Yemen’s defense minister has censured American and British attempts to militarize the Red Sea in support of Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip, stressing that the Yemeni armed forces will put a “painful end” to the US hegemony in the strategic waterway.
Major General Mohammad Nasser al-Atifi made the remarks in a meeting attended by the country’s top military commanders and defense officials in the capital Sana’a on Tuesday, Yemen’s Arabic-language al-Masirah television network reported.
This comes as the United States and Britain have been conducting strikes on Yemen in response to attacks by the Yemeni military against Israeli-owned ships or merchant vessels heading to the occupied territories.
“Yemen’s leadership, government, people, army and geography are [more] superior, stronger … to be shaken by the criminal raids of the tripartite American-British-Zionist aggression,” Atifi said.
“The continuation of the treacherous American-British aggression is a blatant violation of the sovereignty of Yemen and destabilizes the security and stability of the region … Yemeni people and their armed forces will not be terrified by America’s internationally banned missiles and bombs,” he added.
Stressing that the US and Israel are always a symbol of chaos and destruction, Yemen’s defense minister said the United States is “a terrorist state,” and a sponsor of terrorism and terrorists, which supports Israel’s brutality against Palestinians.
“We tell them from the Red Sea that we are the ones who [will] put a painful end to American hegemony, which will mark its end with its own hand,” Atifi said, adding that Yemen’s leadership is “aware of the nature of the challenges, consequences, and repercussions of closing the Red and Arab Seas to the Zionists.”
Atifi also said the US and UK must realize the strength of Yemen’s sovereignty and that the Yemeni armed forces will not allow the Red Sea to be a channel “that feeds the Zionists’ brutality and crimes against our people in Palestine.”
Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7 after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.
Yemeni Armed Forces have said they won’t stop their attacks until ground and aerial offensives by Israel in Gaza end. The regime has killed nearly 27,000 people in Gaza since October 7.
The leader of the Ansarullah resistance movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has said it is “a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly.”
The attacks have forced some of the world’s biggest shipping and oil companies to suspend transit through one of the world’s most important maritime trade routes.
Tankers are instead adding thousands of miles to international shipping routes by sailing around the continent of Africa rather than going through the Suez Canal.
