WASHINGTON – President Biden admitted Thursday that a series of US airstrikes targeting Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen have not succeeded in stopping the terror group’s attacks on Red Sea shipping.
“Are the airstrikes in Yemen working?” a reporter asked Biden, 81, as he departed the White House for an event in North Carolina.
“Well, when you say ‘working,’ are they stopping the Houthis? No,” the president said.
“Are they going to continue? Yes.”
Earlier Thursday, US forces launched their fifth airstrike on the Houthis since last week, fewer than 24 hours after neutralizing 14 missiles officials deemed an “imminent threat.”
“I know you saw reports out of Central Command last night about some additional strikes that we took to knock out a range of the missiles that were prepared to fire in the southern Red Sea,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters.
“We did it again this morning, striking at some anti-ship missiles — a couple of anti-ship missiles that we had reason to believe were being prepared for imminent fire into the southern Red Sea,” he added.
Since Nov. 19, the Houthis have launched dozens of strikes on commercial vessels in the Red Sea, using weapons provided by Iran. While the US began an international coalition dubbed “Operation Prosperity Guardian” to patrol the key shipping lane in December, it only began striking the terrorists’ operations on Jan. 11.
“We have to be able to act in our own self defense not just for our ships and sailors, but for merchant ships and merchant sailors and international shipping in the Red Sea,” Kirby said Thursday. “… These strikes will continue for as long as they need to continue to try to disrupt and degrade the Houthis’ ability to continue to cut conduct these attacks.”
While the initial strike last week saw participation by coalition forces, the US has carried out the most recent strikes on its own.
“The Central Command commander has the right when he sees a threat posed to our forces or commercial shipping to take the action that he needs,” deputy Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Thursday, “which is why you saw the strikes just yesterday and early this morning of what appeared to be missiles that were getting ready or preparing to launch into the Red Sea.”
US Central Command (CENTCOM)/AFP via Getty Images
While Singh acknowledged that the strikes have yet to stop the Houthi attacks, she added that the US has “degraded” some of the Tehran-backed group’s capabilities.
“We never said that the Houthis would immediately stop – that is something that they will have to make that decision and that calculation to do what’s in their best interest,” he said. “You’ve seen that we’ve been able to degrade and severely disrupt and destroy a significant number of their capabilities since Thursday.
“But it’s really on them when they decide that they want to stop interrupting commercial shipping by innocent mariners that are transiting the Red Sea,” she added.
The latest strike came a day after the White House announced it had added the Houthis back onto the Specially Designated Global Terrorists list – less than three years after Biden removed the designation in February 2021.
Pressed Wednesday on why the Biden administration believed the redesignation would deter the Houthi attacks when airstrikes did not, Kirby said the move was merely a piece in the pressure puzzle.
“It’s a way of holding the Houthis accountable, [an] additional way to hold them accountable,” he said. “If you look at the levers of national power – diplomacy, information, military, economic – we’re using all of those levers of national power and frankly international power to try to convince the Houthis to stop these attacks.”
“And if they don’t, and they clearly haven’t, to make sure that we’re holding them accountable for that,” he added.