Yemen’s Houthis have responded with defiance to Friday morning’s United States-led air raids on multiple strategic sites in the north of the country in retaliation for the movement’s disruption of shipping in the Red Sea.
In mid-November the Iran-allied Houthis began drone and missile attacks on ships to exert pressure for a ceasefire in Israel’s Gaza war.
Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said 73 strikes in five northern Yemeni regions killed five people and wounded six. He said the US and Britain bear “full responsibility for [the] criminal aggression against our Yemeni people and it will not go unanswered and unpunished.”
The first response came on Friday evening, when the British navy reported that a missile was fired at a vessel south of Yemen in the Gulf of Aden. It missed its target.
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The operation conducted by the US, Britain and other mainly Western allies followed Wednesday’s Security Council resolution demanding the Houthis cease their attacks in the waterway which handles 12 per cent of global shipping. The attacks have prompted about 20 per cent of commercial vessels to reroute around the tip of Africa, lengthening voyages and raising costs.
“The Houthis have been desperately waiting to engage with ‘America and Israel’ for 20 years. [Since the Hamas raid on Israel on October 7th] they recruited 45,000 fighters for the ‘battle of promised conquest and holy Jihad’,” Washington-based Middle East Institute (MEI) Yemen expert Nadwa Dawsari wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Today the US and the UK made their dream come true,” she stated.
While their Red Sea operations have projected the Yemeni tribal movement on to the world stage, the strikes by Israel’s allies conferred on the Houthis coveted warrior status in the escalating regional conflict over Gaza.
The US and Britain provided arms and logistics aid for the 2015 Saudi-Emirati war against the Houthis after they evicted the Saudi-sponsored government from the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, and seized the north of the country. The Emiratis pulled out in 2019 and the Houthis have defeated the Saudis, who are eager for a face-saving negotiated withdrawal.
Responding to the US-UK strikes on the Houthis, the Saudi foreign ministry called for “restraint” and “avoiding escalation”. The Saudis are concerned that the Houthis could abandon the peace talks or retaliate by, once again, rocketing Saudi airfields and oil installations.
Avoiding escalation was the focus of US secretary of state Antony Blinken’s eight-country – Turkey, Qatar, the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Palestine, Israel, and Egypt – tour of the region. It finished on Thursday with no agreement on ending the war. MEI senior fellow Randa Slim told Al Jazeera, “The region, minus Israel, is not interested in listening to the Americans until the Americans call for a ceasefire.”
Regional leaders argue spill-over could escalate until the Gaza war ends.
On the military front, in addition to the Red Sea flashpoint, cross-border exchanges between Lebanon’s Hizbullah and Israel’s army have intensified, prompting Israel to threaten full-scale war. Tit-for-tat strikes between pro-Iranian Iraqi militias and the US have compelled Baghdad to call for the withdrawal of 2,500 US troops from Iraq. In the Gulf of Oman, Iran has hijacked the oil tanker which was seized in 2022 by the US, which confiscated sanctioned Iranian oil.
On the political front, pro-Palestinian Moroccan activists have petitioned the parliament and king to renounce normalisation with Israel and the United Arab Emirates has called for an end to the United Nations Security Council veto. This enables the five permanent members – the US, Britain, France, China and Russia – to block council actions. The US has used its veto 45 times to block criticism or measures against Israel.
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