Successful Houthi attacks off the coast of Yemen from 11/19/2023 to 02/01/2024
February 1, 21:09
Successful Houthi attacks off the coast of Yemen from 11/19/2023 to 02/01/2024
Successful Houthi attacks since the beginning of the naval campaign in the Red Sea and off the southern coast of Yemen.
The American transport Cole, which was hit yesterday, was not included in the list.
The US and Britain have failed to stop the ongoing attacks.
Oil traffic through the Suez Canal has halved
February 1, 19:11
The damming of the Red Sea is once again reshaping global oil logistics. Oil traffic through the Suez Canal has fallen by half, according to Reuters calculations. But there was no commensurate increase in traffic through the Cape of Good Hope, bypassing Africa. That is, Asia-Europe oil traffic has decreased sharply ( https://t.me/topinfographic/2427 ).
At the same time, Russian oil shipments (according to Bloomberg calculations) are at the level of previous weeks. Monarchies also ship by the hour. If the shipping of tankers with Russian oil in the Red Sea is normal, then where the Middle Eastern oil that previously went to Europe is delivered ( https://t.me/topinfographic/2344 ) is still a mystery.
There are not many options: either ships with oil and petroleum products have not yet sailed around Africa and are not reflected in the statistics, or Middle Eastern and Russian oil has gone to Asia ( https://t.me/topinfographic/2488 ), overstocking the markets.
The price of diesel in Europe ( https://t.me/topinfographic/2307 ) has risen sharply, fueling discontent among farmers ahead of the sowing season. If the Red Sea is not released in the near future, then the question will not be the price of refueling tractors, but the physical ability to do it.
On the impact of Houthi attacks on oil and LNG transportation
February 2, 15:13
On the impact of Houthi attacks on the transportation of oil and LNG.
The Bab el-Mandeb Strait accounts for 12% of maritime trade in oil and 8% in LNG.
Euronav, QatarEnergy, Torm, Shell, Equinor, BP and Reliance have suspended transit through it.
A typical voyage from the Persian Gulf to the oil trading hub Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (ARA) via the Suez Canal takes 19 days. If the ship follows the Cape of Good Hope route, it takes almost 35 days to reach the ARA.
Longer routes put upward pressure on freight rates due to fuel costs and fewer ships available. For example, VLGC consumes $30,000 to $35,000 worth of fuel per day using high-sulfur bunker fuel at average 2023 prices.
In addition to increasing fuel costs, a longer voyage requires more ships to maintain the same delivery schedule, and fewer ships available results in higher refueling rates and costs.
Actually, this is the main profit of Iran and the Houthis, and the defeat of individual ships is a means by which pressure is exerted on the energy transportation market.
This would not have been possible if the Houthis had not succeeded in the 2015-2021 Yemen war and created a critical strategic foothold for Iran in one of the key regions.
Yemen's Houthis Claim Missile Attack Against British Vessel
A member of the artillery forces of the Ansar Allah Movement, 2024. | Photo: X/ @BnzEnglish
Published 2 February 2024
This is the third attack that the Houthis have carried out in the last 48 hours in rejection of the Israeli offensive against Gaza.
On Thursday, Yemen's Ansar Allah Movement (Houthi) claimed responsibility for launching a missile attack against a British commercial vessel in the Red Sea.
"In support of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and response to the U.S.-British aggression on our country, we targeted a British commercial ship at the Red Sea which was heading to the ports of Israel," Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea said.
"The operations against Israel in the Red Sea will continue until Israel stops its war on Gaza and lifts its siege on the Palestinian people," he said.
It is the third attack claimed by the armed Houthi group in less than 24 hours. On Wednesday night, the Houthi group claimed responsibility for missile attacks against a U.S. navy warship in the Red Sea and another U.S. commercial vessel in the Gulf of Aden.
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#Yemen Houthis are threatening to cut off the fiber optic cable that runs along the bottom of the Red Sea if the #UnitedStates and UK strike Yemen's airports again.
