Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday warned Iran against providing “lethal support” to the Ansar Allah terrorist organization, also known as the Houthis.
“We see your LETHAL support to The Houthis,” Hegseth posted on X. “We know exactly what you are doing. You know very well what the U.S. Military is capable of — and you were warned. You will pay the CONSEQUENCE at the time and place of our choosing.”
It’s unclear what incident prompted Hegseth’s post. But on Monday, an encounter with the Houthis caused a $60 million U.S. F/A-18 fighter jet to slip off the hangar deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman and fall into the Red Sea. The jet was reportedly making a hard turn to evade Houthi fire. One sailor sustained a minor injury, CNN reported.
The warning comes amid weeks of American airstrikes on the Houthis in response to the group’s more than 100 attacks on international cargo ships, tankers, and naval vessels following Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. Since March, over 800 Houthi targets have been hit, resulting in the elimination of hundreds of fighters and leaders, and Houthi ballistic missile launches and suicide drone attacks are down 69% and 55% respectively, Fox News reported.
Although the Trump administration is in active negotiations with Iran to create a new nuclear deal, President Donald Trump has made it very clear that the United States sees any attack by the Houthis as an attack by Iran.
In a follow-up post, Hegseth shared a screenshot of a Truth Social post from Trump in March where the president declared, “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.” He added that Iran would be held responsible and “suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire.”
Trump pointed out that Iran often plays the “innocent victim” by attempting to publicly distance itself from the terror group that operates as their proxy. Trump accused Iran of “dictating every move, giving them weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even so-called, ‘Intelligence.'”
Trump first designated the Houthis a foreign terror organization in the last weeks of his first term, but President Joe Biden rescinded the designation in February 2021. Trump re-designated the terror group after returning to the White House.
