Yemen’s Houthis enter war with first strike on Israel, as attacks on Iran continue

CAIRO: Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis launched missiles at Israel on Saturday (Mar 28), their first such attack since the start of the Iran war, heightening the risk that a conflict that has entered its fifth week could expand further across the region.

Speaking earlier, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the United States expected to conclude military operations within weeks but the Houthis said they would continue their operations until the “aggression” on all fronts ended.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian spoke with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose government is hosting a meeting with the Turkish and Saudi foreign ministers on Sunday to seek to ease regional tensions.

But with no sign of a diplomatic breakthrough in sight, the war, launched with US and Israeli strikes on Iran on Feb 28, has spread across the Middle East, killing thousands and hitting the world economy with the biggest-ever disruption to global energy supplies.

On Saturday, Israel said it carried out a wave of strikes on Tehran, targeting what the military said were infrastructure sites belonging to the Iranian government.

Iran also kept up its attacks, hitting an air base in Saudi Arabia and wounding 12 US military personnel, two of them seriously.

HOUTHIS CAN STRIKE TARGETS FAR FROM YEMEN

The attack by the Houthis represented a potentially ominous new threat to global shipping, already severely disrupted by the effective closure of the critical Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for around a fifth of world oil supplies.

The group, which has launched regular missile attacks against Israel in recent years, has shown an ability to strike targets far beyond Yemen and disrupt shipping lanes around the Arabian Peninsula and the Red Sea, as they did in support of Hamas in Gaza after Oct 7, 2023.

On Friday they said they were prepared to act if what they called an escalation against Iran and the “Axis of Resistance” continued in the war.

If the Houthis open a new front in the conflict, one obvious target would be the Bab al-Mandab Strait off the coast of Yemen, a key choke point for sea traffic towards the Suez Canal that could add to the turmoil in world trade.

The disruptions have already rippled across the world, adding to inflation pressures that have squeezed businesses and consumers, including those in the United States.

With crucial midterm elections approaching in November, the increasingly unpopular war has weighed on Trump’s Republican Party and he has appeared eager to end it quickly.

Speaking on Friday before the Houthi attack, Rubio said Washington was “on or ahead of schedule” and expects to conclude military operations in “weeks, not months”.

He also told Group of Seven counterparts in France that European and Asian countries that benefit from trade through the Strait of Hormuz should contribute to efforts to secure free passage.

The war has driven a wedge between the US and its traditional allies, who have stayed on the sidelines. President Donald Trump said this lack of support had implications for NATO, the West’s most important alliance.

“We would have always been there for them, but now, based on their actions, I guess we don’t have to be, do we?” Trump told an investment forum in Miami on Friday. “Why would we be there for them if they’re not there for us? They weren’t there for us.”

The charter underlying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which has long been led by the US, says an attack on one member is an attack on all, requiring them to support each other.

But Washington’s allies, which were not consulted before the US and Israeli strikes, have been notably reluctant to be drawn into a war which may still escalate further if Trump decides to deploy ground troops to try to open the Strait of Hormuz.