#Gaza #Palestine #Israel
The U.S. Central Command said that its navy forces intercepted the Houthi missile attack on the warship but gave no details on the other Houthi attack on the U.S. commercial vessel.
Tensions have been escalating in the region where the Houthi group's continuing attacks in the Red Sea disrupt the International shipping lines.
The Houthi group controls much of northern Yemen, including the capital Sana, and the strategic Red Sea port city of Hodeidah. Last month, Washington re-designated the Houthi group as a "global terrorist organization."
U.S. lies on Yemeni intent to destroy marine internet cables debunked
Originally published: Al Mayadeen on February 2, 2024 by Blackdot (more by Al Mayadeen) | (Posted Feb 08, 2024)
Blackdot has recently examined the claim that Yemen’s Ansar Allah plans to cut off 99% of the world’s internet following the circulation of the news on different social media platforms, and eventually refuted it and confirmed its falsity.
Claim: A ‘Houthi’ attack on Red Sea fiber optics cables?
On December 24, several platforms claimed that an Ansar Allah-affiliated Telegram channel shared a photo of the seabed that contains submarine cables that connect several regions of the world and supply them with internet.
The photo was captioned:
There are maps of international cables connecting all regions of the world through the sea. It seems that Yemen is in a strategic location, as internet lines that connect entire continents–not only countries—pass near it.
Once news platforms and users obtained the photo, claims were made accusing the Yemeni Armed Forces of threatening to cut off the world’s internet supply in support of Gaza amid the Israeli genocide, and the US’ targeting of Yemen in support of “Israel”.
Tracing back to the source of the news, it was found that the Middle East Media Research Institute was behind the spread of the claim, an American organization that has been explicitly pro-‘Israel’.
Nothing to back it
The Middle East Media Research Institute is the only original source that kickstarted the frenzy, while other social media platforms only circulated the piece with no substantial evidence that proves its legitimacy, primarily proving its fallacy.
The second indicator was the absence of a tangible connection between the Telegram channel and Ansar Allah, as well as the absence of an official statement from their side. The news solely relied on a theory that was meant to stir tensions.
The third indicator was the direct rejection of the claim itself by the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology of Yemen. Only two days after the American research institute made its claims, the Yemeni ministry released a statement denying the accusations and asserting that Yemen intends to keep the cables secure.
Therefore, this rids the initial claim of any validity.
A result of losses against the steadfast Ansar Allah
This comes as Ansar Allah fights off genocide enablers in the Red Sea in support of Gaza. Even after Ansar Allah was listed as a terrorist organization, Yemen was not deterred.
In response to the decision to designate the Ansar Allah as a Global Terrorist, the head of the movement’s Negotiating Envoy and top official, Mohammad Abdul-Salam said that the U.S. has used the designation for “political purposes.”
He slammed the decision, emphasizing that it “will not deter [Yemen] from our steadfast support for the Palestinian people.”
The official underlined that the decision will have minimal to “no effectiveness on the ground,” adding that it will only “strengthen [Ansar Allah’s] commitment to supporting” Palestine.
Ansar Allah’s Politburo released a statement responding to the decision saying that the classification “is ironically amusing, coming from the global state of terrorism.” The committee said that its decision is “an honorary badge,” highlighting the group’s “supportive stance toward the Palestinian people.”
Corporate Media’s Push for US War in Yemen
February 8, 2024
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The four leading media outlets studied by MintPress regularly presented the U.S. bombing one of the world’s poorest countries as a method of defending itself. Alan McLeod reports.
NBC News control room, 2011. (Anthony Quintano, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
By Alan MacLeod
MintPress News
A MintPress study of major U.S. media outlets’ coverage of the Yemeni Red Sea blockade has found an overwhelming bias in the press, which presented the event as an aggressive, hostile act of terrorism by Ansar Allah (a.k.a. the Houthis), who were presented as pawns of the Iranian government. While constantly putting forward pro-war talking points, the U.S. was portrayed as a good faith, neutral actor being “dragged” into another Middle Eastern conflict against its will.
