Grant Shapps has warned Iran that the world is “running out of patience” after Britain and America launched air strikes against Tehran-backed Houthi rebels.

In an interview with The Telegraph, the Defence Secretary said the Iranian regime must tell the Houthis and other Middle Eastern proxies to “cease and desist”, warning that a “limit has been truly crossed”.

On Thursday night, RAF Typhoon jets launched Paveway IV laser-guided bombs at two Houthi-controlled sites in Yemen, in a raid that the Government believes has significantly reduced the group’s ability to attack commercial ships in the Red Sea.

The mission was undertaken with US forces, who used air, sea and submarine assets in the Red Sea to target more than 60 Houthi sites linked to 27 attacks since November.

On Friday night Lt Gen Douglas Sims, a senior US army officer, said the US and UK deployed more than 150 munitions against command and control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, production facilities and air defence radar systems.

Asked what his message to Iran would be, Mr Shapps said: “You must get the Houthi rebels, others who are acting as proxies for you, Lebanese Hezbollah are obvious examples, [and] some in Iraq and Syria, you must get these different organisations to cease and desist because we are, the world is, running out of patience.

“We see you, we see through what you’re doing. We see how you’re doing it, particularly the Houthi rebels, and no good can come from it.”

Rishi Sunak said on Friday that the strikes were intended to warn the Houthis that further attacks would lead to reprisals from the West. “This type of behaviour can’t be met without a response,” he said on a visit to Kyiv. “We need to send a strong signal that this breach of international law is wrong. People can’t act like this with impunity.”

On Friday night Lt Gen Douglas Sims, a senior US army officer, said the US and UK deployed more than 150 munitions against command and control nodes, munitions depots, launching systems, production facilities and air defence radar systems.

“At this point, we continue to conduct battle damage assessment of the various targets,” he said. “We feel very confident about where our munitions struck.”

The Pentagon said it was confident the strikes had harmed the Houthis ability to conduct attacks in the Red Sea.

The Telegraph can reveal that Britain’s aircraft carriers are not ready to be sent to the region because of the recruitment crisis engulfing the Armed Forces. Despite calls to send HMS Queen Elizabeth, the UK’s £3 billion aircraft carrier, to the Red Sea, it cannot be deployed because its support ship, RFA Fort Victoria, is operating on a skeleton crew and remains in a Liverpool shipyard.

Mr Shapps said: “We are acting in self-defence because of the shipping situation, because of HMS Diamond being attacked. Iran has an important part to play here and needs to understand that it needs to be clearer with its many proxies in the region that no good can come from this and everyone loses if they carry on going down this track.

“We can’t have thugs, essentially, harassing international shipping and running the risks. It’s only a matter of time before there are deaths of entirely innocent people [who are] completely disconnected to what’s going on in the Israel-Gaza conflict.”

Mr Shapps also defended the decision not to allow MPs to vote on the strikes before they took place. He said: “If you had to go through a parliamentary process then it would... potentially degrade the quality of the operation itself.”

The Defence Secretary’s comments came after the US insisted that the strikes were not an attack on Iran.

Joe Biden wrote in a statement delivered to the leaders of both houses of Congress: “The strikes were taken to deter and degrade Houthi capacity to conduct future attacks and were conducted in a manner designed to limit the risk of escalation and avoid civilian casualties.”

Asked if the air strikes would continue, Mr Biden said: “ We will make sure that we respond to the Houthis if they continue this outrageous behaviour, along with our allies.”

On Friday, a split emerged between EU countries over the attacks on Yemen, with Italy and France refusing to join the military action or endorse a statement on their justification. The Netherlands along with Australia, Canada and Bahrain added logistical and intelligence support to the US and UK strikes.

An Italian government source told Reuters that Giorgia Meloni’s administration had refused to participate because the country wanted to pursue a “calming” policy in the Red Sea.

Antonio Tajani, the deputy prime minister, said Italy could not have participated at such short notice “because the constitution does not allow us to commit acts of war without a debate in parliament”.

