The U.S. military is not joining the Saudi-led Arab coalition’s war against Houthi rebels in Yemen, the Pentagon said Thursday.
A Pentagon spokesman said the U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile attack launched early Thursday morning from the destroyer USS Nitze against three coastal defense missile radar sites in Yemen was a purely defensive response to attacks on a U.S. ship, and does not signal wider U.S. involvement in Yemen’s civil war.
“These strikes are not connected to the broader conflict in Yemen,” said Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook. “The Unites States continues to encourage all parties in the Yemen conflict to commit to a cessation of hostilities and to seek a political solution to that conflict.”
The attack on Yemeni radar followed three instances in which shore-launched cruise missiles were fired from Houthi-controlled territory at ships in international waters in the Red Sea this month, including two failed attempts to hit U.S. warships, and one successful strike against a UAE-flagged vessel.
Destroying the radars is aimed at degrading the ability of hostiles to track and target ships as they transit the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, a narrow waterway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.
Cook stopped short of blaming the Houthis, even though the missiles came from areas they control. “We don’t know who was pulling the trigger specifically.”
The Pentagon says it is prepared to respond further if the cruise missile attacks continue. The Shiite Houthi rebels are battling against the Sunni government of elected President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, who is backed by Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies.
The Houthi rebels have received some aid in the past from Iran, and it appears the missiles used in the attacks were Iranian versions of Chinese anti-ship missiles, but Cook could not say if there was any involvement by Iran in the strikes.