Since November, Ansar Allah has been conducting a blockade of Israeli ships entering the Red Sea in an attempt to force Israel to stop its attack on the people of Gaza. The U.S. government, which has refused to act to stop a genocide, sprang into action to prevent damage to private property, leading an international coalition to bomb targets in Yemen.
The effect of the blockade has been substantial. With hundreds of vessels taking the detour around Africa, big businesses like Tesla and Volvo have announced they have suspended European production. Ikea has warned that it is running low on supplies, and the price of a standard shipping container between China and Europe has more than doubled. Ansar Allah, evidently, has been able to target a weak spot of global capitalism.
Western airstrikes on Yemen, however, according to Ansar Allah spokesperson, Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, have had only a “very limited” impact so far. Al-Bukhaiti made these comments in a recent interview with MintPress News.
Biased Reporting
MintPress conducted a study of four leading American outlets: The New York Times, CNN, Fox News and NBC News. Together, these outlets often set the agenda for the rest of the media system and could be said to be a reasonable representation of the corporate media spectrum as a whole.
Using the search term “Yemen” in the Dow Jones Factiva global news database, the 15 most recent relevant articles from each outlet were read and studied, giving a total sample of 60 articles. All articles were published in January 2024 or December 2023.
For full information and coding, see the attached viewable spreadsheet.
The study found the media wildly distorted reality, presenting a skewed picture that aided U.S. imperial ambitions. For one, every article in the study (60 out of 60) used the word “Houthis” rather than “Ansar Allah” to describe the movement which took part in the Yemeni Revolution of 2011 and rose up against the government in 2014, taking control of the capital Sanaa, becoming the new de facto government.
Protesters in the Yemen capital marching to Sana?a University, joined for the first time by opposition parties, March 2011. (Noor Al Hassan, Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository, CC BY-SA 2.0)
Many in Yemen consider the term “Houthi” to be a derogatory term for an umbrella movement of people. As Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of Yemen’s Supreme Revolutionary Committee, told MintPress:
“‘Houthis’ is not a name we apply to ourselves. We refuse to be called Houthis. It is not from us. It is a name given to us by our enemies in an attempt to frame the broad masses in Yemeni society that belong to our project.”
Yet only two articles even mentioned the name “Ansar Allah” at all.
Since 2014, Ansar Allah has been in control of the vast majority of Yemen, despite a U.S.-backed Saudi coalition attempting to beat them back and restore the previous administration.
Many of the articles studied, however (22 of the 60 in total), did not present Ansar Allah as a governmental force but rather as a “tribal group” (The New York Times), a “ragtag but effective” rebel organization (CNN), or a “large clan” of “extremists” (NBC News). Fourteen articles went further, using the word “terrorist” in reference to Ansar Allah, usually in the context of the U.S. government or American officials calling them such.
Some, however, used it as a supposedly uncontroversial descriptor. One Fox article, for example, read: “For weeks, the Yemeni terrorist group’s actions have been disrupting maritime traffic, while the U.S. military has been responding with strikes.” And a CNN caption noted that U.S. forces “conducted strikes on 8 Houthi targets in Iranian-backed Houthi terrorist-controlled areas of Yemen on January 22.”
Ansar Allah is responding to an Israeli onslaught that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and displaced around 1.9 million Gazans. Yet Israel and its actions were almost never described as “terrorism,” despite arguably fitting the definition far better than the Yemeni movement. The sole exception to this was a comment from al-Houthi, whom CNN quoted as calling Israel a “terrorist state.” Neither the United States nor its actions were ever described using such language.
