President Joe Biden’s administration is reportedly planning to increase its military campaign against the Iranian-backed Houthi terrorists in Yemen after the first few rounds of airstrikes have failed to deter attacks from the group.
The terrorist group has vowed that it will continue to attack ships in and around the Arabian peninsula in response to Israel hunting down the Hamas terrorists who were responsible for murdering 1,200 Israelis on October 7.
The Houthis have launched dozens of attacks against merchant vessels in and around the Red Sea over the last couple of months, including hijacking at least one major Israeli-linked cargo ship. Thousands of ships have been impacted by the Houthis’ acts of terrorism and have had to find significantly longer routes to reach their destinations.
The Washington Post reported that the administration’s strategy was to “erode the Houthis’ high-level military capability enough to curtail their ability to target shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden or, at a minimum, to provide a sufficient deterrent so that risk-averse shipping companies will resume sending vessels through the region’s waterways.”
U.S. officials told the newspaper that while they do not anticipate that the U.S. campaign against the Houthis will be a lengthy engagement, they also don’t know how long it will take to completely degrade their ability to launch anti-ship ballistic missiles.
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“We’re not trying to defeat the Houthis. There’s no appetite for invading Yemen,” a U.S. diplomat told the Post. “The appetite is to degrade their ability to launch these kind of attacks going forward, and that involves hitting the infrastructure that enables these kind of attacks, and targeting their higher-level capabilities.”
Officials said that the U.S. and British military strikes in the country had “significantly degrad[ed]” the Houthis’ military assets, but there were still some weapons that the coalition forces had to find and destroy.
“It’s impossible to forecast exactly what’s going to happen, and certainly not [to predict] future operations,” a senior U.S. official said. “But the principle that it simply can’t be tolerated for a terrorist organization … with these advanced capabilities to essentially shut down or control shipping through a key international choke point is one that we feel very strongly about.”