WASHINGTON — Nearly three years after President Joe Biden announced that ending the war in Yemen would be among his top foreign policy priorities, experts are warning that a wave of American-led airstrikes in the war-torn country could undermine his administration’s hard-won diplomatic gains.
US and British warplanes carried out precision strikes across Yemen overnight on Thursday in what was described as a joint effort to degrade the Houthis’ ability to threaten commercial shipping in the Red Sea. A US Navy destroyer launched another strike the next day that targeted a radar site belonging to the Yemeni militant group.
Biden said the initial airstrikes — which hit radar installations, missile launchers and storage facilities in the capital Sanaa and other Yemeni cities — were intended to send “a clear message that the United States and our partners will not tolerate attacks on our personnel or allow hostile actors to imperil freedom of navigation.”
The Houthis responded by striking a US-owned and operated cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden with a ballistic missile on Monday, according to US Central Command, which handles American military operations in the Middle East. A day earlier, US fighter aircraft shot down an anti-ship cruise missile fired toward an American warship from Houthi-controlled Yemen.
