The U.S. military‘s airstrikes against the Houthis are occurring at a faster “tempo of operations” compared to strikes under the previous administration due to changes made by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth regarding the authorization process.
U.S. forces began a military campaign targeting the Houthis on Saturday and carried out additional strikes on Sunday and Monday as well. The United States hit more than 30 targets on Saturday, Lt. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the joint staff director for operations, confirmed on Monday. However, he declined to provide a specific tally for the Sunday and Monday strikes.
Recommended Stories
- Putin and Trump to speak Tuesday, as Trump confirms some decisions about carving up Ukraine have already been made
- Marco Rubio: Ground raids on Houthis not necessary following successful US airstrikes
- Hegseth pledges strikes at Houthis won't be a 'one-night thing'
Hegseth signed a directive last month easing constraints on airstrikes and the deployment of U.S. Special Forces, which Grynkewich said during Monday’s Pentagon press briefing was a “key difference” in the operation compared to previous iterations of U.S. strikes targeting the Houthis in the last year and a half.
TRUMP ESCALATION AGAINST HOUTHIS HAS MAJOR EFFECT ON OIL
“Without going into too many operational details for security reasons, but it’s a much broader set of targets that we’ve been able to action in this case, and the other key difference is the delegation of authorities from the president through Secretary Hegseth down to the operational commander,” he explained. “So that allows us to achieve a tempo of operations, where we can react to opportunities that we see on the battlefield in order to continue to put pressure on the Houthis.”
“Dozens” of Houthi rebels were killed in the operation, Grynkewich said, adding that there have been no indications of civilian casualties. Targets included training sites, unmanned aerial vehicle infrastructure, weapons manufacturing capabilities, and weapons storage facilities. One of the compounds hit was “where we know several senior Houthi unmanned aerial vehicle experts were located,” he noted.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said the military’s operation against the Houthis is “not about regime change in the Middle East.” He said the goal is to get the Houthis to “stop attacking our ships and putting American lives at risk.”
More than 50 people were killed in the strikes, according to the Houthi Health Ministry.
Houthis rebels said they retaliated for the strikes against U.S. naval vessels in the region. However, Grynkewich said the U.S. “easily defeated” the drones and missiles fired at them, adding, “they missed by over 100 miles.”
Earlier on Monday, President Donald Trump warned that any further Houthi retaliation would incur a U.S. response against Iran, which funds and supports them.
“Any further attack or retaliation by the ‘Houthis’ will be met with great force, and there is no guarantee that that force will stop there. Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” Trump said on TruthSocial. “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
Parnell declined to rule out the possibility that the U.S. could put troops in Yemen.
The Houthis began firing missiles and drones at commercial vessels transiting the waterways of Yemen’s coasts in the aftermath of the start of the Israel-Hamas war. There have been more than 150 such attacks, and as a result, commercial shipping companies have decided to largely avoid the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, instead opting for the much longer and more expensive route traveling around the southern tip of Africa.
Under the previous administration, the U.S. and U.K. militaries jointly carried out several rounds of airstrikes, but they didn’t completely eradicate Houthi military capabilities. The U.S. also led an international effort to protect ships transiting the waterways off Yemen’s coasts.