The French government is understood to have thought striking the Houthis would have hindered its attempts to de-escalate conflict in Lebanon. Rear-Adml Emmanuel Slaars, the French naval commander in the region, said he did not have a mandate to attack Houthis directly.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, accused the UK-US alliance of turning the Red Sea into a “sea of blood” with a “disproportionate use of force”.

The UK and US insist that the strikes were in self-defence, on behalf of naval and commercial shipping vessels from various countries that have been attacked in recent weeks.

Warning of retaliation

Houthi commanders have vowed to retaliate against the US and UK for the strikes, which the rebels said had killed five fighters and injured another six.

“The American and British enemy bears full responsibility for this criminal aggression against our Yemeni people, and it will not go unanswered and unpunished,” a statement by the group said.

On Friday, a British maritime security firm said that Houthi militants had mistakenly targeted a tanker carrying Russian oil in a missile attack off Yemen.

A missile was reported to have been fired at the vessel but there were no injuries or damage.

Security firm Ambrey said it believed it had been mistakenly targeted because outdated information suggested it was linked to the UK.

A US assessment of the strikes released on Friday morning said they had been a “success”.

However, despite London and Washington issuing strong warnings to the Houthis, the White House said it was “not looking for conflict” with Iran and hoped the situation could now be resolved through diplomatic means.

“We’re not looking to escalate and there’s no reason for it to escalate beyond what happened over the last few days,” John Kirby, the US national security spokesman, told MSNBC.

“We know that Iran supports the Houthis. We know that they’re supplying them with the missiles and the drones, the same things they’ve used to attack shipping, and we have made it very clear Iran should stop that support.”

‘We can’t let thugs harass shipping’

By Ben Riley-Smith

Grant Shapps was in bed at his constituency home in Hertfordshire when the news came through that the British mission to strike Houthi sites in Yemen had succeeded.

The Defence Secretary had been monitoring the operation via his phone, secure messages pinging with updates, stepping out of the bedroom to take calls periodically.

One word sprang to mind when hearing British pilots were back at base in Cyprus in the early hours of Friday morning, having pulled the trigger at 11.30pm on Thursday.

“I can’t think of a better word than ‘relief’ to see all our crews had returned,” Mr Shapps told The Telegraph in an exclusive interview on Friday, discussing the previous night’s raids.

The sensation must have been shared by Rishi Sunak, who then was somewhere en route to Ukraine for a secret trip to Kyiv to unveil a new Ukrainian military aid package.

Thursday night’s bombing was the first known military strike signed off by Mr Sunak.

For Mr Shapps, 55, the operation came just five months into his tenure heading up the Ministry of Defence – though he has a host of other Cabinet roles under his belt.

Britain’s Armed Forces were responsible for two of the 16 Yemeni sites struck: an airfield at Abs and a site at Bani, which the UK said had been used for drone attacks.

So was the mission a success? “All of our targets across two different locations were hit,” Mr Shapps says.

“We won’t see all the reconnaissance for 24 or 48 hours. But we’ve every reason to believe that all of our intended targets were successfully diminished.”

The British military personnel who took part were also unscathed. “All returned to base and no injuries at all,” Mr Shapps says.

If the US-led raid appears to have gone without a hitch in operational terms, the merits of the decision itself are sure to be the point of heated debate the world over.

The Houthis, a pro-Palestinian Shia Islamist group who control Yemen, have been firing rockets in increasingly escalating attacks on cargo ships in the Red Sea since the Israel-Gaza conflict broke out.

The Defence Secretary has confidence in the decision taken to return fire, pointing to the warning statement from the US, UK and other allies issued on Jan 3 and the attempted Houthi attack on US and UK vessels that followed on Tuesday.

“I think we made it very, very clear that the freedom of navigation in international waterways is an absolute guaranteed right,” Mr Shapps says.

“It should be an absolute guaranteed right across all our oceans around the world. The UK actually hosts the International Maritime Organisation to the UN. So, in a sense, we have a special interest in responsibility and that ability of freedom of navigation was being impeded.