Eyes on Iran
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps ground force in Kerman tactical exercise, November 2023. (Tasnim News Agency, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)
Although the perpetrator of the attacks on shipping is unquestionably Ansar Allah, corporate media had another culprit in mind: Iran. Fifty-nine of the 60 articles studied reminded readers that the Yemeni group is supported by the Islamic Republic, thereby directly pointing the finger at Tehran.
It is indeed true that Iran supports Ansar Allah politically and militarily. When directly asked by MintPress if Tehran supplies it with weapons, al-Bukhaiti dodged the question, calling it a “marginal issue.”
Why this facet of the story needed to be repeated literally hundreds of times is unclear. Often, the media studied would repeat it ad nauseam, to the point where a reader would be forgiven for thinking Ansar Allah’s official name was the “Iran-backed Houthis.” One CNN round-up used the phrase (or similar) seven times, a Fox News article six times, and an NBC News report five times.
Not only was the “Iran-backed” factoid used constantly, but it was also made a prominent part of how the issue was framed to the American public. The title of one Fox News report, for instance, read (emphasis added throughout): “U.S.-U.K. coalition strike Iran-backed Houthi targets in Yemen after spate of ship attacks in Red Sea.”
Its subheadline stated that: “Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi militants have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea in recent weeks,” and its first sentence read:
“The United States and Britain carried out a series of airstrikes on military locations belonging to Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen early Friday in response to the militant group’s ongoing attacks on vessels traveling through the Red Sea.”
From a stylistic point of view, repeating the same phrase continuously is very poor form. It does, however, drive the point home, suggesting perhaps that this was an inorganic directive from above.
Fox News studios at street level in New York, 2009. (Jim Henderson, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)
This is far from an unlikely event. We know, for example, that in October, new CNN CEO Mark Thompson sent out a memo to staff instructing them to always use the moniker “Hamas-controlled” when discussing the Gazan Health Ministry and their figures for deaths from Israeli bombardment. This was done with the clear intent to undermine the Palestinian side of the story.
Not only did the four outlets studied constantly remind readers that Ansar Allah is supported by Iran, but they also regularly framed the violence as orchestrated by Tehran and that Ansar Allah is little more than a group of mindless, unthinking pawns of Ayatollah Khamenei. As The New York Times wrote:
“Investing in proxy forces — fellow Shiites in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, and the Sunni Hamas in the Gaza Strip — allows Iran to cause trouble for its enemies, and to raise the prospect of causing more if attacked… The Houthi movement in Yemen launched an insurgency against the government two decades ago. What was once a ragtag rebel force gained power thanks at least in part to covert military aid from Iran, according to American and Middle Eastern officials and analysts.”
The New York Times’ sign on 8th Avenue. (Kevin Prichard Photography, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)
This “Iran is masterfully pulling all the strings” framing was present in 21 of the 60 articles.
The fearmongering about Iran did not stop there, however, with some outlets suggesting Tehran is building an international terror network or constructing an atomic bomb. The New York Times quoted one analyst who said:
” ‘Iran is really pushing it…It’s another reason they don’t want a war now: They want their centrifuges to run peacefully.’ The Iranians do not have a nuclear weapon but could enrich enough uranium to weapons-grade in a few weeks, from the current 60 percent enrichment to 90 percent, he said. ”They’ve done 95 percent of the work.’”
The point of all this was to demonize Ansar Allah and ramp up tensions with Iran, leading to the inevitable calls for war. “The U.S. needs to strike Iran, and make it smart,” ran the (since changed) title of a Washington Post editorial.
“The West may now have no option but to attack Iran,” wrote neoconservative Iran hawk John Bolton in the pages of The Daily Telegraph. Bolton, of course, is part of a group called United Against Nuclear Iran that, since its inception, has been attempting to convince the U.S. to bomb Iran. Earlier this year, MintPress News profiled the shady think tank.
While the media in the sample reminded us literally hundreds of times that Ansar Allah is Iran-backed, similar phrases such as “U.S.-backed Saudi Arabia” or “America-backed Israel” were never used, despite Washington propping both those countries up, with diplomatic, military and economic support.
