Trump vows to hold Iran responsible for Houthi attacks

By Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Mohammed Ghobari

WASHINGTON/ADEN (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he would hold Iran responsible for any attacks carried out by the Houthi group that it backs in Yemen, as his administration expanded the biggest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since Trump returned to the White House.

Responding to the Houthi movement's threats to international shipping, the U.S. launched a new wave of airstrikes on Saturday. On Monday, the Red Sea port city of Hodeidah and Al Jawf governorate north of the capital Sanaa were targeted, Houthi-run Al Masirah TV said.

"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, and IRAN will be held responsible, and suffer the consequences, and those consequences will be dire!" Trump said on his Truth Social platform.

The White House said that Trump's message to Iran was to take the United States seriously.

At least 53 people have been killed in the attacks, the Houthi-run health ministry said on Sunday. Five children and two women were among the victims and 98 have been hurt, it said. Reuters could not independently verify those casualty numbers.

The Houthis, an armed movement that has taken control of the most populous parts of Yemen despite nearly a decade of Saudi-led bombing, have launched scores of attacks on ships off its coast since November 2023, disrupting global commerce.

One U.S. official told Reuters the strikes might continue for weeks. Washington has also ramped up sanctions pressure on Iran while trying to bring it to the negotiating table over its nuclear program.

An Emirati official last week passed on a letter from Trump, who took office in January, proposing nuclear talks with Tehran - a proposal that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei rejected as "deception" by Washington.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Tehran would respond to the letter "after full scrutiny" of it.

The Houthis say their attacks, which have forced companies to re-route ships to longer and more expensive journeys around southern Africa, are in solidarity with Palestinians as Israel strikes Gaza.

The U.S. and its allies characterise them as indiscriminate and a menace to global trade.

Houthi leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Sunday the militants would target U.S. ships in the Red Sea as long as the U.S. continues attacks on Yemen.

Under the direction of al-Houthi, who is in his 40s, the ragtag group has become an army of tens of thousands of fighters and acquired an arsenal of armed drones and ballistic missiles. Saudi Arabia and the West say the arms come from Iran. Tehran denies this.

While Iran champions the Houthis, the Houthis deny being puppets of Tehran, and experts on Yemen say they are motivated primarily by a domestic agenda.

The Houthis' military spokesman, without providing evidence, said in a televised statement early on Monday that the group had launched a second attack against the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.

'AXIS OF RESISTANCE'

The Houthis are part of what has been called the "Axis of Resistance" - an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias that also includes the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Lebanon's Hezbollah and is backed by Iran.

Israel has severely weakened many of Iran's regional allies since being attacked by Hamas gunmen in October 2023.

Israel has assassinated the top Hamas and Hezbollah leaders, and the fall of another Iranian ally, Syria's Bashar al-Assad, also dealt a blow to Tehran. But the Houthis are still standing, along with pro-Iranian militias in Iraq.

In further violence in the Middle East, an Israeli airstrike killed three Palestinian men in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, local medics said on Monday. The three had left their homes to collect firewood, family members said.

Israel's military, which began its Gaza campaign after the deadly Hamas-led attacks on Israel in October 2023, said it had conducted attacks in central Gaza and Rafah against "terrorists" operating near their forces and trying to plant bombs.

The bloodshed underscores the fragility of a three-stage ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the U.S. There was no sign of progress from renewed talks on sustaining a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

The Houthis said last week they would resume attacks on Israeli ships passing through the Red Sea if Israel did not lift a block on aid entering Gaza.

Israel's suspension of goods entering Gaza for 16 days has increased pressure on the enclave's 2.3 million people, most of who have been made homeless by the war. The suspension, which Israel said was aimed at pressuring Hamas in ceasefire talks, applies to food, medicine, and fuel imports.

Houthi fighters have also fired drones and missiles towards Israel.

Israel, which has hit multiple Houthi-linked targets in Yemen, has warned the militants to halt their strikes, saying they risked the same "miserable fate" as Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad.

(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart, Yomna Ehab, Hatem Maher, Ahmed Tolba; additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo; Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by Timothy Heritage and Nia Williams)