WASHINGTON: Operatives from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are working inside Yemen to support Houthi insurgents\u2019 attacks on international shipping, a US official said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, told a Senate subcommittee that Iran\u2019s clerical state was \u201cequipping and facilitating\u201d the Houthi attacks, which have triggered retaliatory US and British strikes on Yemen.<\/p>\n
\u201cCredible public reports suggest a significant number of Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah operatives are supporting Houthi attacks from inside Yemen,\u201d Lenderking said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t imagine the Yemeni people want these Iranians in their country. This must stop,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The White House said in December that Iran was \u201cdeeply involved\u201d in planning the attacks, which the Houthis say are acts of solidarity with the Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n
Lenderking, who has dealt with the Houthis since the start of President Joe Biden\u2019s administration as he helped diplomacy to freeze a brutal civil war, acknowledged that the rebels have not been deterred.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that they continue this, and have said publicly that they will not stop until there\u2019s a ceasefire in Gaza, is an indication that we\u2019re not yet at the point, unfortunately, where they do intend to dial back,\u201d Lenderking said.<\/p>\n
The bombing campaign drew skepticism from some senators from Biden\u2019s Democratic Party.<\/p>\n
Chris Murphy, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Middle East, agreed that the United States has \u201can obligation to respond\u201d to attacks on shipping but added, \u201cI do worry about the efficacy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Houthis, who control war-torn Yemen\u2019s most populated areas, have previously reported the death of 17 fighters in Western strikes targeting their military facilities.<\/p>\n
The Houthi attacks have had a significant effect on traffic through the busy Red Sea shipping route, forcing some companies into a two-week detour around southern Africa.<\/p>\n
Last week, Egypt said Suez Canal revenues were down by up to 50 percent this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: Operatives from Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah are working inside Yemen to support Houthi insurgents\u2019 attacks on international shipping, a US official said Tuesday. Tim Lenderking, the US special envoy for Yemen, told a Senate subcommittee that Iran\u2019s clerical state was \u201cequipping and facilitating\u201d the Houthi attacks, which have triggered retaliatory US and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61264"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61264\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61283,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61264\/revisions\/61283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}