The Biden administration has rushed more than $14 billion in military aid to Israel since Oct. 7, sent a fleet of warships to the region, and blocked diplomatic efforts to stop Israel’s attack on Gaza.
Meanwhile, it is doubtful whether Saudi Arabia would exist in its current form without U.S. support. Militarily alone, the U.S. has sold tens of billions of dollars worth of weaponry to Riyadh, helping the petro-state to convert its oil profits into security. From 2014 to 2023, Saudi Arabia led a U.S.-backed coalition force attempting to remove Ansar Allah from power.
This consisted primarily of a massive bombing campaign against civilian targets in Yemen, including farms, hospitals and sanitation infrastructure. The violence turned Yemen into what the United Nations regularly called the “world’s worst humanitarian crisis,” with around 400,000 people dying and tens of millions going hungry and lacking even basic healthcare.
Protester with Chicago Area Peace Action group, Nov. 30, 2018, responding to a Saudi attack on a school bus that used a 500-pound bomb manufactured by Lockheed-Martin. (Charles Edward Miller, Flickr, CC BY SA-2.0)
The U.S. backed Saudi Arabia the whole way, selling the government at least $28.4 billion worth of arms, according to a MintPress study. In 2021, the Biden administration announced it would only sell the kingdom “defensive” technology. However, this has included shipments of cruise missiles, attack helicopters, and support for gunships.
Both Saudi Arabia and Israel featured prominently in the articles studied. But only five of the 60 mentioned U.S. support for Saudi Arabia, and none at all for Israel. This context is extremely important for American audiences to know. Without their government’s political, military, economic and diplomatic support, none of this would be possible, and the current situation would be radically different.
Only six articles mentioned U.S. support for the Saudi onslaught against Yemen — and none featured the fact prominently as they did with Iranian support for Ansar Allah.
Only one article in the sample suggested that Ansar Allah might not simply be an Iranian cat’s paw. The New York Times wrote that: “The Houthis are an important arm of Iran’s so-called ‘axis of resistance,’ which includes armed groups across the Middle East.
But Yemeni analysts say they view the militia as a complex Yemeni group, rather than just an Iranian proxy.” This was the sum total of information given suggesting Ansar Allah is an independent actor.
Humanitarian Blockade?
Yemen considers its actions in blocking Israeli traffic from the Red Sea as a humanitarian gesture, similar to the “right to protect” concept the U.S. frequently invokes to justify what it sees as humanitarian interventions across the world. As al-Houthi told MintPress:
“First, our position is religious and humanitarian, and we see a tremendous injustice. We know the size and severity of these massacres committed against the people of Gaza. We have suffered from American-Saudi-Emirati terrorism in a coalition that has launched a war and imposed a blockade against us that is still ongoing. Therefore, we move from this standpoint and do not want the same crime to be repeated.”
Al-Bukhati said that Ansar Allah did not intend to kill anyone with their actions and that they would stop if Israel ceased its attack on Gaza, telling MintCast host Mnar Adley that:
“We affirm to everyone that we only target ships associated with the Zionist entity [Israel], not with the intention of sinking or seizing them, but rather to divert them from their course in order to increase the economic cost on the Zionist entity [Israel] as a pressure tactic to stop the crimes of genocide in Gaza.”
However, this “humanitarian” framing of Yemen’s actions was not prominently used and was only introduced by identifying it as a Houthi claim. Many articles only alluded to the position of Ansar Allah. CNN wrote that “The Iran-backed Houthis have said they won’t stop their attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea until the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza ends.”
Meanwhile, NBC News and Fox News frequently presented Ansar Allah’s actions as purely in support of their ally, Hamas, as the following two examples illustrate:
“The Iran-backed militants, who say their actions are aimed at supporting Hamas, vowed retaliation and said the attacks had killed at least 5 fighters at multiple rebel-held sites” (NBC News).
