U.S. Escalates Middle East War Further with Attacks on 13 Locations in Yemen

These latest aerial assaults were some of the most destructive the fascist forces have carried out to date on Yemen.

These strikes are the latest of many against Yemen since the U.S. created its Operation Prosperity Guardian task force in support of Israel's genocide on Palestinians. It was supposed to make the Red Sea safe for ship traffic, but has done the opposite and forced far more ships to take the long route around Africa instead of through the Suez Canal and Red Sea. 

The American and British attacks have to date been ineffective in forcing Yemen to ease up on its currently non-lethal Red Sea naval blockade primarily against cargo ships which dock at Israeli ports, are Israeli-flagged, or owned by Israeli companies. Yemen's military manages that blockade first via radio warnings to ship captains, followed by targeted strikes and shelling aimed at dissuading the ships from traveling further. The Yemeni leadership is also on record stating that if western powers who are suffering economic harm as most ships are being rerouted from the Red Sea around the Cape of Good Hope, they must collectively force Israel to halt its deadly slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Pentagon said these latest attacks were in line with the most severe of past strikes, but apparently carried out with more powerful weaponry this time, with the goal of destroying more deeply buried and heavily fortified targets than in previous attempts to block Yemen in achieving its mission in the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. The American-led mission hit 13 locations with a total 36 specific attacks. Those strikes were on facilities U.S. coalition forces’ intelligence organizations determined were deep underground munitions storage areas, more missile systems launching sites, defense radar facilities, and unspecified defense installations, all reportedly connected with the ongoing naval blockade actions Yemen has been running against the genocide.

In its own statement on the Yemeni assaults, the United Kingdom went into more than usual detail about its roles in the mission this time. It cited attacks its military had run on Yemen ground control stations at As Salif and Al Munirah, on a costal stretch along the Red Sea. Those ground stations were said to have been critical in launching drones and providing reconnaissance for the Houthi missions. The government also noted that Royal Air Force Typhoon FGR4 aircraft struck several targets in Bani that it said were key to supporting Yemen’s missile launches at cargo ships traveling through the region.

The U.K. said the RAF fighter jets were launched from Cyprus. This is the same location from which both American and British aircraft had launched in previous attacks on Yemen over the last month.

As in the past, this latest wave of aerial attacks were handled mostly by United States military aircraft and Tomahawk cruise missiles launched by American naval vessels. The United Kingdom provided a much smaller portion of the assault weaponry, mostly in the form of its own Typhoon fighter jets and Paveway IV guided bombs.

The Pentagon said this time they had received additional support from genocide coalition members Australia, Bahrain, Canada, Denmark, and New Zealand in carrying out the mission. How they provided that was not specified. The point was to demonstrate that the governments were being subservient to Zionist Israel and the Euro-American war industry. 

Shortly after the current batch of airstrikes against Yemen were completed, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin issued a statement summarizing their scope and nature. They also reiterated something which has become a common part of the U.S. military narrative in the Middle East of late, both in the coalition bombings in Yemen and its apparently first of many major proxy attacks on Iran via Iranian-aligned militia which took place on February 2 in Iraq and Syria. That something is that these latest rounds of bombings are intended to be a warning of what the United States could do if it does not get its way in the current conflict.

The Houthis responded with their own statement via Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a senior official in the Yemen political bureau.

“The US-British coalition’s bombing of a number of Yemeni provinces will not change our position, and we affirm that our military operations against Israel will continue until the crimes of genocide in Gaza are stopped and the siege on its residents is lifted, no matter the sacrifices it costs us,” he wrote on the social media platform X.

“Our war is moral, and if we had not intervened to support the oppressed in Gaza, humanity would not have existed among humans,” he continued. “The American-British aggression against Yemen will not go unanswered, and we will meet escalation with escalation.”

The powerful assault by the genocide supporters on Yemen late on Saturday followed several back-and-forth smaller skirmishes between the resistance and the United States in the Red Sea on February 2 and earlier in the day on February 3, before the planned airstrikes began.

According to U.S. Central Command, those began with the resistance launching a drone over the Gulf of Aden at around 10:30 am local time on February 2 and the U.S. Navy destroyer-class USS Carney shooting it down. Later in the afternoon the Houthis reportedly fired off four more drones, this time over the Red Sea and in the path of merchant shipping vessels in the area. The U.S. counterattacked but did not disclose whether it hit them. Other cruise missiles were launched from Yemen that night, with American forces once again responding.

In the early morning hours of February 3, the U.S. claims to have struck and exploded seven drones fired out from Yemen over the Red Sea. The Red Sea and Gulf of Aden remained relatively quiet over most of the day following, but in the evening CENTCOM said the American forces in the Red Sea were able to down another six Houthi cruise missiles which had targeted various ships in the area.

Even as the U.S. coalition was running the attacks which hit the 36 separate targets in Yemen on Saturday, reports were coming in as to the seriousness of the damage caused by American forces during the 85 bombing runs on Iran-aligned militia targets in Iraq and Syria. Reports from the ground where the attacks took place say as many as 40 people may have been killed and at least 25 wounded by the American forces spearheaded by B-1 bombers sent from the United States.

China and Russia have tentatively responded by agreeing to hold drills with Iran. Iran's Rear Admiral Shahram Irani said today, “Iran's joint naval exercise with Russia and China will be held by the end of the year, although other countries have also been invited to participate in this exercise.”