President Trump declared Monday that he would consider every shot fired by the Houthis to be an attack from Iran and threatened to hold the regime in Tehran responsible.
Trump’s dramatic warning comes after reports of the US carrying out another round of strikes against the Houthis on Monday. Houthis spokesperson Nasr el-Din Amer told NBC News that the terror group will not back down until the “blockade on Gaza” is gone.
“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,” Trump ominously warned on Truth Social.
On Saturday, Trump, 78, unleashed a barrage of airstrikes on Houthi stronghold territory in Yemen, which the US-designated terrorist organization claims killed 53 and injured 98. That came in retaliation for the terror group’s sporadic attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.
Strikes continued Sunday “against additional headquarters locations, weapon storage facilities, as well as detection capabilities that have been used to threaten maritime shipping in the past,” Lt. Gen. Alexus G. Grynkewich told reporters at the Pentagon
“Today, the operation continues, and it will continue in the coming days, until we achieve the President’s objectives,” he said.
While Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell declined to say what the Pentagon may have in mind for holding Iranian leaders accountable for Houthi shots at US troops, he said “all options are on the table.”
“This is the President showcasing leadership from the Oval Office, and, frankly, bringing moral clarity back to the United States of America,” Parnell said. “We know who the enemies of this country are and the enemies of a free world are and President Trump has put them on notice, as you saw with Iran this morning.”
Iran has long funneled financial and military aid to the Houthis, a Shia Islamist group that has battled to take over Yemen and control most of the country’s east coast near the Red Sea.
Houthi rebels had ramped up their attacks on shipping vessels during Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.
The terror group is part of Iran’s network of proxies, sometimes known as the “Axis of Resistance,” much of which has taken a beating over the past year and a half, with Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria collapsing and Israel having taken out key leaders of Hezbollah.
“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 stressed on Truth Social.
Following the Trump-directed strikes against the Houthis on Saturday, the group fired off at least 11 drones and one ballistic missile at the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier group, according to US officials.
None of those attacks made contact with the US vessels, which were nestled in the Red Sea.
“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 added.
“Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” the president went on. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated Military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘Intelligence.’”
Trump has long pushed for a hardline approach against Iran and had dramatically tightened the screws on sanctions against the Shia fundamentalist regime during his first administration.
He also famously ordered the January 2020 strike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, something that has inspired alleged efforts by the regime to assassinate him.
The 47th president warned last month that if Iran kills him, he has left his team explicit instructions to “obliterate” the regime.