“Houthi forces have taken credit for continued attacks on merchant vessels and threatened to expand their targets to include U.S. and British vessels — all in a campaign to support Hamas in its war against Israel” (Fox News).
Therefore, humanitarian action was refashioned into support for terrorism.
Other articles also suggested a wide range of reasons for the blockade, including to “expand a regional war” and “distract the [Yemeni] public” from their “failing…governance” (The New York Times), to “attempt to gain legitimacy at home,” (CNN), and “revenge against the U.S. for supporting Saudi Arabia,” (NBC News). Many offered no explanation for the blockade whatsoever.
A War ‘Nobody Wants’
U.S. Secretary Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Feb. 7. (State Department, Chuck Kennedy)
As al-Bukhaiti’s comments suggest, there would be a very easy way to end the blockade: get Israel to end its operations in Gaza.
But only twice in 60 articles was this reality even mentioned; one noting that Omani and Qatari officials advised that “reaching a cease-fire in Gaza would remove the Houthis’ stated impetus for the attacks,” and once in the final sentence of an NBC News article quoting al-Bukhaiti himself saying exactly as much.
However, due to the placement of the information and the fact that it came from an organization regularly described as an Iran-backed extremist terrorist group, that idea likely held little weight with readers. Instead, military solutions (i.e., bombing Yemen) were the overwhelming response offered by the corporate press in their reporting.
Despite this, the media consistently presented the United States as a neutral and honest actor in the Middle East, on the verge of being “sucked” into another war against its will. As The New York Times wrote, “President Biden and his aides have struggled to keep the war contained, fearful that a regional escalation could quickly draw in American forces.”
There was a profound “reluctance,” the Times told readers, from Biden to strike Yemen, but he had been left with “no real choice” but to do so.
This framing follows the classic trope of the bumbling empire “stumbling” into war that media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has documented, where the United States is always “responding” to crises and is never the aggressor.
“How America Could Stumble Into War With Iran,” wrote The Atlantic; “Trump could easily get us sucked into Afghanistan again,” Slate worried; “What It Would Take to Pull the US Into a War in Asia,” Quartz told readers.
None of the journalists writing about the U.S.’ frequent misfortune with war ever seem to contemplate why China, Brazil, Indonesia, or any other similarly large country do not get pulled into wars of their own volition as the United States does.
The four media outlets studied regularly presented the U.S. bombing one of the world’s poorest countries as a method of defending itself.
CNN wrote that “Administration officials have repeatedly said that they see these actions as defensive rather than escalatory,” without comment. And Fox News ran with the extraordinary headline, “U.S. carries out ‘self-defense’ strike in Yemen against Iran-backed Houthi missiles” – a framing which could surely only fly in a deeply propagandized nation.
In reality, the United States’ military meddling in Yemen did not start this winter. Biden is the fourth successive U.S. president to bomb the country. In December, the White House confirmed that there are already American troops in Yemen, though what their precise focus is remains unclear.
How Propaganda Works
This sort of wildly skewed coverage does not happen by accident. Rather, it is the outcome of structural and ideological factors inherent within corporate media.
The New York Times is committed to Zionism as an ideology, and its writers on the Middle East are not neutral actors but protagonists in the ongoing displacement of Palestinians. The newspaper owns property in West Jerusalem that was seized from the family of writer Ghada Kharmi during the 1948 ethnic cleansing.
And while many Times writers are openly supportive of the Israeli project and have family members serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, staff who speak out against the ongoing genocide are promptly shown the door.
Fox News is no less complicit in the Israeli project. Its owner, Rupert Murdoch, is a major owner in Genie Energy, a company profiting from oil drilling in the illegally occupied Golan Heights region.
Murdoch is famously hands-on as a boss and makes sure all of his media outlets follow his line on major issues. And on Israel, the Australian billionaire is explicit: “Israel is the greatest ally of democracy in a region beset with turmoil and radicalism,” he said in 2013. The network’s massive Evangelical Christian viewership would expect little else than strong support for the U.S.-Israeli position, either.
