Regional
Who are Yemen’s Houthis and why are they attacking Red Sea ships?
The Iran-aligned Houthis of Yemen are playing an escalating role in the Middle East, attacking shipping in the Red Sea and firing drones and missiles at Israel in a campaign they say aims to support Palestinians in the Gaza war, Reuters reported.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Tuesday announced the creation of a multinational operation to safeguard commerce in the Red Sea in response to the Houthi attacks.
The Houthis’ role has added to the conflict’s regional risks, threatening sea lanes through which much of the world’s oil is shipped, and worrying states on the Red Sea as Houthi rockets and drones fly towards Israel.
Who are the Houthis?
History
In the late 1990s, the Houthi family in far north Yemen set up a religious revival movement for the Zaydi sect of Shi’ite Islam, which had once ruled Yemen but whose northern heartland had became impoverished and marginalised, Reuters reported.
As friction with the government grew, they fought a series of guerrilla wars with the national army and a brief border conflict with Sunni powerhouse Saudi Arabia.
Growing Power
Their power grew during the Yemen war which began in late 2014, when they seized Sanaa. Worried by the growing influence of Shi’ite Iran along its border, Saudi Arabia intervened at the head of a Western-backed coalition in 2015 in support of the Yemeni government, Reuters reported.
The Houthis established control over much of the north and other big population centres, while the internationally recognised government based itself in Aden.
Yemen has enjoyed more than a year of relative calm amid a U.N.-led peace push. Saudi Arabia has been holding talks with the Houthis in a bid to exit the war.
Role in Middle East war
The Houthis waded into the latest conflict as it spread around the Middle East, announcing on Oct. 31 they had fired drones and missiles at Israel and vowing they would continue to mount attacks “until the Israeli aggression stops”.
Their actions have echoed the role of the Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israeli positions at the Lebanese frontier, and Iraqi militias which have been firing at U.S. interests in Iraq and Syria.
Stepping up their threats, the Houthis said on Dec. 9 they would target all ships heading to Israel, regardless of nationality, and warned all international shipping companies against dealing with Israeli ports, Reuters reported.
“If Gaza does not receive the food and medicine it needs, all ships in the Red Sea bound for Israeli ports, regardless of their nationality, will become a target for our armed forces,” the Houthi spokesperson said in a Dec. 9 statement.
The Houthis’ slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam”.
Iran links
The United States believes that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is helping to plan and carry out the Houthi missile and drone attacks, Reuters reported.
“Iran’s support for Houthi attacks on commercial vessels must stop,” U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Dec. 18.
Iran denies involvement.
The Saudi-led coalition has long accused Iran of arming, training and funding the Houthis. The Houthis deny being an Iranian proxy and say they develop their own weapons.
Arsenal
The Houthis demonstrated their missile and drone capabilities during the Yemen war in attacks on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, targeting oil installations and vital infrastructure.
The arsenal includes ballistic missiles and armed drones capable of hitting Israel more than 1,000 miles from their seat of power in Sanaa.
Its Tofan, Borkan, and Quds missiles are modeled on Iranian weapons and can hit targets up to 2,000 km away, experts say.
The Houthis fired these missiles at Saudi Arabia dozens of times during the Yemen war. In September, the Houthis displayed anti-aircraft Barq-2 missiles, naval missiles, a Mig-29 fighter jet and helicopters for the first time.
The Houthis have also used fast boats armed with machine guns in their operations against shipping.
Regional
US strikes Iran in response to attack on cargo ship in Strait of Hormuz
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
The U.S. military attacked Iran on Friday in response to an Iranian drone strike on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, with each country accusing the other of violating terms of a ceasefire agreed on last week, Reuters reported.
U.S. Central Command said aircraft struck missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites, later publishing a grainy black-and-white video of an explosion labeled “unclassified.” A U.S. official reported the operation had concluded.
Iran said a projectile struck the area around a pier in Sirik in southern Iran, and that Iranian naval forces responded by striking U.S. military targets in the region. Tehran did not provide details about what may have been hit.
Elsewhere, however, there were signs of progress in ending the four-month-old conflict, as Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement to end the fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Both sides framed the deal as an initial step that calls for Hezbollah to disarm and Israel to withdraw troops from Lebanon, but it was not clear how it would be enforced. Hezbollah said it would not cooperate.
