DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The leader of Yemen’s Houthis said Thursday that retaliation for an Israeli strike last month on a port controlled by the Iran-backed rebels was inevitable.
The promise threatened to add to regional tensions that have soared after Iran vowed reprisals against Israel for the killing of top Hezbollah military commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut last week, and for the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran hours later, which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility for.
A response to Israel’s July 20 attack that targeted fuel storage tanks on the Houthi-controlled Hodeida harbor is “inevitable and will come,” Abdul Malik al-Houthi said in a televised speech.
The battle with Israel was “at its zenith,” the rebel chief added.
Israeli fighter jets struck the port’s oil and fuel facilities last month in response to a Houthi drone strike on Tel Aviv which killed a man.
In addition to oil and fuel facilities, the strike targeted four large container cranes, which Israel said were being used to import Iranian weapons into Yemen. In total, a port official estimated that the strike caused around $20 million in damage.
The Houthi rebel group is part of Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” which includes Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Syrian and Iraqi militant groups.
The delayed response by Iran and its proxies was “purely tactical,” al-Houthi said, adding that it was aiming for “a genuinely impactful response” in light of preemptive defense measures taken by Israel and its American backers.
“The decision to respond is a decision made by everyone; at the level of the entire axis,” he said.
Since November, the Iranian proxy has been targeting ships in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza where Israel has been waging a war against Hamas since the terrorist organization’s unprecedented October 7 massacre, in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 251 were taken hostage.
“The decrease in maritime traffic is a great victory,” the Houthi leader said on Thursday, adding that a total of 177 vessels had been targeted.