President Donald Trump escalated his rhetoric against Iran on March 17, declaring that any future attacks by the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen would be treated as direct acts of aggression by Tehran—warning that Iran would be held responsible and face “dire” consequences.
“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote in the March 17 social media post.
“Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there.”
Trump accused Iran of directly orchestrating the Houthis’ military actions, rejecting claims that Tehran lacks control over the group.
“They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘Intelligence,’” Trump wrote.
“Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
Iran has denied any direct involvement in the Red Sea shipping attacks, and in response to U.S. airstrikes against the Houthis, Iranian officials issued threats of retaliation.
Salami insisted that Iran “plays no role in setting the national or operational policies” of its allied militant groups in the region.
The Houthis, also known as Ansar Allah, are a Shiite Islamic militant faction that has controlled much of Yemen for nearly a decade despite sustained Saudi-led military intervention.
Rubio said that such attacks threaten freedom of navigation in a shipping lane critical for global commerce and that the United States will respond with force until they stop.
“We’re not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot,“ Rubio said, adding that the U.S. response ”will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that.”
The Houthis have claimed that their attacks on Red Sea shipping are in retaliation for Israel’s military operations in Gaza against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group following its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israeli communities.
The State Department recently redesignated the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, reversing a Biden-era policy that Trump has blamed for emboldening the group’s attacks on U.S. forces, allies, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.
Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, told ABC on March 16 that the weekend strikes “targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out,” though he did not provide names or further specifics.
Rubio confirmed that several key Houthi military facilities had been destroyed.
So far, however, the Houthis have remained defiant. The group’s political bureau issued a statement warning that it will “meet escalation with escalation.”