Tehran has said it would control the Strait of Hormuz and warned Gulf states not to side with Washington after Thursday’s attack on a cargo ship traveling near Oman’s coast. President Donald Trump blamed the attack on Iran and said it violated last week’s interim agreement.
“The unwarranted aggression against commercial shipping by Iranian forces clearly violated the ceasefire,” U.S. Central Command said in its statement announcing strikes, which it called “a powerful response to yesterday’s attack on a commercial ship that was transiting the Strait of Hormuz.”
The U.S. military said it would continue to provide “safe passage coordination and support” to commercial vessels transiting the strait.
Vice President JD Vance, once seen as a skeptic on U.S. intervention in Iran but now a Trump administration point person on the conflict, said the Americans have honored the ceasefire deal, also known as a memorandum of understanding.
“Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone. But violence will be met with violence,” Vance said on X.
Iranian state media, citing an unnamed military source, reported the strike at the port of Sirik after an explosion was heard there. The source said several warning shots had been fired from Sirik toward vessels that violated Strait of Hormuz regulations about five hours earlier, adding two warning missiles had also been launched from the nearby Karpan area toward the strategic waterway, read the report.
On Saturday, Iran’s Mehr news agency cited the head of ports at eastern Hormozgan as saying that there was no damage to the port of Sirik after the attack by the U.S. The official said the port was operating normally with no damage reported to facilities and equipment.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said that in response its navy “struck the locations where the terrorist U.S. military is stationed in the region” and warned that any further U.S. attacks would be met with a broader response, according to the statement carried on state media.
The ceasefire agreement gives Iran control over ship traffic in the strait, the Guards said.
“However, the United States, by provoking various fronts, sought to violate this commitment, and the necessary response was given and will continue to be given. If the aggression is repeated, our response will be broader than this,” the Revolutionary Guards said.
The U.S. did not immediately respond to Iran’s report of striking American targets, a tactic that has sought to undermine U.S. allies in the region during the conflict.
Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said in response to the latest strikes that Trump has failed to show a commitment to the principles of negotiation or ceasefire.
“This reckless violation of the ceasefire will, as always, lead to retreat and regret on their part,” Azizi posted on X.
Before the renewed outbreak of violence, oil prices fell about 3% on Friday, on course for steep weekly losses, in response to oil tankers exiting the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of global oil and LNG supplies before the U.S. and Israel launched the war on February 28, Reuters reported.
Saudi Aramco resumed crude loadings at its Ras Tanura terminal in the Gulf, the world’s biggest oil port, after a nearly four-month halt, shipping data showed.
Fertilizer shipments through the strait have also picked up, helping to assuage concerns about a spike in global food prices.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio — wrapping up a tour of the Gulf to reassure regional allies about the interim pact — issued a joint statement with the Gulf Cooperation Council calling for “free, unconditional, and unrestricted navigation” in the strait without tolls or “attempts to assert control.”
Iran’s foreign ministry said the strait should be governed by Iran and Oman, while Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, warned Washington’s Gulf allies their survival depended on Tehran’s tolerance.
Regional
Iran’s Pezeshkian says without missiles his country would be ‘just like Gaza’
The Iranian president stressed that Tehran’s defensive capabilities are not open to negotiation.
Regional
US and Iran conclude high-level talks in Switzerland, mediators say
The parties agreed to a mechanism to end the fighting in Lebanon and opened a communications line to help ensure safe passages for commercial ships through the contested strait, the statement said.
The first round of talks between high-ranking U.S. and Iranian officials in Switzerland ended Monday, mediators said, after a tense opening marked by Tehran’s announcement it had again closed the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. President Donald Trump repeating his threats to resume attacks on Iran.
A joint statement from mediating nations Qatar and Pakistan said the U.S. and Iran agreed to a roadmap toward a final deal within 60 days. Technical talks will continue for the rest of the week in the Qatari-owned Swiss mountain resort of Buergenstock, according to the statement, which was released by the Qatari foreign ministry, Reuters reported.
The parties agreed to a mechanism to end the fighting in Lebanon and opened a communications line to help ensure safe passages for commercial ships through the contested strait, the statement said.
