The United States has undertaken its eighth round of strikes in ten days against the Yemeni Houthi group as it has conducted its second joint airstrike with the British military in an ongoing U.S-led campaign targeting Houthi ports that the Pentagon has now dubbed “Operation Poseidon Archer”.
“The U.S. and UK carried out additional strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen on Monday, marking the eighth round of attacks by the U.S. military on the rebels’ infrastructure in just over 10 days, according to a joint statement.
They struck eight sites, according to the statement from the U.S. and UK, which conducted the strikes, and Canada, the Netherlands, Bahrain, and Australia, which supported the attacks.
The latest strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen were ‘successful’ and destroyed missiles, weapons storage sites and drone systems, according to a senior military official and a senior defense official.
The officials, who briefed reporters following the Monday afternoon operation, said the strikes ‘achieved the desired effect’.
It was a smaller number than the first joint operation on January 11th that struck over 30 Houthi targets. Monday’s strikes targeted a Houthi underground storage site and sites associates with Houthi missile and air surveillance, the statement added.
The U.S. used fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as surface vessels and a submarine to strike eight locations, the senior military official said. In all, the official said approximately 25-30 precision guided munitions were fired at the targets, including Tomahawk cruise missiles.
For the first time, the U.S. also struck an underground storage facility used by the Houthis, the official said. The storage site was assessed to have “more advanced conventional weaponry,” including missiles and one-way attack drones.
Grant Shapps, the UK’s secretary of state for defense, said four British Typhoon fighter jets took part in the strikes on Houthi targets.
CNN reported on Monday that the U.S. has named the ongoing operation to target Houthi assets in Yemen ‘Operation Poseidon Archer’, suggesting a more organized and potentially long-term approach to the operations in Yemen that have been aimed at deterring the Iranian-backed group from attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
The U.S. has now struck Houthi targets in Yemen eight times since January 11th, the majority of which the U.S. military has carried out unilaterally. The first wave of strikes, in which the U.S. and UK hit approximately 30 sites across Houthi-controlled Yemen, marked the beginning of Operation Poseidon Archer, one official said.
The attacks have targeted the Houthis’ one-way attack drones, anti-ship ballistic missiles, anti-ship cruise missiles and more as the U.S. has tried to disrupt the group’s ability to fire on international shipping lanes.
In an attempt to avoid escalation, the officials said the latest strikes were specifically intended to target the Houthi weapons and supporting capabilities used to target international shipping lanes, describing them as similar in nature to the first round of coalition strikes against Houthi targets on January 11th.
‘We are not at this time expanding beyond that target set’, the senior military official said.
Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said on Monday that the Houthis had not launched a new attack on commercial shipping since January 18th. The Houthis claimed on Monday to have attacked a U.S.-owned cargo ship, the M/V Ocean Jazz, but a defense official told CNN that claim was not true”. - Natasha Bertrand and Oren Liebermann, CNN
As the United States strategy to curb the ability of the Yemeni Shiite militant group to target ships transporting through the Red Sea, the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait, and the Gulf of Aden by directly engaging in attacks on Houthi sites seems to have failed to degrade the ability of Houthi fighters to continue to hijack commercial vessels at sea, facing a rise in insurance premiums, Western carriers will likely be required to reroute their cargoes around Africa until Israel’s blockade of Gaza is lifted.