(Bloomberg) -- US military strikes on Yemen’s Houthi militants will be “unrelenting” until the group stops shooting at civilian and military vessels in the Red Sea, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth said on Sunday, a day after President Donald Trump ordered new operations in the Middle East.
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“This campaign is about freedom of navigation and restoring deterrence. The minute the Houthis say, ‘We’ll stop shooting at your ships, we’ll stop shooting at your drones,’ this campaign will end,” Hegseth said in an interview on Fox News’s Sunday Morning Futures. “But until then, it will be unrelenting.”
On Saturday, Trump said he ordered “decisive and powerful” action against the Houthis. In a post on his social media platform Truth Social he said the group has “choked off shipping in one of the most important Waterways of the World, grinding vast swaths of Global Commerce to a halt.” He added attacks on American vessels “will not be tolerated.”
The Houthi ruling political council vowed to retaliate for what it called US “aggression,” saying the maritime operations will continue until the Gaza blockade is lifted, according to the Houthi-controlled Saba news agency. On Tuesday, the militant group said it would resume attacks on Israeli ships for the first time in about two months after demanding Israel end a ban on aid entering Gaza, which the country imposed following disagreements with Hamas over a ceasefire.
The Houthis will now also target US vessels, including warships, as part of escalation in response to the airstrikes, the group’s leader Abdul Malik Al-Houthi said in a televised speech Sunday. “We still have escalatory options” should the US attacks persist, he added.
Hegseth said the latest strikes were also a warning to Iran, which backs the Houthis.
“Iran has been enabling the Houthis for far too long. They better back off,” he said.
White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said the attacks were successful.
“We hit the Houthi leadership, killing several of their key leaders last night — their infrastructure, the missiles,” Waltz said on Fox News Sunday. “We just hit them with overwhelming force and put Iran on notice that enough is enough.”
Speaking in a separate appearance on ABC’s This Week, Waltz said Iranian targets in and around Yemen — including ships near the coast that provide intelligence and trainers — “will be on the table, too.”