Middle East crisis: US and UK launch heavy attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen

Middle East crisis: US and UK launch heavy attacks on Houthi sites in Yemen

The United States and Britain carried out large-scale military strikes on Saturday against multiple sites in Yemen controlled by Houthi militants, according to a statement from the two countries and six allies, as the Biden administration continues its Middle East retaliation campaign against Iran. . -militias backed by

The strikes against 36 Houthi targets at 13 sites in northern Yemen came just 24 hours after the United States carried out a series of military strikes against Iranian forces and the militias they support at seven sites in Syria and Iraq.

American and British fighter jets, as well as Navy Tomahawk cruise missiles, hit deeply buried weapons storage facilities; missile systems and launchers; air defense systems; and radars in Yemen, according to the statement. Australia, Bahrain, Denmark, Canada, the Netherlands and New Zealand provided support, which officials said included intelligence and logistics assistance.

“These precision strikes aim to disrupt and degrade the capabilities that the Houthis use to threaten global trade and the lives of innocent sailors, and are a response to a series of illegal, dangerous and destabilizing actions by the Houthis since previous attacks by the coalition,” the statement said. he said, referring to the major attacks carried out by the United States and Britain last month.

The attacks were the second largest barrage since the allies first attacked Houthi targets on January 11. They came after a week in which the Houthis had been particularly defiant, launching several attack drones and ballistic and cruise missiles against merchant ships and US Navy warships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden.

The U.S.-led air and naval strikes began last month in response to dozens of Houthi drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since November. The Houthis claim their attacks are in protest of Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza.

The United States and several allies had repeatedly warned the Houthis of serious consequences if the bombing did not stop. But the US-led strikes have so far failed to deter the Houthis from attacking sea routes to and from the Suez Canal that are critical to global trade. Hundreds of ships have been forced to take a long detour around southern Africa, driving up costs.

“Our military operations against the Zionist entity will continue until the aggression against Gaza ceases, regardless of the sacrifices it demands of us,” a senior Houthi official said in response to the latest attacks. “We will meet escalation with escalation.”

While the Biden administration maintains that it is not seeking to expand the war in the region, the attacks of the past two days represent an escalation.

In scope, the attacks in Yemen were about the size of the U.S. and British attacks on Jan. 22, but smaller than the Jan. 11 salvos, officials said.

Saturday’s attacks came after an exchange of more limited attacks in the previous 36 hours between the Houthis and US forces in the Red Sea and nearby waters.

A protest in Sana, Yemen, on Friday. The Houthi militia in Yemen has vowed to keep up its attacks as Israel continues its invasion of Gaza.Credit…Yahya Arhab/EPA, via Shutterstock

At approximately 10:30 local time on Friday, the destroyer Carney shot down a drone flying over the Gulf of Aden. Six hours later, the United States attacked four Houthi attack drones that the military’s Central Command said were about to launch and threaten merchant ships in the Red Sea. At approximately 9:20 p.m., U.S. forces attacked cruise missiles in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen after determining they posed a threat to shipping in the region, Central Command said in another statement. And about five hours later, early on Saturday, the destroyer Laboon and FA-18 attack aircraft shot down seven drones flying over the Red Sea.

Then on Saturday night, before the planned strikes, the United States attacked six Houthi anti-ship cruise missiles as they prepared to launch them against ships in the Red Sea, Central Command said.

So far, the Biden administration has been trying to undermine the Houthis’ ability to threaten merchant and military vessels without killing large numbers of Houthi fighters and commanders, which could unleash even more chaos in the widening war. .

“I don’t see how these airstrikes achieve American objectives or prevent further regional escalation,” said Stacey Philbrick Yadav, a Yemen specialist at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. “While they may degrade Houthi capabilities in the short term, the group’s leaders have vowed to continue their attacks in the Red Sea and retaliate in response to these airstrikes.”

Saturday’s strikes came as the U.S. military had begun assessing dozens of airstrikes it carried out Friday night that hit 85 targets at seven sites in Iraq and Syria.

The strikes were in retaliation for a drone attack on a remote outpost in Jordan last Sunday that killed three American soldiers. Washington has suggested that an Iraqi militia linked to Iran, Kataib Hezbollah, was behind that attack.

Syria and Iraq said Friday’s attacks killed at least 39 people (23 in Syria and 16 in Iraq), a figure the Iraqi government said included civilians.

The multiple attacks left the region on edge, although analysts said they appeared designed to avoid a confrontation with Iran by focusing on the militias’ operational capabilities.

“We do not seek conflict in the Middle East or anywhere else,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said after Friday’s attacks, “but the president and I will not tolerate attacks on U.S. forces.”

Iranian officials’ reaction to Friday’s round of attacks was condemnatory but not inflammatory. A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nasser Kanaani, said the U.S. strikes represented “another strategic mistake,” but he did not talk about counterattacking.

Syria and Iraq denounced the US attacks on their countries as violations of their sovereignty, adding that the attacks would only impede the fight against Islamic State militants.

Washington not only timed the attacks to avoid fueling a broader war, but had openly warned that they would come days before the attacks, said Maha Yahya, director of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut, Lebanon. Both sides, he added, had sought ways to attack that would stay “below a threshold that would mean total war.”

There was a lot at stake in this particular US bombing, given the rising tensions across the Middle East due to the war in Gaza and the related violence it has fueled elsewhere in the region.

The rubble of a destroyed building in Al-Qaim, Iraq, on Saturday after a US airstrike the previous night.Credit…Reuters

Since the deadly Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, and Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign and ground invasion of Gaza, Iranian-backed militias have carried out more than 160 attacks against US forces in the region, as well as against commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The Houthis in Yemen have said they will not stop attacks in the Red Sea until there is a ceasefire in Gaza. Kanaani, the Iranian foreign minister, echoed that sentiment, saying on Saturday that “unlimited US support” for Israel was the main driver of regional tensions.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will return to the region this week to continue negotiations on the release of Israeli hostages and a temporary ceasefire. More than 27,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, according to Gaza health officials, and about 1,200 Israelis have died, Israeli officials said. More than 100 hostages kidnapped in Israel in the October 7 attack remain captive in Gaza.

The three American soldiers killed in Jordan were the first to die in Gaza-related military violence since the war began. The United States said it struck only targets associated with Iranian-backed militias that had been involved in the attack on the base in Jordan or other offensives against American troops.

But the United States did not attack Iran itself, despite its status as the patron and general coordinator of these militias. Nor did it attack Hezbollah in Lebanon, the most powerful of Iran’s regional proxies, which has been fighting Israeli troops along the Lebanon-Israel border throughout the war in Gaza.

This fits with the United States’ efforts to keep its own military activities separate from those of Israel, which says it seeks to destroy Hamas.

How successful the new attacks are in degrading the military capabilities of Iran and its proxies (or deterring them from attacking the United States) remains an open question.

Iran created its network, with affiliates in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen, to extend its influence and give it a way to attack its enemies without having to do so itself, analysts say. Anti-Iran hawks in the United States and the Middle East often argue that attacking proxies without attacking Iran is a waste of time.

Ms Yahya of the Carnegie Center said she did not expect the new US strikes to dramatically change the activities of Iran’s regional proxies.

“The only thing that would make them back down would be a clear signal from Iran telling them to back off,” he said. “But even then, they may or may not listen.”

This is because Iran does not directly control its proxies, who have significant freedom to make their own decisions, Yahya said.

The report was contributed by Raja Abdulrahim and Aaron Boxerman from jerusalem, Max Bearak from New York, Ben Hubbard from istanbul, Hwaida Saad from Beirut and David E. Sanger of Berlin.