U.S. and Iran-backed Houthis both vow escalation after airstrikes target rebels in Yemen

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (Win McNamee/Pool Photo via AP)

CAIRO — The United States and Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen are both vowing escalation after the U.S. launched airstrikes to deter the rebels from attacking military and commercial vessels on one of the world’s busiest shipping corridors.

The Houthi-run Health Ministry said the overnight U.S. strikes killed at least 53 people, including five women and two children, and wounded almost 100 in the capital of Sanaa and the northern province of Saada, the rebels' stronghold on the border with Saudi Arabia.

“We’re not going to have these people controlling which ships can go through and which ones cannot. And so your question is, how long will this go on? It will go on until they no longer have the capability to do that,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio told CBS on Sunday. He said these are not the one-off retaliation strikes the Biden administration carried out after Houthi attacks.

President Donald Trump on Saturday vowed to use “overwhelming lethal force” until the Houthis cease their attacks, and warned that Tehran would be held “fully accountable” for their actions.

The Houthis have repeatedly targeted international shipping in the Red Sea, sinking two vessels, in what they call acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in Gaza, where Israel has been at war with Hamas, another Iranian ally.

The attacks stopped when a Israel-Hamas ceasefire took hold in January -- a day before Trump took office -- but last week the Houthis said they would renew attacks against Israeli vessels after Israel cut off the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza this month.

There have been no Houthi attacks reported since then.

The overnight airstrikes were one of the most extensive attacks against the Houthis since the war in Gaza began in October 2023.

Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Waltz, on Sunday told ABC that the strikes “actually targeted multiple Houthi leaders and took them out.” He didn’t identify them or give evidence. Rubio said some Houthi facilities had been destroyed.

The Houthis' political bureau has said the rebels will respond to the U.S. strikes and “meet escalation with escalation.”

The rebels on Sunday claimed to have targeted the USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group with missiles and a drone, but two U.S. officials told The Associated Press they were not tracking anything. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations.

The spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in a statement called for “utmost restraint and a cessation of all military activities,” while warning of the “grave risks” to the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Rubio said that over the past 18 months the Houthis had attacked the U.S. Navy “directly” 174 times and targeted commercial shipping 145 times using “guided precision anti-ship weaponry.”

The attacks sparked the most serious combat the U.S. Navy had seen since World War II.

On Sunday, the head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami, denied his country was involved in the Houthis' attacks, saying it “plays no role in setting the national or operational policies” of the militant groups it is allied with across the region, according to state-run TV.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, writing on X, urged the U.S. to halt its airstrikes and said Washington cannot dictate Iran’s foreign policy.

The U.S. and others have long accused Iran of providing military aid to the rebels. The U.S. Navy has seized Iranian-made missile parts and other weaponry it said was bound for the Houthis.

The United States, Israel and Britain previously hit Houthi-held areas in Yemen, but the new operation was conducted solely by the U.S. It was the first strike on the Houthis under the second Trump administration.

The USS Harry S. Truman carrier strike group, which includes the carrier, three Navy destroyers and one cruiser, is in the Red Sea and was part of the mission. The USS Georgia cruise missile submarine has also been operating in the region.

Associated Press writers Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, and Tara Copp and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.