar systems, drone storage and launch sites, ballistic missile storage and launch sites, and cruise missile storage and launch sites.
The strikes are a sign of the growing international alarm over the threat to one of the world’s most critical waterways. For weeks, the US had sought to avoid direct strikes on Yemen because of the risk of escalation in a region already simmering with tension, but the ongoing Houthi attacks on international shipping compelled the coalition to act.
Senior administration officials briefed congressional leadership earlier Thursday on the US plans, according to a congressional source.
The Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping on Tuesday marked the final straw that culminated in Biden giving the green light for the US to move forward with Thursday’s strikes, though preparations have been ongoing for some time, a senior US official told CNN.
The USS Florida, a guided missile submarine that crossed into the Red Sea on November 23, was part of the attack on Yemen, according to a second US official. Like the surface ships that participated in the attack, the sub fired Tomahawk land-attack missiles, the official said.
The strikes come as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin remains hospitalized following complications from a surgery for prostate cancer.
Though the US has carried out strikes against Iranian proxies in Iraq and Syria since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, this marks the first known strike against the Houthis in Yemen. They come at a time of huge tension in the Middle East as the US looks to ensure the war in Gaza does not spill out into the wider region. The Biden administration had been wary of striking the Houthis, worrying it could upset a delicate cease-fire between the militant group and Saudi Arabia that was achieved after years of war.
Over the course of the past several weeks, Biden has weighed potential strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen against the prospect of an escalating crisis in the Middle East. His underlying hesitancy in ordering direct action has been the potential of getting drawn in more directly to an expanding conflict — a scenario US officials believe could ultimately be Iran’s objective.
But the White House had made clear the repeated Houthi attacks on international shipping lanes in the southern Red Sea were intolerable. The attacks have forced some of the world’s largest shipping companies to avoid the waterway, instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa.
Hours before the strike on Thursday, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Iran “has a role to play” in getting the Houthis to stop their “reckless, dangerous, and illegal activity.” If they did…
Read More: US and UK carry out strikes against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen