The Guardian - 2/4/2024 3:41:17 PM - GMT (+3 )
Washington says assault targeted 13 locations, including underground weapons stores, missile systems and launchers
A third wave of US and UK strikes hit 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday night, prompting a vow from the militant group to continue attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
The assault was supported by six other countries, including Canada, Netherlands and Bahrain. The US said the strikes targeted 13 locations across Yemen and hit underground weapons storage facilities, missile systems, launchers and other capabilities the Iranian-backed Houthis have used to attack Red Sea shipping.
The UK foreign secretary, David Cameron, defended the strikes. “We have issued repeated warnings to the Houthis,” he said. “Their reckless actions are putting innocent lives at risk, threatening the freedom of navigation and destabilising the region. The Houthi attacks must stop.” The US and UK previously launched joint strikes on 11 and 23 January.
The assault came the day after the Pentagon struck Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Syria in reprisal for the killing of three US soldiers at a military base on the Jordan-Syria border a week earlier.
The larger strategic conflict pits the US - which is trying to press Tehran into reining in its allied forces across the region – against Iran, which is determined to aid those forces to put pressure on the US to leave the region and for Hamas not to be destroyed in Gaza.
Neither Washington or Tehran, however, want to slip into direct conflict. Tehran has set a red line by telling the US not to mount any direct attack on Iranian soil, the course favoured by many US Republicans.
Explaining the reasoning for the attacks on the Houthis, the US defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, said: “This collective action 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.”
His UK counterpart, Grant Shapps, said: “The Houthis’ attacks on commercial and military vessels in the Red Sea are illegal and unacceptable and it is our duty to protect innocent lives and preserve freedom of navigation.
“That is why the Royal Air Force engaged in a third wave of proportionate and targeted strikes against Houthi military targets in Yemen.
“This is not an escalation. We have already successfully targeted launchers and storage sites involved in Houthi attacks, and I am confident that our latest strikes have further degraded the Houthis’ capabilities.
The Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Sarea said the strikes “will not pass without a response and consequences”. The Houthis said 48 attacks had been launched, including 13 in the capital, Sana’a.
Military and diplomatic experts are divided on whether the strikes will undermine the Houthi’s military and political base along the Red Sea coast and in the north of the country, including Sana’a. The group, which is armed and advised by Iran but is not a full-scale client agent, feels it has gained prestige in the Middle East by taking the lead in acting in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Its strikes have successfully deterred commercial shipping from using one of the world’s busiest waterways, pushing up transport costs and insurance premiums.
The Yemen strikes, now in their third week, are running in parallel to Washington’s ongoing retaliation for repeated attacks on US military bases in Iraq, Jordan and Syria. It carried out its first wave of attacks on Friday, striking more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the militias it backs, reportedly killing nearly 40 people.
The strikes in Iraq, telegraphed by the Pentagon for a week, do not appear to have killed any Iranian military advisers and were largely focussed on munitions dumps of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the umbrella group for militias operating in the country.
Iraq and Russia have called for an emergency meeting of the UN security council in New York on Monday to condemn the US actions. Iraq, which is caught in the crossfire of the dispute between Washington and Tehran, suffered a further invasion of its sovereignty last month when Iran hit what it claimed was a Mossad-linked spy headquarters in Erbil.
The strikes have reignited an already inflamed and long-running debate about the continued US troop presence in Iraq, and whether they are in the country to defeat Islamic State or further US interests.
Iraq’s national security adviser, Qasim al-Araji, said: “This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of abyss, and it also contradicts efforts to establish the required stability.”
In a sign of Iraqi sympathies, Araji met Abu Idris al-Sharafi, the special representative of the Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi last week, when the two sides “confirmed that the war in Gaza is the reason for the escalation in the region and its continuation is dragging the region into a war with dire consequences. The war must be stopped and the suffering of the Palestinian people must be lifted”.
Within hours of the US strikes, Islamic Resistance claimed to have targeted three US bases in Syria and Iraq, including the al-Tanf bases at the border triangle between Jordan, Iraq and Syria, and another base in Erbil, northern Iraq.
The statement of support for the US and UK strikes on the Houthis was confined at least initially to Australia, Canada, Bahrain, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Denmark.
The EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, called on all parties on Saturday to avoid further escalation in the Middle East. “Everybody should try to avoid the situation becoming explosive,” he said. “Certainly every attack contributes to the escalation, and the ministers have expressed their serious concern for this process.
“We can only call on everybody to understand that at any moment from this series of attacks and counter attacks, a spark can produce a greater incident”.
The EU is in the laborious process of launching its own naval mission in the Red Sea this month, designed to protect European shipping but not to undertake offensive operations.
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