Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told Fox News last weekend that the U.S. military had launched operations against the Houthis in Yemen because “ships haven’t been able to go through for over a year without being shot at.” He then said that in December-ish (not giving a specific date) that “we sent a ship through, it was shot at 17 times.”
Military sources who spoke to Military.com are puzzled because there were two attacks they know of in December against a merchant vessel and U.S. warships but “the munitions used didn’t appear to add up to 17.” Then nothing after that, until of course, March 16, when Houthis launched missiles and a drone against the USS Harry S. Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea in response to the U.S. airstrikes on March 15. They were intercepted.
Reporter Konstanin Toropin said as of Thursday, “the Pentagon and Trump administration had yet to fully explain what prompted the resumption of operations against the Iranian-backed rebel group after months of relative quiet in the Red Sea.” When he asked specifically, he was directed to public statements by Trump and other officials, but those have been less than clarifying.
Defense officials did tell Military.com that the air campaign could go on for a month “or so” and that there “there is also less reluctance to hold off striking targets based on the casualties that may result.” They also said there was “a very clear end state to this.” But as Toropin pointed out, the officials he spoke with would not “go into detail about what specific aims they were trying to achieve.”
U.S. airstrikes began targeting Houthi infrastructure in Yemen last weekend but are now going into the sixth day and are hitting the capital of Sana’a and residential areas, according to reports. “Dozens of people” were killed in the initial strikes, and there have been reports of civilian casualties, but the mainstream media appears not to have no information on that.
The Houthis had pledged to restart their attacks on Israeli-linked vessels since Israel broke the ceasefire with Hamas last week and renewed its incursions and bombardments of Gaza, insisting that Hamas must turn over its hostages before it stops. Some 500 Palestinians have been killed there just in just the last few days.
Meanwhile, a single Houthi missile was reportedly intercepted yesterday, heading towards Israel.
Trump has vowed to “annihilate” the Houthis and link their every move to Iran. The Pentagon, meanwhile, says “Houthi terrorists have launched missiles and one-way attack drones at U.S. warships over 170 times and at commercial vessels 145 times since 2023.” The spokesman doesn’t say that the vast majority of the attacks were thwarted before they did any damage and no American or anyone else has been injured or killed in the attacks (Houthis did detain a crew of a seized merchant vessel for 14 months but released them in January. No one is diminishing their plight).
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