Just hours after President Joe Biden acknowledged Thursday that his strikes against Yemen’s Houthis have not stopped the militia attacking ships, the Pentagon announced that yet another U.S.-owned vessel had been targeted by the Iran-backed rebels.
In a statement, U.S. Central Command said Houthi “terrorists launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at M/V Chem Ranger, a Marshall Island-flagged, U.S.-Owned, Greek-operated tanker ship.” “The crew observed the missiles impact the water near the ship,” the statement continued.
No injuries or damage to the ship were reported, the statement added.
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News of the latest attack followed a startling admission Biden made during an exchange with reporters as he left the White House on Thursday, acknowledging that a string of U.S. airstrikes against Houthi targets had failed to deter the militants from disrupting shipping in the Red Sea. “When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis? No,” Biden said of the U.S. operations. “Are they going to continue? Yes.”
The Houthis say their attacks are targeted at ships linked to Israel, with the intention of impeding Tel Aviv’s ongoing campaign against Hamas in Gaza. U.S. and British warships in the region have attempted to prevent the assaults with strikes of their own against Houthi missile sites in Yemen, but the latest attack Thursday confirms Biden’s assessment of the plan’s efficacy.
Muhammad al-Buheiti, identified by a Russian newspaper as a member of the “Ansar Allah Politburo”—using the official name of the Houthi movement—said in an interview Friday that the rebels also plan to keep up their attacks. Only American and British vessels have anything to fear, he said.
“As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” Izvestia quoted al-Buheiti as saying. “Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safety of the passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country.”
He also said that sinking ships is not the overall purpose of the attacks. “Our goal is to raise the economic costs for the Jewish state to stop the carnage in Gaza,” he said. “If the crews of the ships that came under our fire had not ignored our warning signals and changed their direction, the further escalation that the American side caused in the interests of protecting Israel could have been avoided.”
With no end in sight for the tit-for-tat exchanges, British lawmakers are reportedly looking for a more cost-effective way of responding to the Houthi threat; The U.K. military has for the first time tested a high-powered laser weapon capable of swatting drones out of the sky from positions miles away, according to The Times. The high-tech device named DragonFire costs less than $13 per shot, while the Sea Viper missiles that have launched this month from HMS Diamond, a British destroyer, cost around $1.3 million each.