“We’d issued all the warnings and there comes a point where you simply have to act in self defence, which is what we did, because our own shipping was being fired upon.”

In a precarious situation in the Middle East, with different nations and factions lined up on opposing sides in the Israel-Gaza conflict, the possibility of violence escalating hangs heavy.

The true nature of the relationship between the Houthis, who took control of Yemen in an ongoing civil war kick-started in 2014, and the Iranians remains a point of debate.

Mr Shapps is explicit, delivering a clear message to Iranian leaders to intervene to make sure there are no more attacks from Houthi “thugs”, as he brands them.

“No one wants to see escalation,” Mr Shapps says. “We are acting in self-defence because of the shipping situation, because of HMS Diamond [the UK vessel fired at on Tuesday] being attacked.

“But Iran has an important part to play here and needs to understand that it needs to be clearer with its many proxies in the region that no good can come from this and everyone loses if they carry on going down this track.

“We can’t have thugs, essentially, harassing international shipping and running the risks. It’s only a matter of time before there are deaths of entirely innocent people [who are] completely disconnected to what’s going on in the Israel-Gaza conflict.

“Over 50 countries have now been affected by this with their shipping. This has lost all connection to the Israel-Gaza conflict and Iran absolutely needs to send a message to the Houthis that they have gone too far.”

The comments were similar in tone to ones he gave on Thursday, as strikes were being prepared, when The Telegraph accompanied him on a missile factory visit.

Asked what his message to Iran was, Mr Shapps told this newspaper on Thursday: “You must get the Houthi rebels, others who are acting as proxies for you, Lebanese, Hezbollah are obvious examples, some in Iraq, Syria, you must get these different organisations to cease and desist because we are – the world is – running out of patience. We see you, we see through what you’re doing.

“We see how you’re doing it, particularly the Houthi rebels, and no good can come from it.”

Concerning the question of Houthis failing to back down, Mr Shapps expressed his hope that Britain would not have to strike again.

He said: “Look, I just very much hope that there’s an understanding now that there is a limit that has been truly crossed.
“We cannot have a situation where international waterways are too dangerous for ships to pass. We will obviously keep the situation under review, but we’re realistic and understand we’re dealing with pretty unreasonable people.”

Government ministers have faced criticism from some political opponents for not holding a vote in Parliament before launching the strike on Houthi sites.

Such a move has become convention for military operations since Tony Blair secured the backing of the House of Commons before approving the invasion of Iraq, but there is no legal or constitutional requirement to do so.

Mr Shapps defends the decision, deploying an eye-catching argument: The effectiveness of the military operation itself could have been undermined by giving MPs a vote.

He explains: “Our constitutional position is absolutely clear in this country that it’s done by a prerogative power which actually goes straight from the King, essentially, to the defence secretary.

“So there’s a power of prerogative and there are times where you just need to be able to act, and unfortunately, if you had to go through a parliamentary process then it would degrade, potentially degrade the quality of the operation itself.

“So that’s one aspect of it. But secondly, Parliament will be back on Monday, the Prime Minister will make a statement. No one’s trying to avoid parliamentary scrutiny.”

He declines to promise a parliamentary vote if the “one-off” strike on Houthi targets becomes a more prolonged military engagement – a likely point of debate next week in the Commons.

There is barely time to discuss the new military aid package for Ukraine, with Mr Sunak announcing £2.5 billion worth of support during a visit to Kyiv on Friday.

The Defence Secretary saw for himself how the Storm Shadow long-range missile the UK has given Ukraine is made during a visit to a factory run by the company MBDA near Bolton on Thursday.

Mr Shapps believes Friday’s funding announcement should be seen by Vladimir Putin, as a sign of the UK’s deep commitment to supporting Ukraine in its attempt to repel the Russian invasion.

“If Putin thought that events in the Middle East would distract us from his evil war in Europe, he’s absolutely wrong,” Mr Shapps says.

“I think actually, by chance, the fact that we had both British military action in the Red Sea overnight at the same time as the Prime Minister going to Ukraine and announcing an increased amount of money to Ukraine very strongly demonstrates that point.”