CNN, meanwhile, operates a strict, censorious, top-down approach to its Middle East coverage, with everything the outlet prints having to go through its notoriously pro-Israel Jerusalem bureau before publishing.
Senior executives send out directives instructing staff to make sure that Hamas (not Israel) is always presented as responsible for the current violence while, at the same time, barring any reporting of Hamas’ viewpoint, which its senior director of news standards and practices told staff was “not newsworthy” and amounted to “inflammatory rhetoric and propaganda.”
Therefore, the results of this study, while shocking, should not be surprising, given this context. Through examining the coverage of Yemen in four leading U.S. outlets, it is clear that corporate media are failing to inform the public of many of the basic realities of who Ansar Allah is, why they are carrying out their campaign, and what it would take to end the hostilities.
They are perpetuating this war, and therefore are every bit as responsible as the politicians and military commanders who keep the bloodshed going.
Yemen to require permits for ships transiting Red Sea
Yemen has conducted military operations against Israeli-linked ships in solidarity with the Palestinian people since November
News Desk
MAR 5, 2024
(Photo Credit: Reuters)
Ships wishing to transit the Red Sea will have to procure a permit from Yemen’s Maritime Affairs Authority before entering Yemeni waters, Telecommunications Minister Misfer Al-Numair said on 4 March.
"[We] are ready to assist requests for permits and identify ships with the Yemeni Navy, and we confirm this is out of concern for their safety," Numair told Al-Masirah TV.
The territorial waters that require a permit include the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. About 15 percent of the world’s shipping traffic passes through this crossing to and from the Suez Canal.
Since November, Yemen has targeted Israeli-linked ships that enter its waters in an act of solidarity with the people of Palestine. Israel has now waged a brutal, five-month offensive on Gaza that has killed at least 30,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.
On Monday, Yemen’s armed forces released a statement declaring responsibility for an attack against an Israeli ship in the Red Sea.
“The naval forces of the Yemeni Armed Forces carried out a targeting operation against an Israeli ship ‘MSC SKY’ in the Arabian Sea with a number of suitable naval missiles, and the hit was accurate and direct,” the statement read.
It also noted that the targeting of “MSC SKY” came hours after the Yemeni armed forces carried “out a qualitative operation during which the missile force and unmanned air force launched a number of ballistic missiles and drones at a number of enemy American warships in the Red Sea.”
In retaliation for the Yemeni attacks, the US and UK have conducted multiple airstrikes against targets in Yemen, including in the capital, Sanaa.
In the latter half of February, Yemen successfully launched an attack targeting the UK’s Rubymar cargo ship. The ship sank on 3 March after days of taking on water.
Yemeni navy fires drones, missiles at US destroyers in Red Sea
Sanaa recently announced that ships wishing to transit the Red Sea will need a permit from Yemen’s maritime authority
News Desk
MAR 6, 2024
(Photo credit: AP)
Yemen’s Armed Forces announced that it targeted two US warships in the Red Sea with drones and missiles on 5 March.
“The Yemeni armed forces, with the help of God Almighty, carried out an effective military operation in which they targeted two American warship destroyers in the Red Sea, through our naval forces, the missile force, and the unmanned air force. The operation was carried out with a number of naval missiles and drones,” the Yemeni army said in a statement on Tuesday evening.
“The operations of the Yemeni armed forces will not stop until the aggression stops and the siege imposed on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip is lifted,” the statement added.
CENTCOM said on Wednesday that it shot down a missile and three drones launched toward the USS Carney the night before.
Sanaa’s latest operation came one day after its ballistic missile and drone attack on the MSC Sky, an Israeli ship in the Red Sea. The targeting of the Israeli ship came hours after Yemeni forces fired several ballistic missiles toward US warships in the Red Sea.
