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An American warship on Saturday shot down 14 attack drones launched by Houthi forces operating in Yemen, Pentagon officials said, marking yet another direct clash between U.S. troops and the Iran-backed rebel group.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees American military operations in the region, said the Houthis launched the “drone wave” over the Red Sea. Officials did not say what the targets were believed to be, but the Houthis have launched repeated missile and drone attacks aimed at Israel in the months since the Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an Oct. 7 terror attack on the Jewish state. U.S. warships have intercepted those Houthi attacks multiple times. On at least one occasion, an American ship came under direct fire from Houthi forces.
Saturday’s clash was especially significant because Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in the Middle East over the weekend for a brief multi-nation visit. His trip to the region will include a stop in Bahrain to discuss efforts to stop the Houthi attacks.
“We will talk with them in a multinational framework about the work we’re doing, particularly in light of increasing Houthi aggression in the Red Sea,” a U.S. defense official told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday, previewing the secretary’s trip.
Mr. Austin also is expected to visit the USS Gerald R. Ford, which was dispatched to the Mediterranean Sea shortly after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. That warship, like other U.S. military assets sent to the Middle East in the weeks after the attack, is meant to deter other actors from capitalizing on the Israel-Hamas clash in the Gaza Strip and expanding the conflict into a wider regional war.
But in the case of the Houthis, America’s deterrence does not seem to be working. Saturday’s incident was the latest in a string of dangerous clashes that have put U.S. troops and commercial shipping vessels in the region’s busy waterways in danger. No one was injured and no ships damaged during Saturday’s incident, officials said.
During the incident, CENTCOM said the USS Carney in the Red Sea “successfully engaged 14 unmanned aerial systems launched as a drone wave from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
“The UAS were assessed to be one-way attack drones and were shot down with no damage to ships in the area or reported injuries. Regional Red Sea partners were alerted to the threat,” CENTCOM said in a statement posted on social media.
Earlier this month, a Navy destroyer and three commercial ships came under missile-and-drone fire from the Houthis. In another recent incident, missiles fired by the Houthis landed near American ships in the region, though Pentagon officials say the U.S. vessels weren’t the intended target. And last month, the Houthis shot down a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone operating in international airspace off the coast of Yemen.
The White House has accused the Houthis of reckless behavior that could spark a wider war, though the U.S. so far has opted against direct strikes on Houthi targets inside Yemen. Such a move could itself escalate the Middle East conflict and could derail intensive United Nations-backed peace talks aimed at ending Yemen’s long-running civil war.
Analysts warn that the Houthis have little incentive to stop their attacks. What’s worse, the group is widely seen as more unpredictable than other Iran-backed outfits in the region, including Hamas, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias that have repeatedly targeted U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria.
“What’s different about the Houthis is, they don’t have to be careful,” Michael Knights, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy who closely tracks Iran-linked militias, told The Washington Times recently.
“The Houthis are just sitting there in Yemen, much further away than Lebanese Hezbollah is from Israel,” Mr. Knights said. “They’ve been bombed for the last eight, nine years. They have a very high pain threshold. All their leadership is extremely well hidden so the Saudis couldn’t assassinate them during the war. They’re locked down. And they’re actually much more ideologically pure and determined than Lebanese Hezbollah or the militias” backed by Iran.
Mr. Knights described the Houthis as the true “hardliners” of the Iranian axis of resistance across the Middle East, saying the group has “less to lose” and is “more crazy” than other actors threatening the U.S. and Israel.
• Ben Wolfgang can be reached at bwolfgang@washingtontimes.com.
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