US officials are grappling with how to respond to escalating attacks by Iran-backed proxy groups on US troops and ships in the Red Sea without sparking a broader war in the Middle East.
The US has retaliated several times to the proxy groups’ attacks, striking militants and infrastructure in Iraq and Syria and shooting down missiles and drones launched by the Houthi rebels in Yemen. US officials have also conveyed to Iran and its proxies via backchannels that the attacks must stop, and on Sunday the US killed a group of Houthi militants attempting to board and seize a commercial vessel in the Red Sea.
A senior administration official said the US would not hesitate to use lethal force again against the Houthis in self-defense. “If that happened again, we would probably do the exact same thing,” the official said.
But the US has been deeply reluctant to move beyond self-defense strikes and backchannel diplomacy, even as the Pentagon has drawn up various options for President Joe Biden to strike the Houthis inside Yemen should he choose that approach, officials told CNN.
Since Israel launched its war against Hamas in Gaza following the terror groups’s October 7 attack, the US has been scrambling behind the scenes to prevent a broader multi-country war from igniting. But the challenge has only increased with tensions skyrocketing this week following an Israeli strike on a Hamas leader in Lebanon and a major ISIS terror attack in Iran on top of the regular Iranian proxy attacks.
“We remain incredibly concerned, as we have been from the outset of this conflict, about the risk of the conflict spreading into other fronts,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told reporters on Wednesday.
The US has been particularly wary of undercutting a US and UN-brokered truce between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis over the war in Yemen that the…
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