U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday accused Iran of orchestrating attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels and warned that any further aggression from the group would result in severe retaliation.
“Let nobody be fooled! The hundreds of attacks being made by Houthi, the sinister mobsters and thugs based in Yemen, who are hated by the Yemeni people, all emanate from, and are created by, IRAN,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
Trump dismissed Tehran’s claims that it had lost control over the Houthis, arguing that Iran remains fully in charge of the group’s operations. “Iran has played ‘the innocent victim’ of rogue terrorists from which they’ve lost control, but they haven’t lost control,” he said. “They’re dictating every move, giving them the weapons, supplying them with money and highly sophisticated military equipment, and even, so-called, ‘intelligence.’”
He warned that any future Houthi attacks would be treated as direct aggression from Iran itself. “Every shot fired by the Houthis will be looked upon, from this point forward, as being a shot fired from the weapons and leadership of IRAN,” he wrote. “IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!”
The comments come amid a large-scale U.S. military operation against the Houthis in Yemen to restore freedom of navigation for international shipping in the Red Sea area. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Sunday that the terror group has attacked U.S. naval vessels 174 times and commercial ships 145 times in the past 18 months.