Yemeni media reported several US–British airstrikes on the Baqim District in Yemen’s Saada province that evening.
Since November, Yemen has targeted Israeli-linked ships that enter its waters in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Israel has now waged a brutal, five-month offensive on Gaza that killed at least 30,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children.
The US and UK have been waging a violent aerial campaign against Yemen since mid-January in response to Yemeni naval operations. Since this campaign began, the scope of Yemen’s operations has expanded to include US and British vessels.
The British Rubymar vessel sank on 3 March after being struck by Yemeni forces late last month.
The Yemeni army and the Ansarallah resistance movement, militarily aligned with one another, have repeatedly affirmed that vessels unassociated with Israel, the US, or the UK will not be subject to attacks.
To guarantee their safety, Sanaa announced on 4 March that ships wishing to transit the Red Sea will have to procure a permit from Yemen’s Maritime Affairs Authority before entering Yemeni waters.
The territorial waters that require a permit include the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the mouth of the Red Sea. About 15 percent of the world’s shipping traffic passes through this crossing to and from the Suez Canal.
Pentagon blames 'intel gap' for failure to stop Yemen's Red Sea ops
After nearly two months and hundreds of airstrikes, the US has failed to deter the pro-Palestine actions of the Yemeni armed forces
News Desk
MAR 6, 2024
(Photo Credit: Saba News Agency)
US defense officials have blamed “insufficient intelligence” for Washington's abortive airstrike campaign against Yemen, which started in mid-January and has so far failed to deter the Yemeni armed forces from attacking US, UK, and Israeli-linked vessels in the Red Sea in support of Palestine.
During a congressional hearing on US operations in the Red Sea last week, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for West Asia, Daniel B. Shapiro, revealed Washington “did not know” the full capacity of the Yemeni arsenal used for its operations in the Red Sea, adding that the White House was “working to gather that intelligence.”
He added that, while the Pentagon had “a good sense” of what US-led attacks have allegedly destroyed, officials did not “fully know the denominator” – meaning the reality of Yemen's military capabilities.
According to current and former US officials who spoke with the Financial Times (FT), US intelligence agencies saw a “drop-off” in Yemen operations during the governments of former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
“Because Yemen went down as a priority, so did our intelligence focus there,” Mick Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official and CIA officer, told the British news outlet.
CIA operations in Yemen were also affected after the Ansarallah-led government shut down the US embassy in Sanaa.
“Reporting on a country from afar or offshore is inherently challenging, and doubly so for a country that has seen so much churn over the past 10 years,” Ted Singer, a recently retired senior CIA official, said.
Although hundreds of US-led airstrikes have hit the Arab world's poorest country since January, Yemeni leaders maintain that no amount of hostilities will deter them from continuing their Red Sea operations until Israel puts an end to the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.
“The US, Britain, and Israel must realize that the policies of demarcation and assertion of hegemonic influence on international waters are obsolete and no more favorable … As long as the Zionists’ atrocities continue in Gaza, we will continue our operations against the usurping entity," Defense Minister Major General Mohammed al-Atifi said on 26 February.
As US intelligence agencies scramble to discover the reality of Yemen's military arsenal, White House lawyers are in a rush to find legal loopholes to justify a new war in West Asia.
Smoking American transport True Confidence.
The ship, sailing under the Barbados flag, yesterday received an anti-ship ballistic missile hit on its superstructure after refusing to comply with the demands of the Houthis. As a result, it received a missile and a subsequent fire. 3 crew members were killed, 5 were injured and burned.
The ship itself received significant damage. American warships were also attacked, but there are fewer specifics.
The US and Britain responded by bombing the Hodeidah area again, but as usual with near-zero results. The Houthis promised yesterday that the attacks would not only continue, but also intensify. Moreover, the Houthis are announcing an increase in the use of surface and underwater drones.
There is also still a threat of failure of other main cables running along the bottom of the Red Sea. The US and British Operation Guardian of Prosperity was a complete failure.
