Houthis vow revenge for US attacks in Yemen as conflict escalates
Houthi forces in Yemen vowed Friday to retaliate against an American-led barrage of military attacks, as the Middle East remained alert to more escalation that could widen the conflict and further damage critical shipping lanes between Europe and Asia could disrupt.
The pre-dawn attacks on Friday, with missiles and fighter jets launched by the United States and Britain, came in response to an intensification of attacks on commercial ships and warships in the Red Sea by the Iran-backed Houthi militia, which has said to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in the war between Israel and Hamas.
A military spokesman for the Houthis, Yahya Saree, said in a social media post that the US-led attacks “would not go unanswered and unpunished.” He said they had killed at least five members of the Houthi forces, an armed group that controls northern Yemen, including the capital Sana.
The US and British forces fired more than 150 missiles and bombs at several dozen targets in Yemen, chosen specifically to damage the Houthis' ability to compromise shipping – weapons caches, radars and missile and drone launch sites , US officials said. It was the first Western attack after repeated warnings from the United States and its allies that the Houthis and Iran must halt naval attacks or face the consequences, only to see them increase.
“I would expect that they would attempt some form of retaliation,” Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, director of the US Army Joint Staff, told reporters on a conference call on Friday, adding that this would be a mistake. “We just won't let ourselves be bothered here.”
John Kirby, a White House spokesman, said Friday that the attacks, ordered by President Biden, were not intended to spark a broader regional war.
“We are not interested in a war with Yemen – we are not interested in any conflict,” he said. “In fact, everything the president has done has tried to prevent any escalation of the conflict, including last night's strikes.”
Mr Kirby said anything that hit the United States was a “valid, legitimate military target.”
The British Prime Minister's office said no further attacks on Houthi targets are currently planned but the situation will be monitored.
Military analysts were still assessing the results of the barrage on Friday, but General Sims said the strikes had achieved their goal of damaging the Houthis' ability to launch the kind of complex drone and missile attack they carried out on Tuesday .
U.S. and British forces hit more than 60 targets at 16 locations with more than 100 precision-guided munitions during an initial wave of attacks, General Sims and other officials said. About 30 to 60 minutes later, a second wave hit dozens more targets at 12 additional locations with more than 50 weapons, they said.
The number of casualties was likely minimal because of the time of day and remote location of many of the targets, General Sims said. He sidestepped questions about whether the Houthis could have moved people and equipment out of harm's way in advance due to widespread news reports that the strikes were imminent.
The consequences of the tensions in the Red Sea have spread far beyond the Middle East. A number of commercial ships bound for the Suez Canal changed course after the American-led attacks. The International Association of Independent Tanker Owners, a trade association, said shipping companies had been advised by the US-led coalition to avoid the Bab al Mendab, the narrow strait at the mouth of the Red Sea, for “several days”.
The Suez Canal, which handles more than 20,000 ships a year and generates billions of dollars in transit fees for Egypt, has seen traffic decline as hundreds of ships have diverted their journeys to avoid the canal and the Red Sea and taken the much longer route around the Suez Canal taken. the southernmost tip of Africa, with an extension of one to three weeks.
Mr Biden confirmed the attacks on Thursday evening – Friday morning in Yemen – and said 2,000 ships had been forced to divert since mid-November.
In the three months since the Houthis began attacking commercial ships, the price of shipping a standard 40-foot container between China and Northern Europe has more than doubled from $1,500 to $4,000, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research organization.
The president called the strikes a “clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to jeopardize freedom of navigation on one of the world's most critical commercial routes.” ”
British warplanes took part in the attacks, and Australia, Bahrain, Canada and the Netherlands provided logistical, intelligence and other support, according to U.S. officials.
The attacks sparked large protests in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen, and even some U.S. allies in the Arab world said they worried the strikes would fail to deter the Houthis and a region seething over Israel's war against could further inflame Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Oman, a U.S. ally that has mediated talks with the Houthis, criticized the strikes and expressed “deep concern.”
Saudi Arabia, wary of the lifting of a fragile ceasefire in Yemen between the Houthis and the internationally recognized Saudi-backed government, said it was viewing the situation in the Red Sea with “extreme concern ” follow the. After spending years and billions of dollars on Yemen's civil war, the Saudis have attempted to withdraw from the conflict.
“The kingdom reaffirms the importance of protecting the security and stability of the Red Sea region,” the Saudi government said in a statement, adding a call for “self-restraint and avoidance of escalation.”
Russia on Friday requested an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the US-led attacks, according to a diplomat from France, which holds the council's rotating presidency this month. The hearing is scheduled for Friday afternoon and will be a closed meeting, according to the diplomat. On Wednesday, the Council adopted a resolution condemning the Houthi attacks in the Red Sea but not authorizing any action in response.
Analysts who study the Houthis said Friday that the American-led airstrikes could play a role in the group's agenda and are unlikely to stop the group's attacks.
“This was not a miscalculation by the Houthis,” said Hannah Porter, senior research officer at ARK Group, a British international development firm. “This was the goal. They hope for an extended regional war, and would like to be on the front lines of that war.”
Within hours of the strikes, a senior Houthi official said the United States and Britain would soon realize they had committed “the greatest folly in their history.”
“Yemen is not an easy military opponent that can be quickly subdued,” the official, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, said on social media. “It is ready to engage in a long struggle that will change the direction of the region and the world.”
The war in Gaza has catapulted the Houthis, whose ideology has long included hostility toward the United States and Israel, to unlikely prominence. Part of the group's slogan is “Death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews.” Their attacks in the Red Sea and their support for the Palestinian cause have earned them popularity in the Arab world.
The group, which adheres to a religious ideology inspired by a sect of Shiite Islam, has honed its military capabilities through years of civil war. In 2014, the country took over Sana and fended off a Saudi-led coalition that wanted to expel it. This exacerbated one of the world's worst humanitarian crises while leaving the Houthis in power in northern Yemen. There they have created an impoverished proto-state that they rule with an iron fist.
“They calculate that there are not many high-value targets for the US and Britain to attack because the country is already in ruins,” said Abdullah Baabood, an Omani senior non-resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center. “Therefore, they will not hesitate to continue to test the situation and escalate the conflict.”
Ms Porter agreed it was “extremely unlikely” the strikes would stop the group's Red Sea attacks. “The Houthis are very comfortable in a war environment,” she said. “They are more successful as a military group than as a government.”
The strikes could also help the Houthis with domestic politics, said Ibrahim Jalal, a Yemeni non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based research group. The direct confrontation with the West provides “a new pretext for a 'foreign enemy' to distract the public from their failing rebel government that is not providing services,” he said.
Hundreds of thousands of people in Yemen have died from fighting, hunger and disease since a Saudi-led coalition began its bombing campaign in 2015, supported by US weapons and military aid.
Aid groups and Yemeni analysts have warned that the new strikes, combined with the escalation in the Red Sea, could worsen Yemen's economic crisis, raising fuel and food costs and increasing hunger.
“Yemenis across the country have woken up to fear of a return to conflict,” said Jared Rowell, Yemen country director of the International Rescue Committee. “Nine years of war have taken a huge toll, leaving more than 18 million people – more than half the population – in urgent need of assistance.”
Reporting was contributed by Erik Schmitt, Raja Abdulrahim, Zach Montague, Saeed Al-Batati, Stanley Reed, Farnaz Fassihi, Stephen's Castle And Gaya Gupta.