US, UK launch airstrikes against Houthis in Yemen after Red Sea attacks, Rishi Sunak says 'necessary, proportionate'
Houthi rebels in Yemen amid growing crisis in oil-rich West Asia, thereby escalating a conflict in response to a string of attacks that have disrupted commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Notably, the spill over from the war between Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel and Hamas fighters in Gaza had been flagged repeatedly by US when Tel Aviv began a relentless airstrike campaign in the densely populated Gaza Strip.
President Joe Biden said that the series of strikes in Yemen targeting Iran-backed Houthi rebels was meant to demonstrate that the US and its allies “will not tolerate" the militant group’s ceaseless attacks on the Red Sea. According to Bloomberg report, oil prices jumped as as result of US and UK launching airstrikes on the Houthi rebels in the Red Sea.
A US official confirmed the strikes to Bloomberg, which escalate a conflict with the Iranian-backed group. Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been launching attacks on shipping in the Red Sea for weeks, including their largest barrage ever of drones and missiles launched late Tuesday.
US-led forces launched retaliatory strikes early Friday. Further on Thursday Iran's navy captured an oil tanker Thursday in the Gulf of Oman that only months earlier had seen its cargo of Iranian oil seized by the United States over sanctions linked to Tehran's nuclear program, further escalating the tensions gripping the Mideast's waterways.
The vessel was previously known as the Suez Rajan when it was involved in a yearlong dispute beginning in 2021 that ultimately saw the US Justice Department take the 1 million barrels of Iranian crude oil on it. The US and its allies also have been seizing Iranian oil cargoes since 2019 to enforce sanctions over the Islamic Republic's nuclear
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