U.S. Vice President JD Vance had opened talks with Iranian officials on Sunday under the terms of a memorandum of understanding reached last week to extend a tenuous ceasefire from April for at least another 60 days. The discussions continued until the early hours of Monday.
In a post on social media, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said his country had secured waivers for oil and petrochemical exports, the release of some frozen assets and the launch of a reconstruction and development plan for Iran.
The White House had no immediate comment when asked if talks had wrapped for now.
Just before talks officially began on Sunday, Fox News reported that Trump said he told Iranian officials “you won’t have a country” if they tried to close the strait again. Trump also reiterated an earlier threat that the U.S. would take over the waterway and possibly charge a toll of its own, Fox News said.
U.S. and Iranian sources provided separate accounts of the discussions in Switzerland.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, citing an informed source, said that after Trump’s threats became public, the Iranian delegation refused to return to the room where talks were held, though messages were still being traded via Pakistani and Qatari mediators.
According to Tasnim’s source, Iranians said that the start of negotiations on nuclear matters required the delivery of other parts of the MOU, including the release of frozen assets and U.S. waivers authorizing Iranian oil exports.
“The Iranians never left and are still here meeting and negotiating deep into the night,” a U.S. diplomat involved in the talks told Reuters. “We’ve talked about the Strait, Lebanon, nuclear issues, and details of implementing the MOU, among other topics.”
High-level discussions are expected to wrap up on Monday, with technical staff remaining to conduct further talks, according to a U.S. official.
The agreement called for reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a choke point for global energy shipments, and ending all hostilities, including in Lebanon, where Israel has continued to launch deadly strikes as Iranian ally Hezbollah fires at Israeli targets.
Iran, arguing that the U.S. had failed to meet its commitment to halt fighting in Lebanon, said on the weekend that it had again stopped maritime traffic through the strait and that Sunday’s talks would not cover substantive issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme.
At the talks in Switzerland, where U.S. and Iranian officials met in the presence of Qatari mediators, Vance played down the impact of violence in Lebanon, saying progress had been made towards ending hostilities there.
“These things are always a little bit messy,” he said.
Back in the United States, Trump threatened to resume attacks on Iran if it did not rein in its allies.
“Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble,” Trump wrote on social media, apparently referring to Hezbollah. “If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard again, just like we did last week, only harder!!!”
Even as Trump was threatening Iran, Vance told reporters the U.S. president had “asked us to turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran.”
A U.S. diplomat late Sunday said discussions included “clarifying some of the confusing messaging from Iran on the Strait and building deconfliction mechanisms to ensure the Strait will remain fully open.”
IRAN CITES LEBANON AS REASON TO CLOSE STRAIT
Despite the announcement of a new ceasefire in Lebanon on Friday, there has been scant sign of an end to fighting there. Iran said on Saturday that as a result, it had again shut the strait, whose closure for nearly four months caused the biggest disruption of global energy supplies in history.
U.S. officials disputed that the strait was closed, but commercially available shipping data showed an immediate impact.
Five vessels passed the strait on Sunday, a sharp drop from the 26 ships spotted a day earlier, data from analytics firm Kpler showed. The data may exclude vessels that switch off their transponders while travelling in the Gulf.
Iran’s Fars news agency cited a military source as saying on Sunday that no new permits were being issued for ships to cross until further notice.
Trump said he agreed to last week’s memorandum of understanding to avert a global economic depression from high oil prices caused by the strait’s closure. Oil prices had tumbled over the past week to levels unseen since the war started on February 28 with U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran.
Brent crude futures rose more than $1 to $81.66 a barrel in early Monday trading, following the rocky start to the peace talks.
Sunday appeared to be the quietest day in Lebanon for some time, with no reports of major violence by nightfall, after two days of heavy Israeli strikes and fire from Hezbollah fighters on Israeli positions.
More than 1 million people have fled their homes in Lebanon since Israel invaded in March to pursue Hezbollah fighters who fired across the border in support of Tehran.
Reuters journalists in southern Lebanon on Sunday saw some of the heaviest traffic since the memorandum was signed, with residents returning to their homes. Some stood beside cars backed up on the highway and waved Hezbollah flags.
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