The United States carried out renewed air strikes on the Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen on March 16, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said they would not let up until international shipping lanes in the region were safe for commercial vessels.
The Houthi-run health ministry in Yemen said U.S. strikes have killed at least 53 people, including five women and two children, and wounded almost 100 in the capital, Sanaa, and in the governorate of Saada, close to the border with Saudi Arabia.
“We’re not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot,“ Rubio told CBS on March 16. ”And so your question is, how long will this go on? It will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that.”
He said the Houthis had targeted the U.S. Navy “directly” 174 times and attacked commercial vessels 145 times in the past 18 months, using “guided precision anti-ship weaponry.”
On March 15, President Donald Trump ordered several airstrikes on Houthi-held areas in Yemen, vowing to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Iran-backed terrorists end their attacks on a critical sea lane in the Red Sea.
Hegseth Promises ‘Unrelenting’ Attacks
“The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we‘ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end, but until then, it will be unrelenting,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”
“This is about stopping the shooting at assets ... in that critical waterway, to reopen freedom of navigation, which is a core national interest of the United States, and Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long. They better back off.”
In a speech broadcast on the night of March 16, the Houthi leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, said: “We will confront escalation with escalation.
“We will respond to the American enemy in its raids, in its attacks, with missile strikes, by targeting its aircraft carrier, its warships, its ships.
“However, we also still have escalation options. If it continues its aggression, we will move to additional escalation options.”
The USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group is currently in the region, and the Houthis have threatened to target it.
The Houthis began attacking shipping in the Red Sea in October 2023, shortly after the conflict between their ally, the Hamas terrorist group, and Israel broke out after Hamas crossed the border from the Gaza Strip and killed 1,200 Israelis.
The Houthis sank two commercial vessels and damaged dozens more but paused their attacks when the Israel–Hamas cease-fire began in January.
But on March 11, the Houthis said they would resume their attacks in response to Israel’s decision earlier in March to cut off humanitarian aid to Gaza.
“It uses these supplies to finance its terror machine, which is aimed directly at Israel and our civilians, and this we cannot accept.”
In an interview with “Fox News Sunday,” U.S. national security adviser Mike Waltz described the Houthis, a terrorist organization, as “essentially al-Qaeda with sophisticated Iranian-backed air defenses and anti-ship cruise missiles and drones.”
Every day, dozens of commercial vessels sail up or down the Red Sea, heading either into the Indian Ocean and toward Asia or up to the Suez Canal, a shortcut to Europe. It is estimated that around 10 percent of the world’s shipping uses the route.
UN Urges ‘Utmost Restraint’
A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in a statement, called for the “utmost restraint and a cessation of all military activities.”Guterres also warned of “grave risks” to the humanitarian situation in Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the Middle East.
The head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, told state-run television that Tehran “plays no role in setting the national or operational policies” of the Houthis.
“End support for Israeli genocide and terrorism. Stop killing of Yemeni people.”
