Yemen’s Houthi rebels have launched a missile at a U.S. warship patrolling the Gulf of Aden, forcing it to shoot down the projectile. The attack on the destroyer USS Carney marks a further escalation in the biggest confrontation at sea the U.S. Navy has seen in the Middle East in decades.
The U.S. military stated that this represents the first time the Houthis directly targeted a U.S. warship since the rebels began their attacks on shipping in October. This incident contradicted a statement by the U.S. military’s Central Command, which said the Houthis fired “toward” the Carney. Since the Israel-Hamas war broke out, the U.S. has tried to temper its descriptions of the strikes targeting its bases and warships to try to prevent the conflict from becoming a wider regional war.
Brad Bowman, a senior director at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, noted the importance of acknowledging Friday’s assault as a direct attack on a U.S. warship. He mentioned that the language tempering, aimed at preventing a wider war, has had the opposite effect of further enabling the Houthis.
In Friday’s attack, an anti-ship ballistic missile came near the USS Carney, an Arleigh-Burke class destroyer that’s been involved in American operations to try and stop the Houthi campaign since November, Central Command said. “The missile was successfully shot down by USS Carney,” Central Command said. “There were no injuries or damage reported.”
The U.S. and Britain have launched multiple rounds of airstrikes targeting Houthi missile depots and launcher sites in Yemen, a country that’s been wracked by conflict since the rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
Since November, the rebels have repeatedly targeted ships in the Red Sea, saying they were avenging Israel’s offensive in Gaza against Hamas. But they have frequently targeted vessels with tenuous or no clear links to Israel, imperiling shipping in a key route for global trade between Asia, the Mideast and Europe. The rebels now say they’ll target American and British ships as well.
The U.S. Navy’s top Mideast commander told the AP on Monday that the Houthi attacks were the worst since the so-called Tanker War of the 1980s. It culminated in a one-day naval battle between Washington and Tehran, and also saw the U.S. Navy accidentally shoot down an Iranian passenger jet, killing 290 people in 1988.
Copp reported from Washington.
