US and British warships and aircraft launched waves of missile strikes on Yemen's Iran-backed Houthi rebels on Friday, after weeks of warnings to the group to stop attacking commercial shipping in the Red Sea or face dire consequences.
The United States of America (US) had previously refused to retaliate, reflecting concerns about disrupting a shaky ceasefire in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. But on Tuesday, the Houthis launched 18 attack drones, anti-ship cruise and ballistic missiles at international commercial and warships in the Red Sea.
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While U.S. and partner warships and aircraft protecting the waterways managed to repel Tuesday's attack, the scale and severity of the attack drew international condemnation and left few options for response other than to heed international warnings that the attacks would be met with a severe response - which and it happened.
The targets of the British and American strikes were the locations from which the Houthis carry out missile and drone strikes, as well as radars. The Houthis said they would retaliate for the bombing, and announced that five members of their units were killed and six wounded.
Who are the Houthis?
Houthi rebels abandoned their stronghold in northern Yemen and captured the capital Sana'a in 2014, starting a fierce war. A Saudi-led coalition intervened in 2015 to try to restore Yemen's exiled, internationally recognized government to power.
Years of bloody fighting - effectively a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran - has turned into a stalemate on the battlefield, causing widespread hunger and misery in Yemen, the Arab world's poorest country. The war killed more than 150.000 people, including combatants and civilians, and caused one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.
A ceasefire that technically ended more than a year ago is still largely respected. Saudi Arabia and the rebels have carried out some prisoner swaps, and a Houthi delegation has been invited to high-level peace talks in Riyadh in September, as part of a wider easing of Saudi-Iranian relations. Although the participants talked about "positive results", there is still no lasting peace.
Attacks on ships
The Houthis have sporadically attacked ships in the region, but there has been an escalation in scale and frequency since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas, especially after an explosion at a hospital in Gaza on October 17, in which many were killed and injured. That explosion marked the beginning of an intense militant campaign against US bases in Iraq and Syria, and against many commercial ships passing through the Red Sea. The attacks damaged ships and forced international shipping companies to divert their vessels.
Since last Thursday, the Houthis have launched 27 separate attacks on ships passing through the southern Red Sea, Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a news conference.
Houthi army spokesman General Yahya Sari stated that the group wants to "prevent Israeli ships from sailing in the Red Sea (and the Gulf of Aden) until the Israeli aggression against our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip ends."
However, only a few of the attacked ships had direct connections with Israel. In the recent attack, one of the hit commercial ships "Unity Explorer" had a weak Israeli connection. It is owned by a British company in which one of the employees is Dan David Ungar, who lives in Israel. Israeli media identified Ungar as the son of Israeli shipping billionaire Abraham "Rami" Ungar. But any links Israel has with the other ships are unclear.
U.S. officials have argued that the Houthis were not technically targeting U.S. military vessels or forces — a claim that could be questioned by naval ship captains monitoring incoming drones.
In response to the attacks, last month US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Operation "Prosperity Guardian", in which the US and more than 20 other countries devised protections for commercial ships that remained en route and chose to transit through the Red Sea.
If the operation had not escorted the commercial ships and intercepted the incoming fire, "we have no doubt that ships would have been hit, perhaps even sunk, including in one case a commercial ship full of jet fuel," a senior US administration official told reporters Thursday evening of the strikes. , speaking on condition of anonymity. "We had extremely dangerous situations."
To date, that protection operation has helped more than 1.500 commercial vessels pass safely through the Red Sea.
American calculus
While the US has carried out airstrikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, which have attacked US troops 130 times since October 17, the Houthis had not retaliated as of Thursday.
That reluctance to attack the Houthis reflects political sensitivities and stems largely from the Joseph Biden administration's broader concerns about upsetting the fragile truce in Yemen and triggering a wider conflict in the region. The White House wants to preserve the truce and is cautious about taking actions that could open another war front.
Iran-backed militias have launched one-way drones, rockets or short-range ballistic missiles at US bases in Iraq 53 times and in Syria 77 times. Dozens of soldiers suffered injuries, in many cases traumatic brain injuries.
In response, the US has retaliated with airstrikes in Syria on multiple occasions since October 17, targeting weapons depots and other facilities directly linked to Iran's Revolutionary Guards and militias. Several locations were hit in Iraq at the end of last month after one of the groups fired short-range ballistic missiles at US forces at the Al-Asad base for the first time.
But until Thursday, attacking the Houthis involved complicated calculations.
Pentagon officials said at one point that Navy ships shot down Houthi drones moving toward them because they were considered a "threat." But at a later point, officials said the US had determined the ships were not targets. The decision on what the target is often comes later after intelligence assessments review telemetry and other data on incoming missiles.
However, that is certainly no comfort to sailors on ships who follow the radar trail of swooping drones and must make quick decisions about whether they pose a threat to the ship.
At the same time, the US has always said that it wants to protect the free navigation of the seas. But the Houthis' actions prompted the relevant maritime agencies to issue a warning that ships passing through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait should choose routes as far away from Yemeni waters as possible, travel at night and not stop.
The Biden administration has been adamant about the need to avoid the escalation of the war between Israel and Hamas into a wider regional conflict. So far, attacks on Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria have not widened the conflict, Ryder said.
It is not clear whether targeted strikes on Houthi weapons depots or similar sites - which also have Iranian support - would cross the border and trigger a wider war.
"We will continue to consult with international allies and partners on the appropriate way to protect commercial vessels passing through that region, while ensuring we do what we need to do to protect our forces," Ryder added.
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