Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth clarified that the recent strikes in Yemen against the Houthis are in defense of U.S. assets and not to advance either side of the Yemeni civil war.
The strikes represent a difference between President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden’s reactions to Houthis targeting U.S. ships in the Red Sea. Over 30 Houthi rebels were killed as a result of the strikes.
“By the way, to the Houthis: this isn’t a one-night thing. This will continue until you say, ‘We’re done shooting at ships. We’re done shooting at assets.’ We don’t want a long limited war in the Middle East. We don’t care what happens in the Yemeni civil war,” Hegseth said on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. “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.”
Traffic in the Suez Canal has dropped by 82%, according to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development. This has led to a 40% drop in revenue for the canal. According to Hegseth, the Houthis were enabled by Iran to target ships there and President Donald Trump plans to put pressure on Iran.
“Nobody wants a military option as it pertains to Iran. So [Trump] is through maximum pressure, just as he did in his first administration, maximum pressure, bankrupt the Iranians,” Hegseth said.
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Biden unfroze $6 billion in Iranian assets just before Iran bombed Pakistan prompting retaliatory bombs. He had also dropped the previous Trump administration’s designation of the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump redesignated the group as a foreign terrorist organization in an executive order at the beginning of his second term.
Under the Biden administration, the U.S. destroyed several missiles belonging to the Houthis and 36 of their stockpiles with the help of the United Kingdom last year. Prior to U.S. retaliation, the Houthis appeared to be poised to attack Navy ships in the area.
