The leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah movement, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi, has warned of a “big” response to the United States and its allies if they proceed with any military attack against his country.
Houthi said in a televised speech on Thursday any such response would be bigger than the recent strike in which Yemeni drones and missiles targeted US and British ships.
“We’ll confront the American aggression,” Houthi said in a televised speech on Thursday. “Any American attack won’t go unpunished.”
“Any American attack will not remain without a response. The response will be greater than the attack that was carried out with twenty drones and a number of missiles.”
Yemen has vowed retaliation in the wake of the killing of 10 Yemeni naval personnel in late December, when the US Navy sunk three of speedboats of Ansarullah.
“We are more determined to target ships linked to Israel, and we will not back down from that.”
The Houthi leader made clear all other ships except those bounded for occupied Palestinian territories are safe as long as their countries were not part of or planned to join a US-led anti-Yemen coalition.
Peace talks with Saudi Arabia
Earlier, Mohammed Abdulsalam, the chief Ansarullah negotiator, said Yemen’s attacks in the Red Sea on commercial ships heading to Israeli ports do not threaten the country’s peace talks with Saudi Arabia.
The peace process is underway between Yemen and Saudi Arabia, with the mediation of Oman and the United Nations. Ansarullah has praised Oman for efforts to close the gaps between the Yemeni resistance and Saudi Arabia.
The Yemeni negotiator also slammed the United States for its all-support for the Israeli regime.
“The one who is dragging the region into a wider war is the one who allows the continuation of the aggression and the siege that continues for more than 100 days in the Gaza Strip,” he said in reference to Washington and its backing of Israel.
Yemen is after a ceasefire in Gaza, and lifting the Israeli siege as well as moving towards peace and dialogue, the Yemeni negotiator said.
US-allied Persian Gulf Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, have also been pressing Washington for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
During recent months, Yemen’s Armed Forces have been staging missile and drone attacks against vessels heading to Israeli ports in support of the war-hit Palestinians in Gaza.
Yemen has already warned it will prevent the passage of all ships in the Red Sea bound to the occupied territories and has dismissed plans to build a US-led coalition against the Yemeni forces.
The Yemeni military recently engaged directly with the US navy in the Red Sea. It said on Wednesday the forces had fired a barrage of rockets, drones and cruise missiles targeting a US ship in a “preliminary response” to a recent deadly attack by the US that sank three boats and killed nearly a dozen people off the coast of Yemen.
As Israel’s most dedicated and age-old ally, the US has torpedoed the prospect of cessation of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza by stonewalling ratification of all United Nations Security Council resolutions that called for a permanent ceasefire.
Washington has also supplied the regime with more than 10,000 tons of advanced weaponry since the onset of hostilities in early October.
Yemen on Thursday also condemned as a “political game” a resolution adopted by the United Nations Security Council on naval operations in the Red Sea, saying the US is the side that is violating international law. In an X post, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, said the actions of the Yemeni armed forces in support of the Gaza Strip fall within the framework of legitimate defense.
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has said Yemeni strikes against ships heading to the occupied Palestinian territories send a message to the West that they should either work to stop Israel’s atrocities or expect the crisis to expand across the region.
