US, Britain strike Yemen's Houthis in a new wave, retaliating for attacks by Iran-backed militants

In a second round of attacks aimed at further disabling Iran-backed militias that have been attacking American and international objectives since the Israel-Hamas conflict, the United States and Britain hit 36 Houthi sites in Yemen on Saturday. However, Washington again refrained from taking direct aim at Iran in an attempt to strike a balance between escalating the confrontation and responding with force.

US warships and American and British fighter planes staged the most recent attacks against the Houthis. In response for the drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan last weekend, additional Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were the targets of an airstrike on Friday in Iraq and Syria.

The Houthi targets were in 13 different locations and were struck by US F/A-18 fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier, by British Typhoon FGR4 fighter aircraft and by the Navy destroyers USS Gravely and the USS Carney firing Tomahawk missiles from the Red Sea, according to US officials and the U.K. Defense Ministry. The US officials were not authorized to publicly discuss the military operation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Following the troops’ fatalities at the Tower 22 facility in Jordan last Sunday, the US issued a warning, saying that its retribution will not be restricted to one night, one target, or one group. The Houthis have been one of the main US antagonists since Hamas struck Israel on October 7, killing over 1,200 people and seizing over 250 captives, even though there has been no indication that they were directly responsible. Since the start of the conflict, more than 26,000 Palestinians have died and over 64,400 have been injured in Israeli military operations, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza.

The Houthis have been conducting almost daily missile or drone attacks against commercial and military ships transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden and they have made clear that they have no intention of scaling back their campaign despite pressure from the American and British campaign.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a Houthi official, said “military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us.” He wrote online that the “American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”

The Biden administration has indicated that this is likely not the last of its strikes. The US has blamed the Jordan attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iranian-backed militias. Iran has tried to distance itself from the drone strike, saying the militias act independently of its direction.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the military action, with support from Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, the Netherlands, and New Zealand, “sends a clear message to the Houthis that they will continue to bear further consequences if they do not end their illegal attacks on international shipping and naval vessels.”

He added: “We will not hesitate to defend lives and the free flow of commerce in one of the world’s most critical waterways.”

The Defense Department said the strikes targeted sites associated with the Houthis’ deeply buried weapons storage facilities, missile systems and launchers, air defense systems, radars and helicopters. The British military said it struck a ground control station west of Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, that has been used to control Houthi drones that have launched against vessels in the Red Sea.

President Joe Biden was briefed on the strikes before he left Delaware on Saturday for a West Coast campaign trip, according to an administration official.

The latest strikes marked the third time the US and Britain had conducted a large joint operation to strike Houthi weapon launchers, radar sites and drones. The strikes in Yemen are meant to underscore the broader message to Iran that Washington holds Tehran responsible for arming, funding and training the array of militias — from Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen — who are behind attacks across the Mideast against US and international interests.

Video shared online by people in Sanaa included the sound of explosions and at least one blast was seen lighting up the night sky. Residents described the blasts as happening around buildings associated with the Yemeni presidential compound. The Houthi-controlled state-run news agency, SABA, reported strikes in al-Bayda, Dhamar, Hajjah, Hodeida, Taiz and Sanaa provinces.

Hours before the latest joint operation, the US took another self-defense strike on a site in Yemen, destroying six anti-ship cruise missiles, as it has repeatedly when it has detected a missile or drone ready to launch. The day before the strikes the US destroyer Laboon and F/A-18s from the Eisenhower shot down seven drones fired from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen into the Red Sea and the destroyer Carney shot down a drone fired in the Gulf of Aden and US forces took out four more drones that were prepared to launch.

The Houthis’ attacks have led shipping companies to reroute their vessels from the Red Sea, sending them around Africa through the Cape of Good Hope — a much longer, costlier and less efficient passage. The threats also have led the US and its allies to set up a joint mission where warships from participating nations provide a protective umbrella of air defense for ships as they travel the critical waterway that runs from the Suez Canal down to the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.

During normal operations about 400 commercial vessels transit the southern Red Sea at any given time.

In the wake of the strikes Friday in Iraq and Syria, Hussein al-Mosawi, spokesperson for Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the main Iranian-backed militias in Iraq, said Washington “must understand that every action elicits a reaction.” But in an AP interview in Baghdad, he also struck a more conciliatory tone. “We do not wish to escalate or widen regional tensions,” he said.

Iraqi officials have attempted to rein in the militias, while also condemning US retaliatory strikes as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and calling for an exit of the 2,500 US troops who are in the country as part of an international coalition to fight the Islamic State group. Last month, Iraqi and US military officials launched formal talks to wind down the coalition’s presence, a process that will likely take years.