Houthis Say US Efforts to Stop Their Attacks on Red Sea Shipping a ‘Declaration of War’

The U.S. and its allies have carried out precision strikes against the Houthis, and they are vowing revenge:

🚨 Breaking: The leader of Yemeni Houthis: “We will retaliate against US and UK. They will feel the power of our vengeance. The victory will be ours.”

🤣 pic.twitter.com/35pePzbEVN

— Dr. Eli David (@DrEliDavid) January 12, 2024

The Houthis were warning about a “declaration of war” before Thursday’s strikes against the Houthis. Important information on the Houthi threat, and what should be done to permanently remove it, can be found here: “Will the US Task Force Undo Years of Neglecting the Houthi Threat?,” by Yaakov Lappin, JNS, January 7, 2024:

In a recent sign of ongoing Iran-Houthi coordination, on Dec. 31 Iranian state media reported that Ali-Akbar Ahmadian, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council—the main Iranian military decision-making body—met with the Houthi spokesman and chief negotiator Mohammad Abdeslam.

Ahmadian praised the Houthis’ recent actions, which included a spate of attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping and the firing of missiles and UAVs at Eilat, most of which have been intercepted by American, Israeli, Egyptian and Saudi air defenses.

On that same day, Reuters reported that at least 10 Houthis were killed and two wounded in an attack carried out by American forces on four Houthi boats trying to take control of a Danish ship in the Red Sea.

These ten Houthis who were killed while trying to seize a Danish ship, represented the largest number of casualties inflicted by American forces on the Houthis in the Red Sea. Most of the American efforts to date have been directed to shooting down drones and the occasional missile, not to killing Houthi fighters.

In response, Yahya Saria, spokesman for the Houthi armed forces, said the United States was responsible for the “crime” and its consequences. He said the American military operation in the Red Sea was designed to protect Israeli ships but would not prevent Yemen from “fulfilling its duty to support the Palestinians.”

Yahya Saria has it wrong: the American military operation in the Red Sea is not to protect Israeli ships alone, but all the ships that are, or think they are, threatened by the Houthis.

He reiterated that the Houthi forces would continue to prevent the passage of Israeli ships or ships sailing towards Israeli ports—thereby confirming the Houthi—Iranian strategy of blockading Israel’s Red Sea shipping lanes, posing a severe threat to its economy, as well as to the wider global economy.

There is no record of the Houthis managing to prevent the passage of a single Israeli ship. Indeed, it would be impossible for the Houthis to know where ships sailing up the Red Sea are aiming to travel until almost at the very end, when they either move left into the Suez Canal, or right, headed either to the Israeli port of Eilat or to the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Abdeslam Hajaf, a member of the Houthis’ Shura Council and Defense and Security Committee, claimed that the American attack was a “declaration of war.”

No, the “declaration of war” was not from the Americans sinking the boats of Houthis trying to take control of a Danish ship. That declaration came long ago from the Houthis, who have been launching, without the slightest provocation, hundreds of drones at Western shipping in the Red Sea,

Britain’s Times newspaper, meanwhile, reported that Britain and the United States are preparing to carry out a series of attacks against the Houthis, and may be joined by another European country.

That third maritime power is likely France, which has most of its navy in the Mediterranean, and since 2015 has been able to use the Suez Canal in both directions. It could send a few ships from the naval base at Toulon, southward through the Canal to the Red Sea, where it could then join the American-led naval task force, prepared to shoot Houthi UAVs and missiles out of the sky, and to sink Houthi boats foolish enough, after the latest sinking of four of its boats and the loss of ten of its men, to attack commercial shipping in the Red Sea.

In a sign of the orchestrated nature of the Houthi actions as part of the Iranian radical terror axis, the Iran-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad issued an announcement on Dec. 31 condemning the American action against Houthi forces, and called on Arab and Islamic nations to “confront the American aggression against Yemen by all possible means.”

No Sunni Arab state is going to help the Shi’a Houthis. The Sunnis have no desire to see the Houthis take over all of Yemen, or still worse, have the Iranians, who control the Houthis, use Yemen as part of the Shia crescent Tehran has been patiently trying to construct over several decades.