While the US is launching strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen to a vow of the rebels to target American ships, Donald Trump is trying to push Iran.
In a truth Social Post on Monday, the president wrote that his administration would be in prospect of considering Houthi acts of aggression against American vessels, interests and allies to be carried out with the direction or support of Iran.
“From this point to every shot fired by the Houthi, if a shot is fired from the weapons and leadership of Iran, and Iran will be held responsible, and the consequences will be, and these consequences will be severe!” Trump wrote.
His post on Monday followed similar rhetoric that leveled the aftermath of the US air strikes in Yemen over the weekend, but indicated an escalation, as it was the first time the US threatened military retaliation against the Iranian government over the action taken by the Houthis.
The US and Western countries have long accused the Iranian government – through its Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) of funding and training the Houthi movement. In recent days, Iranian officials, including highest leader Ayatollah Khamenei, have tried to distance Tehran and the group.
“We have always declared -and we declare again today -that the Yemenians are an independent and free nation in their own land, with an independent national policy, a top -irgc official, Major General Hossein Salami, Sunday said.
But the Foreign Relations Council and other organizations estimate that Iran has provided the Houthi movement to weapons for a decade, as well as intelligence support and remains one of Tehran’s most important customer organizations after the fall of Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
The Houthi militant group first emerged in the 1990s and gained control of Sanaa, the capital of Yemen in 2014. An al-Qaeda subsidiary also remains active in the country, and the two groups were the targets of an extensive Western supported Saudi-led military campaign that had the blame to kill a humanitarian crisis and kill thousands of civilians.
“Successive US administrations did not dump the flow of Iranian support for the Houthis and the growing Iranian influence on them,” an analysis of 2022 read from the Center-Right American Enterprise Institute (AEI). “The IRGC QUDs power has increasingly transmitted sophisticated weapons and capabilities to the Houthi’s during the Trump administration’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign against Iran.”
The US AirStriks launched On the Houthi-Hemenite capital of Sanaa early Sunday morning. Local officials claim most of the dead were civilians, including women and children.
However, Foreign Minister Marco Rubio claimed that Yemenians were not even key players in the conflict: ‘It is wrong to think about it as we bombed Yemen. We bombard the Houthis, and they are coincidentally located in Yemen. “
Iran’s revolutionary guards promised to rise the threats of the Trump administration, and the country’s highest leader says Tehran will not participate in core talks, while the “maximum pressure” campaign in Washington remains in effect. The campaign seeks to cut off Iran’s oil exports with the aim of suffocating Iran’s nuclear development.
Experts of the Atlantic Council warned over the weekend that the Houthi forces could probably also increase attacks against US interests, including warships stationed in the region-or try to push further to the territory held by the Government in the Government of Yemen.
“We warn our enemies that Iran will respond decisively and destructively if they take their threats into action,” the IRGC’s salami told Iranian state media.
