Biden admits airstrikes on Houthis aren’t working

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Yemen’s Houthi rebels are enthusiastically “confronting America directly,” the organization’s leader said in a televised speech, vowing to continue the group’s campaign of attacks on ships in the Red Sea until Israel’s blockade of Gaza is lifted.

The remarks came as the U.S. steps up its strikes on Houthi targets and ahead of President Joe Biden’s admission to reporters that so far, his administration’s military action was not having its intended effect.

“When you say working, are they stopping the Houthis?” Biden said in an exchange with reporters in Washington, D.C. “No. Are they going to continue? Yes.” The White House re-designated the Houthis as a terrorist organization on Jan. 17, after de-listing the group in 2021.

The U.S. carried out its fifth airstrike against Houthi targets in Yemen late Thursday night, with American jets targeting anti-ship missiles that U.S. Central Command said “were aimed into the southern Red Sea and prepared to launch.”

As if to validate Biden’s comments, the Iran-backed rebel group within hours launched two anti-ship ballistic missiles at a U.S.-owned tanker. The vessel, a small chemical tanker called the Chem Ranger, reported no injuries or damage to the ship.

It is “a great honor and blessing to be confronting America directly,” Houthi leader Abdul-Malek al-Houthi said in his defiant, hour-long speech that leaned heavily on religious rhetoric. He claimed that the U.S. and U.K. strikes on Yemen only sharpened his military’s technology, and that it proved the Houthis’ strategy — which targeted Israeli ships or those coming to or from Israel — was working.

The Houthis’ actions have certainly worked to disrupt transport and seaborne trade in the region: Major shipping firms have suspended all Red Sea and Suez Canal…